Rewatching Agent Carter season one episodes yet again (as one does) I ended up going through the final firefight in 1x05 in detail, taking screenshots and lightening them to figure out exactly how the final fight was blocked out – and specifically, what it was in the fight, exactly, that made Jack freeze up, because it wasn’t just the fight itself (he was fine in parts of it, just not in all of it). And the results of that were really interesting. Unfortunately most of it is too dark and happens too fast to really see what happened without going through the caps.
First of all, it’s not combat that does it – not precisely. He’s actually okay in a firefight; in fact, he’s possibly got the most dangerous position in the group, covering their rear as they escape. Right before they hit the dead end where they eventually escape through the wall, you can see him hanging back, letting other people go ahead of him, and then only diving for cover once everyone else is behind the big metal furnace things that they’re sheltering behind. He’s the last to take shelter.
So at this point, they’re sheltering behind these furnace things. Peggy and most of the others are behind the one on the left; Jack and Li are behind the one on the left. And he’s still doing fine.
Li is right behind him; Jack and Li are alternating fire from behind the furnace.
Then the little Black Widow drops out of a vent behind Li, while everyone else is focused on the enemies in front of them.
She shoots Li from behind; he falls down between Jack and Peggy.
There’s a moment when everyone is frozen and can’t figure out what just happened. In that frozen instant, the Black Widow almost gets Jack too, but Peggy yells, “Above you!” and he ducks.
And this is when things really fall apart, with the girl still shooting people and the Russian prisoner taking advantage of the confusion to take Sam hostage. At this point, the biggest threats to their group are two noncombatants: a little girl, and one of the people they were rescuing.
Andthat’s the point when he freezes; things are happening fast at this point, so we don’t see him again for a minute or two, but the next time in the fight that we see him at all, he’s completely out of it.
And that’s what did it, I think: it wasn’t being shot at, it was being thrown into another situation where the right answer wasn’t obvious, and he had to make another split-second decision about who to kill, with lives hanging in the balance. The last time, he made the wrong choice; this time, he flashes back to having killed innocent people in a similar situation before, and seizes up.
(Though probably the fact that they just got raked with fire in a supposedly safe spot had something to do with it too. He’d thought they were relatively well defended, then watched one guy he was responsible for get shot in front of him and almost got killed himself – that would rattle anybody, even without preexisting trauma. I don’t remember where this discussion was happening, but at some point recently in the AC tags, someone was talking about the war in the Pacific being especially traumatic because of the dense Pacific jungle and the fact that threats could come very suddenly from any direction, which kept everyone in a constant state of hypervigilance – and that’s exactly what just happened here.)
It puts a whole new light on Season 2, doesn’t it? His inability to trust his instincts to tell right from wrong continues.
Vernon is a family friend and appears to be looking out for him. Jack doesn’t want to give him the Zero Matter film reel but he can’t trust his own instincts, so he chooses to trust in Vernon instead.
He sees the paper later at the Arena Club and he knows Peggy was right; something is rotten in Denmark but he still can’t trust his (and her) instincts, not against Vernon and his own ambition further muddying the waters. He finds out Vernon is working Whitney Frost and still hands over Dottie Underwood; he still follows Vernon’s directions to discredit Peggy.
He doesn’t want to do it, he begs her to go back to NY. “It’s okay to be wrong from time to time,” he tells her, desperately wanting to believe that it’s true (it’s okay to be wrong, Jack) and that Peggy is indeed wrong. If she’s not, that means Vernon is wrong, and his whole world gets turned upside down.
It was probably a relief when Vernon hit him with the memory inhibitor. He doesn’t have to remember the moment when his faith in the man crumbled to dust.
(And it’s no wonder his subsequent plan was to blow everyone up; it’s an overcorrection.)
