A question that was left with me after rewatching Winter Soldier: so... did Fury hire Batroc to attack the Lemurian Star?

In the film, they present this possibility as something Pierce intuits might have happened, to which Steve replies that "if he knew Fury, he knows it's not true."

Then we see him use this to convince the council to immediately reactivate Project Insight, so one could say that the whole thing was fabricated to tarnish Fury's reputation.

But when they meet with Fury, we don't see him deny that he hired them, and as Natasha says, the whole operation was rather strange. So it wouldn't surprise me if Fury already suspected Project Insight and secretly orchestrated the kidnapping as an excuse to send Black Widow to steal the Lemurian's information.

This is Fury before he was flanderized, the same Fury who emotionally manipulated the Avengers into fighting Loki on Coulson's behalf.

Commentaires

Ordinary_Fact_19172026-01-25 15:51

Yes. Fury hired Batroc to hijack the Lemurian Star so he would have an excuse to send Black Widow in to steal files from the ship.

Altruistic_Eye_11572026-01-25 17:00

thank you

TheChaseLemon2026-01-25 22:46

I mean they literally explain that in the movie.

jimmcq2026-01-26 08:09

Yes, but you can't trust anything Pierce says... so I could see where it would be easy to believe he was lying about it.

TheChaseLemon2026-01-26 16:31

Sure, perhaps at that moment of the conversation, but come on, it’s pretty obvious it was true by the time you realize what’s going down in the movie.

ARquantam2026-01-26 00:27

tws is a movie that is a little too realistic for OUR own good.

watze972026-01-26 03:31

To this day it's a masterpiece,it tacke the political paranoia that we are living today, security vs freedom.

CrucialElement2026-01-26 02:03

Whytf didn't he just get Batrocs crew to send the files??

The_Jovanny2026-01-26 03:04

He couldn’t have it get back to Pierce.

tagabalon2026-01-26 08:39

compartmentalization.

batroc is not supposed to know there are confidential SHIELD files in the ship.

CrucialElement2026-01-26 14:13

Not really supposed to hijack a ship either but there he is!

tagabalon2026-01-26 14:50

batroc is a pirate. his job is to hijack ships. that's why fury hired him and not matt murdock.

WildMongoose62062026-01-25 15:55

Yes he did for a good reason.

Busy-Cream2026-01-25 15:56

Yes, fury did it. But what I never understood is why The world’s greatest spy uses his moms neighbors address that his boss would recognize, instead of a random P.O. Box or house in the middle of LA or something. Seems dumb

Tieger662026-01-25 16:04

this is why i always felt like it should've been false. like yes, hiring someone to hijack a ship to give you an excuse to send black widow in is something Fury might do... but doing it so incompetently and obviously? that should've meant he was just taking advantage of someone elses badly done false flag operation.

hemareddit2026-01-25 16:20

Well the address was at the end of a long chain of shell companies. But also it didn’t matter because he was going to out himself to his boss anyways, so he could get “assassinated” and operate freely.

Senshado2026-01-25 16:22

Nick Fury is an objectively terrible spy. There's been no greater failure than allowing enemy agents to infiltrate more than 25% of the staff positions within his organization.

wheeze_the_juice2026-01-25 16:24

well it started when SSR turned into SHIELD, so the blame should be on Carter, Phillips, and Stark.

t_moneyzz2026-01-25 17:20

Stark paid for it at least 💀

blaghort2026-01-25 16:31

Well, tbf, intelligence-gathering and counterintelligence are different things. There's a reason the UK has MI5 *and* MI6, and the US tasks the CIA with intel but the FBI with counterintel. There are overlaps, of course--for instance, sometimes a foreign intel op will reveal information about spies in your own country--but the distinction is real.

Fury may well be a good spy, and good at special ops, but crap at counterintelligence.

(Also, tbf--the way you usually find out about infiltration of your org is by exposing communication between the infiltrators in your org and their controllers outside it. Counterintel techniques aren't really meant to find a cabal *entirely* hosted in your org.)

NotoriousMAO2026-01-25 16:44

MI5 and 6 did once find out everyone inside was a Russian spy too, so being bad at spying is pretty standard in spying also.

WhatTheFreightTruck2026-01-25 16:56

Source? That sounds interesting to read about

NotoriousMAO2026-01-25 17:01

Well I am joking but I am talking about the Cambridge Five and how at certain points nearly everyone was under suspicion due to how badly and easily they were both penetrated.

mjtwelve2026-01-26 01:06

There was even concern that C might be a Russian agent, at one point.

fyreprone2026-01-25 18:04

In that case you might be interested in learning about Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, two members of the CIA who were tasked with finding Russian spies in the CIA while also being the Russian spies they were tasked with finding.

zion_hiker19112026-01-25 19:36

There's a show called the Americans that covers some of this really well. It's set in the US though and pits undercover illegal agents Infiltrating the FBI and CIA in different ways. Also, Keri Russell is really hot in it, and a great actress.

Grays422026-01-25 16:56

I mean, oranges and tangerines are different things but it's a narrow distinction, we aren't talking about the difference between oranges and dining chairs. The FBI is tasked with counterintelligence to create an organizational barrier between the investigators and the investigatees to make sure the investigators aren't compromised too, not because it requires a completely unique skill set.

Fury is the head of the organization, he should be capable of figuring out when a huge segment of his organization is rogue.

mjtwelve2026-01-26 01:09

The problem is identifying what parts of your agency are rogue-rogue and what parts are “rogue” agents doing deniable ops at your request.

Look at the plot of the show Alias - everyone was working for an off the books black ops program that officially didn’t exist on behalf of the CIA. Except that the CIA actually DIDNT set them up, that’s just what the ex CIA rogue agents told their new hires after they left the company.

Paracelsus902102026-01-26 03:52

It's also even more difficult in Fury's case because SHIELD has been rotting since before he ever joined it, he has no baseline for what a 'normal', non-compromised SHIELD looks like because HYDRA was growing inside it since the 50s/60s at least and would have already had a strong foothold if not outright already taken it over by the time he was climbing the ranks.

It's like being blindfolded, entering a room you've never been in before and being asked to figure out where all the furniture was yesterday, like where do you even start?

WeirdIndividualGuy2026-01-25 17:52

> and the US tasks the CIA with intel but the FBI with counterintel

Well also the CIA mainly deals with international espionage vs the FBI that works within the US. That’s the main difference between the two

lolzidop2026-01-26 01:32

That's also the same with regard to MI5 and MI6.

TheGreatStories2026-01-25 19:30

If fury trusted people he would have had better counter intelligence at Shield. His paranoia was a blind spot

blaghort2026-01-25 19:37

Or maybe the people he trusted were untrustworthy.

No way to know really. I mean, we're all just speculating about things that never happened because nobody wrote them into a script. It's all headcanon until it ain't.

vashoom2026-01-27 08:09

Because the last time he trusted someone, he lost an eye

Lime_Born2026-01-25 16:37

That goes back to Operation Paperclip, which is based on a real-world project by the US under the same name. Fury took the helm of an organization that was already long taken over.

InnocentTailor2026-01-25 19:53

I guess the infiltration of the Soviet Union was similar since HYDRA also had their tendrils in the nation too - the Winter Soldier being a notable asset.

…though I forgot if the Red Room and Leviathan, which was in Agent Carter, were arms of HYDRA or their own homegrown problem for the West.

joshwagstaff132026-01-26 05:04

> I guess the infiltration of the Soviet Union was similar

Oh most definitely. IRL Paperclip was mirrored by a Soviet attempt to do the same.

InnocentTailor2026-01-26 05:12

Fair enough. The Cold War began in the ruins of Berlin and before Tokyo fell.

Steamed_Memes242026-01-26 10:13

And it wasnt even an attempt, they had acquired far more then we did and they were smart enough to name their operation something that was impossible to say outside of their language as well lol.

Dealiner2026-01-26 06:04

>…though I forgot if the Red Room and Leviathan, which was in Agent Carter, were arms of HYDRA or their own homegrown problem for the West.

They were both independent.

Nicanoru2026-01-25 16:42

Hoo boy... If you take umbrage with that, real world intelligence and counter intelligence would blow your mind both with how rampant it is but also how it's overwhelmingly... Mundane.

Most top secret information was addresses and family names. Protecting sources. One of the biggest counter intelligence breakthroughs were simply accidentally finding a thumb drive in a parking lot. We had little old ladies at vendor stalls in the local shopping mall ask us awfully specific questions about our schooling. Which is funny because the field manual for HUMINT is open source.

Plowbeast2026-01-25 17:43

And now OSINT is often so canny that it can find out about something just a few hours after the world's largest intelligence agencies do.

mjtwelve2026-01-26 01:11

Bellingcat blowing open the GRU UK assassination operation because the agents had sequential passport numbers, for instance.

NateDawg80s2026-01-25 18:19

They were there before Fury. He didn't allow it; he just wasn't aware of it, as no one else was who wasn't HYDRA.

cptamerica832026-01-25 18:29

Well how else can you be a good spy anyways, if you have just one eye.

coatrack682026-01-25 18:37

In all fairness, they were there a really long time.

Trvr_MKA2026-01-25 20:48

…getting his eye scratched out by a cat-alien

bloodyell762026-01-25 20:53

Hydra was well integrated into SHIELD long before Fury joined though. Harder to see these things when they’re part of the woodwork.

KingOfAwesometonia2026-01-25 21:03

Fury being a bad spy and SHIELD having Helicarriers being destroyed on any day ending in "y" are the two constants in the Marvel universe

DarkShadowZX2026-01-25 22:45

Why are you blaming Fury for that? Hydra had secretly infliltrated SHIELD from the beginning with Arnim Zola. Hydra had already secretly had significant hold over SHIELD by the time Fury became a SHIELD agent, let alone once he became its director. How is Fury a bad spy for any of that? It's not like he knew from the very beginning Hydra was already in SHIELD and just let it be. Once he was in any position of power Hydra was already running SHIELD's half-dead corpse like some parasitizing fungi.

NinjaEngineer2026-01-26 00:25

His organization was already compromised way before he got into a leadership role. Zola was captured in WWII.

hellothere3018202026-01-26 08:25

Peggy Carter and Howard Stark let Arnim Zola and HYDRA into SHIELD way before Fury became an agent and he had to rely on Skrulls to become a good SHIELD director

brnjenkn2026-01-26 16:18

It was infiltrated before he was born.

VengeanceKnight2026-01-26 16:36

That’s not fair; the infiltration began *decades* before Fury even joined SHIELD. HYDRA wasn’t even really a separate organization at that time; it was basically a parasitic faction of SHIELD.

gemurrayx2026-01-25 16:27

Fury suspected something like what was actually happening, and didn’t know who to trust. But he never suspected Pierce and I think he used the address as a signal so that the one person he thought was ok would put the pieces together if something happened to him. Pierce would be one of the few who would know that.

Dr_Disaster2026-01-25 16:55

This is what I think too. At the end of the day, Fury’s goal was to sus out things in SHIELD. The address was a poka yoke. If a friend or enemy was able to deduce his shell game, then their nature would be revealed all the same.

Nick already had Hill and her team as a contingency if he was made. Getting Hydra to out themselves premptively is what sets everything in motion. The Lumerian Star wasn’t just a cover op, it was a spring trap for Hydra.

Busy-Cream2026-01-25 17:33

That seems like a stretch. For one, it’s wasn’t the Lumerian Star that triggered anything from Hydra, it was Nick’s request to delay Insight. In fact , the op on the Star didn’t reveal anything except that someone was keeping secrets from him, which he kinda already knew. Plus, his whole speech to cap in the elevator made it pretty clear he didn’t trust anyone, not even Pierce.

I think it’s simpler, he noticed something funny going on with Insight, wanted to see for himself what was being launched via the Star, once he saw he was locked out he knew something was up and needed more time, asked Pierce at which point Pierce decided to kill him.

After_Dig_75792026-01-25 17:41

Why didn't nick just talk to pierce directly

gemurrayx2026-01-25 18:33

Nick wouldn’t call attention to himself. Pierce says during the council meeting that Nick pulls him out of that he hasn’t seen him for awhile, so he’s not changing his behavior.

repooc212026-01-25 16:32

I think he left that breadcrumb for Pierce under the assumption he was not in any way involved in the threat he was hunting.

He trusted him implicitly.

veritropism2026-01-25 16:58

Or, left different breadcrumbs in a many places over the past few years - tuned to specific potential insider threats - to see which one got a response, and never got one until Pierce.

Which actually could make him a decent counterintel operative. But still stupid to put your top man out as the bait for a counterintel operation.

Busy-Cream2026-01-25 17:03

He said he doesn’t trust anyone. His whole speech to cap in the elevator was an example.

After_Dig_75792026-01-25 17:39

Then why not just tell him directly

Rattlingjoint2026-01-25 17:49

To me, doing that was a direct message to Pierce.

What we know about Fury is he is always planning ahead and he loves to keep things in the air. He needed to make it seem like Batrocs group were hired from an outside person, but he also knew that there was a rat in Shield that needed to be scoped out.

Pierce was one of the council, and Fury never seemed to trust Project Insight from the get go, he knew there was a bigger thread he needed to pull on. He and Pierce were old friends too, so routing to the address next to his mother's home was something only Pierce would know in Shield. So he did it to test Pierce, to see what he would do in that situation, he even had a contingency plan to make himself look dead if his presumption was correct and Pierce was compromised.

Him showing Rogers Project Insight despite Steve not having clearance did two things. It showed that Steve truly did stick to his morales, showing that Insight was wrong. It also affirmed the conflict in Fury that over whether Insight was truly neccesary.

So Fury was right on all accounts, Pierce got his message and ordered the assassination. Fury faked his death and appealed to Steve, the one who he could really trust with the thread he was pulling on. Steve didnt align with Pierce, and uncovered Hydra and eventually finding his way back to Fury.

It was all one big plan up until Rogers declared the end of Shield.

Busy-Cream2026-01-25 19:19

I think that’s a stretch, there’s no evidence Fury didn’t trust Insight and the conversation at the end with Cap absolutely suggests Fury would be fine with all of Shield provided he got rid of Hydra. There’s no indication he’d get rid of any of shield/hydra’s work on its own merits, only that the wrong people were in charge. Further, as I said in another comment, it’s not even the Star that’s the triggering event, it’s the request to delay Insight, so the “breadcrumbs” everyone keeps referring to are irrelevant. Revealing it was Fury who set up the op doesn’t matter.

Rattlingjoint2026-01-25 19:27

No evidence he didnt trust Insight?

He hired a mercenary to hijack the Lemurian Star and had Black Widow collect its data to analyze.

He 100% did not trust Insight from the start of the movie.

Busy-Cream2026-01-25 19:35

The project itself. He seemed fine with it as he explained it to cap. He didn’t trust the people overseeing it but he’s perfectly willing to go back to the status quo once Hydra is purged. Cap objected to the program on moral grounds Fury did not.

feetandballs2026-01-25 19:32

The world's greatest spy probably has two eyes.

brnjenkn2026-01-26 16:17

The rest of the movie was great, but the writers decided what "would" happen without "why" it would happen and wrote themselves into a corner. This is the result. There is no way Fury would have done anything that would have led back to him.

Busy-Cream2026-01-26 16:34

Agreed, and you can see the mental gymnastics people have to go through to justify it (“mole hunt” etc) when the answer is much simpler. They didn’t even need the connection to his mom, they could’ve just said they figured it out because they’re so smart or have great tech or whatever. Hell they could’ve used Zola/AI to figure it out which Fury would’ve never known about.

ybtlamlliw2026-01-25 15:58

I mean, yeah? It's a major plot point.

ThisIs_americunt2026-01-25 17:14

[OP is one of those people who makes companies like Netflix repeat the entire plot point 3 to 4 times cause they are looking at their phone 50% of the time](https://ca.news.yahoo.com/matt-damon-says-netflix-wants-232858695.html) Either he's an idiot or he's karma farming, you can decide lol

CascoBayButcher2026-01-26 00:45

It's... a plot point that the head of HYDRA is trying to pin this on Fury, yes. The movie itself is framed so you're not supposed to believe it

GreenGoblinNX2026-01-26 17:41

Apparently media literacy is so fucking low that they should have explicitly spelled this out, because based on this thread, the majority of the subreddit is convinced that Fury DID hire them.

Wooden-Radish-90082026-01-25 16:05

I say this with no malice, but you either gotta put your phone down or enable subtitles, because this is like, a major plot point that is literally discussed in the film.

frghu22026-01-25 16:09

But what about male models?

ButWereFriends2026-01-25 16:12

Are…are you serious? I just went over that like, two seconds ago

Ill-Kaleidoscope48252026-01-25 16:13

![gif](giphy|tnYri4n2Frnig)

lk792026-01-25 16:13

Are you serious? I just... I just told you that a moment ago.

johnnyma452026-01-25 17:28

Why\* male models

Wooden-Radish-90082026-01-25 18:24

This made me laugh so hard. Thank you.

DeluxeTraffic2026-01-25 17:18

To be fair, the way that Pierce explained how they determined that Fury was the one who hired the pirates made me think that it was a setup by Pierce to implicate Fury, rather than Fury actually having been the one to hire the pirates.

Busy-Cream2026-01-25 19:22

I agree with this, especially because Cap is basically the audience insert, and Cap doesn’t believe it so why should we? It’s not until later that it becomes more clear and even then you could be forgiven for still thinking Pierce set up Fury once it’s revealed he’s the head of Hydra

yeoller2026-01-25 22:49

Why would Pierce initiate the series of events specifically designed to sus himself out?

Fury suspected there was a leak and devised a way to find out who it was, even though he specifically *didn't* suspect Pierce. It doesn't make sense that Pierce would setup up the op on the Lemurian Star knowing it would eventually point straight back at him. If anything, he would have wanted to steer Fury away from that mission.

Keep in mind, Fury was initially *on board* with Project Insight.

Busy-Cream2026-01-25 23:57

Yes I know, but I’m just saying I can see how it’s reasonable for the audience initially think Pierce is lying and setting up fury as you’re meant to be seeing things along with Cap, that’s why the reveal is impactful.

Also I don’t think the op is about sussing him/the mole out, I think that misunderstands the situation. Fury had a feeling something was off and wanted to get a look at what the Star was actually sending up to the satellites, that’s why he staged the op. He had no intention of doing some sort of mole hunt as he didn’t know what exactly was wrong, he definitely didn’t know Hydra was resurrected. He also didn’t plan his own death, though he did take advantage of the attempt.

yeoller2026-01-26 00:16

Ah, good point.

GreenGoblinNX2026-01-26 17:37

This is 100% the correct answer, and I don't really get how so many people in this thread have such low media literacy that they don't comprehend this. I guess the movies should have explicitly spelled this out.

AnonymousFriend802026-01-25 17:23

And people want to ridicule Netflix for their film making.

ade8892026-01-25 17:34

I'm not going to lie. I've watched the film a few times. But I never realised this point. I honestly don't know how it escaped me...

Pristine-Passage-1002026-01-28 04:26

Same for me, this is the first I’m realizing it.

CascoBayButcher2026-01-26 00:43

I watched the movie, phone down and subtitles on, and it's not really discussed in the film. It's treated as a set up of Fury to make him look bad, and then never brought up again

Wooden-Radish-90082026-01-26 02:41

We know Natasha is at the Star gathering information outside of the mission. We know through Pierce's research that Fury was the one that hired the pirates. We know that when Fury tried to access those SHIELD files, he couldn't access them because they were encrypted by SHIELD. Then we have Fury state:

Steve: "HYDRA grew right underneath your nose and you didn't even notice"

Fury: "Why do you think we're meeting in this cave? I noticed."

CascoBayButcher2026-01-26 03:00

The movie is supposed to make you suspicious of Pierce though, lol

mykiisme2026-01-25 16:25

not personally, hiring minions is pretty far below the director of SHIELD’s paygrade.

tanjonaJulien2026-01-25 16:37

Did you watch it ? It's pretty obvious

weehawkenabstract2026-01-25 17:25

for a while i thought fury was being framed by pierce and it was part of a cat and mouse thing where fury noticed something was up but hadn’t really acted on it until using the naturally emerging opportunity for nat to get intel on the ship, but i’ve since come around to it not being that complicated and he just actually did it

lottolser2026-01-25 17:33

Caps shield looking like he bought it from the store and never removed the film wrap because hes scared of damaging the shield.

OJONLYMAYBEDIDIT2026-01-25 17:37

Ultimate Comics Fury once hired a retired Assassin to kill himself (as in Fury put a hit out on himself) so he could lure the Assassin out and kill him personally

Assassins was known for using a phasing bullet in his rife so he could shoot through objects

Fury had a similar gun/bullet prepared for his trap

left-for-dead-99802026-01-25 17:39

Yes, but probably a third party. Fury dirty work is always clandestine.

jfm1002026-01-25 17:50

Marvel snap player who just realised that’s Batroc the Leaper

mentyaf2026-01-25 18:21

Hey did you watch the movie

downtime372026-01-25 18:37

this came out 12 years ago, who do you think you are spoiling it for?

Ralphredimix_Da_G2026-01-25 19:24

Fury’s mom did yes

edit: she was eligible for a senior discount

rohithkumarsp2026-01-25 19:31

yes, blackwidow says she's on another mission and fury also says he did as he suspected something

StatusAssumption84582026-01-25 19:46

They literally tell you this in the movie , holy hell are movie watchers getting dumber and dumber

elpajaroquemamais2026-01-25 19:50

This is spelled out line by line in the movie.

blackyanqui2026-01-25 19:51

Yes, Fury hired Batroc using his mom’s neighbor’s address, and I’ll go a step further. I always thought he did it because he wanted a paper trail. Fury wasn’t an idiot, and knew there was a possibility that he might be killed by whoever ensured he wouldn’t be able to access Project Insight. If some low-level SHIELD analyst ended up picking up Fury’s trail (or hopefully The Avengers), they could find out that Batroc was hired by Fury, and that looking into what the Lemurian Star (and Jasper Sitwell by extension) were up to is the proper course of action.

Altruistic_Eye_11572026-01-25 19:54

The truth is, the only thing he didn't mention is that he apparently trusted Pierce. That's why he warned him that something was wrong, and when they came face to face, Fury asked him questions I doubt he would ask someone he'd known for a while was evil.

And unfortunately for him, Pierce used this to his advantage to continue with Project Insight.

YaBoyNeedsParking2026-01-25 20:18

[removed]

backwardsman892026-01-27 07:51

Same lol

DuckyHornet2026-01-25 22:02

Did Fury ever visit Quebec?

Sorry, I meant to say *Belgium*

polaritypictures2026-01-25 22:07

how did Natasha NOT have hearing loss firing her guns in the engine room without suppressors? and she must have that infinite ammo glitch as she never carries extra mags. And her and Cap Survived a nuke detonation at the base on American soil, in New Jersey? Oh cover THAT up. and How did Shield hide THREE helicarriers, coming and going from Shield HQ? and Why NOT call in your Avengers buddies for help if they're being hunted? Too Expensive to cast them?

Aerolithe_Lion2026-01-25 22:33

100%

Golbeza2026-01-26 01:04

Being completely serious here, were you staring at your phone during the entire movie? Because this is a major plot point that was well explained.

KelVarnsen_20232026-01-26 20:25

The thing I always thought was interesting was that Fury hired those mercenaries knowing that a bunch of them would probably get killed in the rescue mission. I mean it sure looked like those agents were using real bullets and I am not sure I see them turning around to rescue the guy Cap knocked off the ship. And yet Fury didn't care. I like little reminders that you would have to be a total bastard to be the boss of Shield.

thatswhatmyfoodeats2026-01-28 19:19

It wasn’t a question IF Fury hired Batroc, but WHY. WSC/Hydra said he was stealing files to sell on the black market, he actually did it to see wtf was going on and if he needed to do something about it.