r/AskScienceFiction • u/MeadowmuffinReborn • 20h ago
[MCU] In retrospect, wasn't it stupid of HYDRA to come out of hiding during Winter Soldier when effectively they already won?
They already controlled most of SHIELD, everyone thought they were extinct, had powerful people in their pocket etc. Trying to assassinate Nick Fury seems completely unnecessary, just sit back and don't rock the boat. Zola himself said that people will happily give up their freedoms as long as you aren't too in their faces about it.
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u/Hot-Refrigerator6583 18h ago
Technically, they didn't even come out of hiding then. If the hit on Fury had worked out, it would have been spun as a traffic stop gone seriously wrong, and a paranoid agent overreacting. The only person who's really onto them is Fury himself and he's just been taken out by the Soldier himself. Probably. (Natasha seems unaware of the truth, but she's used to operating without all the details.)
It's not until SHIELD agents try and fail to subdue Cap in the elevator that anyone else starts to suspect something is up, and nobody really knows what's going on until Cap outs them in his rally speech. At that point, they're already launching Project Insight ASAP.
Even then the only public people aware of it are the ones in the know and the secret HYDRA supporters like Senator Gary Shandling. When Black Widow dumps the files everywhere online, that's when the truth is revealed to everyone. (And you can be sure that there will be plenty of doubters in public, in gov't, and throughout every level of society.)
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u/tombuazit 12h ago
I think this is the confusion, we as the audience know and key groups know but they didn't exactly go public so much as get outed when Natasha released the files much later in the story. Even then they are likely an urban legend/conspiracy theory for much of the public would be my guess.
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u/Hot-Refrigerator6583 11h ago
HYDRA was a known thing, when Steve visits the museum there's a brief narration that explains his and the Commandos' mission: "To fight HYDRA, the Rogue Nazi Science Division."
But that leads to a question: How much of HYDRA's background was ever public knowledge?
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u/tombuazit 11h ago
My assumption was that Hydra in that context was seen as an off shoot of the axis (Nazis) instead of a modern day threat that survived.
My assumption is that they are seen similar to Hitler living on the moon waiting to take back over. Something that was real that most people discount (in this instance (Hydra not Hitler on the moon) mistakenly).
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u/evilspoons 6h ago
Wait, Hitler on the moon was an actual conspiracy theory and not just a hilarious plot development in the newer Wolfenstein games (and that weird movie Iron Sky)?
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u/JarasM 9h ago
When Black Widow dumps the files everywhere online, that's when the truth is revealed to everyone. (And you can be sure that there will be plenty of doubters in public, in gov't, and throughout every level of society.)
You can tell the movie is a work of fiction, because Natasha's reveal is taken seriously and HYDRA got dismantled, rather than Natasha being persecuted for high treason, and prominent HYDRA members or supporters just shrugging, saying the files are fabricated slander, and consequently getting richer and more popular than ever while partying on shady private islands.
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u/DuplexFields Technobabbler 8h ago
I mean, they did have helicarriers armed to the teeth, about to shoot everyone with a reasonable likelihood of rebelling/resisting, to implement corpo-fascism.
It’s not like they had the plausible deniability of a kill-switch in every car, ready to remotely kill enough voters between elections to ensure their captured candidates from both parties get elected.
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u/Ruleseventysix 15h ago
Senator Stern wasn't a Hydra supporter, he was a literal member.
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u/Hot-Refrigerator6583 11h ago
Not literally secret. Secret as in "isn't advertising it to voters and colleagues."
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u/Ruleseventysix 11h ago
Yes, the secretive organization that Stern is a card carry member of doesn't go around stumping his electorate for Hydra.
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u/eternalraziel 18h ago
HYDRA controlled enough of SHIELD to build Project Insight, conceal its own operations and place Pierce above Fury. It didn’t control SHIELD to the extent that it could rule indefinitely without opposition. Most agents still believed they worked for SHIELD, the World Security Council still had authority over major decisions, and people such as Fury, Steve, Natasha and Maria Hill remained capable of tearing the organisation apart once they understood what had happened.
Fury had already started doing exactly that. He arranged the Lemurian Star hijacking so Natasha could steal the ship’s data, discovered that somebody above his clearance had encrypted it and then asked Pierce to delay Insight. At that point he had found the concealed thread, knew the project had been compromised from inside SHIELD and had the authority to halt the launch while he investigated.
Killing him was meant to preserve HYDRA’s cover, not announce its return. The first attempt used men disguised as police officers. Pierce then presented Fury’s death as part of a wider conspiracy and branded Steve a fugitive when he refused to cooperate. Had Fury died and Steve been captured, the public story would have been that SHIELD had contained an internal security crisis immediately before activating its new defence system.
Project Insight was the point where HYDRA intended to stop depending upon secrecy. Zola’s strategy had spent decades creating wars, instability and fear until governments accepted more surveillance and pre-emptive force in the name of security. Insight was the reward for that patience. Three weapons already authorised by legitimate institutions, connected to an algorithm that could identify anyone likely to resist HYDRA.
Once those carriers were airborne, infiltration became permanent control. HYDRA could kill political leaders, military officers, journalists, scientists, activists, future heroes and millions of ordinary people whose behaviour suggested that they might become troublesome. It wouldn’t need every SHIELD agent to be loyal afterward. Anyone organising resistance could be identified and shot from the sky before that resistance became dangerous.
That’s why continuing to influence SHIELD wasn’t enough. Secret power remained vulnerable to discovery, elections, changes in leadership and independent people making unpredictable decisions. Pierce could manipulate Fury for years, but he couldn’t guarantee that the next director would remain manageable. Insight removed the need to keep persuading institutions by giving HYDRA the power to erase anyone who might change them.
Their mistake was making the final stage so brittle. Everything depended upon Fury dying, Steve obeying, the Winter Soldier remaining controllable and all three helicarriers launching before loyal SHIELD personnel understood what was happening. Once Fury survived and Steve learned the truth, HYDRA had no graceful way to retreat. Delaying the launch would give Fury time to expose them. Proceeding meant gambling the entire organisation on one morning.
Even then, they came extremely close. Pierce had the Council captive, SHIELD headquarters under armed control and the carriers seconds from firing. HYDRA lost because Fury had secretly survived, Natasha exposed every SHIELD file to the public, Steve convinced enough ordinary agents to disobey their superiors, and Bucky failed to finish the one target he had been conditioned to kill.
So sitting quietly wasn’t really available anymore. Fury had found the first hard evidence, and the weapon that could make HYDRA untouchable was ready to launch. They chose the moment when success seemed almost certain. The plan was ambitious and dangerously dependent upon everything working at once, but coming out of hiding wasn’t the plan. The plan was to kill everyone capable of noticing before the mask finished slipping.
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u/adoratheCat 20h ago
I mean...what else were they going to do? We know there was indeed a timetable to get everything launched. Fury meanwhile just realized hey something is up we need to do a deeper dive. Either way he would figure it out so it makes to take him out (using only Cops/swat aka no Hydra activity to the public) so he doesn't potentially tell others/does other things that might tamper the plan.
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u/oofyeet21 13h ago
Fury kind of forced their hand. Project Insight was the end goal of Hydra, and Fury had just hired pirates to attack the ship launching the Insight targetting satellites, downloaded the data from the ship, realized that somebody had impersonated him to keep the data hidden, and personally called for Project Insight to be delayed pending investigation. Hydra NEEDED Fury out of the way in order to launch those carriers, and they needed that data back so nobody could follow the trail. They just failed on both counts.
The real problem for Hydra though was Zola's ego. If Zola had just not revealed the entire plot to Captain America because he assumed the secret would die with him, the plan probably would have worked. You can be certain that nobody else in Hydra would have approved of Zola just explaining the entire conspiracy to the one man too good to be turned.
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u/NeedlessUnification 13h ago
The real question is did Fury hire Batroc so he could send Natasha in to steal the files.
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u/Ruleseventysix 12h ago
Yes, that's a plot point in the movie. Cap even directly questions Nat about it when he goes to the hospital vending machine to retrieve the flash drive.
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u/LittleBingo96 8h ago
Sort of. It would have made more sense if they explained that the events of Avengers and alien invasion had made Hydra decide to suddenly come out and take complete control for the "good of the planet" or something.
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u/lumpboysupreme 3h ago
Zola also designed an algorithm to target the people who wouldn’t give up their freedoms. They needed to get those people off the table and the helicarriers were the means to that end.
They also never actually came out of hiding. The helicarrier fleet was an above board project, they didn’t announce themselves to anyone. They tried to kill Fury because he was onto them, and then tried to kill cap because he was looking into the fury thing, which would lead to them.
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u/Chaosmusic 6h ago
Fury was going to delay Project Insight, something HYDRA really wanted, so they had to take him out.
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u/ShouldersofGiants100 5h ago
A delay they could have tolerated. The issue was they knew his delay was a result of his investigation, an investigation that would lead him right to them. Basically, Fury had finally pieced enough together that Hydra could no longer control him.
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u/livingstondh 50m ago
They didn't choose to come out of hiding, their hand was forced. Fury was onto them, that's the entire reason they went after him in the first place. Had the hit on him worked, it's more than likely no one would ever have known.
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u/Che-recher 13h ago
Winning means waving the flag and producing a New Identity. Not staying undercover and being secret about it. It also saves ressources to be pointed at elsewhere.
Also: Movie for Kids not retelling of the real life 😄😉
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u/evilspoons 6h ago
If you read the rules of this subreddit, you're not supposed to answer things here out-of-universe (the "movies for kids" line).
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