- "Strucker and List have been running experiments on enhanced people. They've set up a base in the Arctic."
- ―Phil Coulson[src]
The Arctic is a polar region located at the northernmost part of the Earth.
History
Sinking of the Valkyrie
In 1945, Steve Rogers, piloting the Valkyrie after Johann Schmidt was presumed deceased, sent a transmission informing Peggy Carter of Schmidt's apparent death and the status of the plane, headed to New York City in order to destroy it. To save countless civilian lives, Rogers decided to sink the plane in the Arctic Region, with Carter tearfully saying goodbye before losing contact.[1]
Search for Bruce Banner
The United States Armed Forces lost Bruce Banner in Greenland, in the Arctic Circle.[2]
Search for Captain America
- "How come nobody spotted it before?"
"It's really not that surprising. This landscape's changing all the time." - ―S.H.I.E.L.D. tech agent and Search Team Leader[src]
Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D. ordered to send a series of expeditions to the Arctic Region, hoping to find the remains of the Valkyrie and Steve Rogers inside. Fury personally oversaw some of this expeditions accompanied by Phil Coulson.
One of the expeditions revealed the location of one of the HYDRA Parasits that abandonded the plane during the battle between Captain America and the HYDRA soldiers inside, a signal that they were approaching the right location of the plane.[3]
A year later, a Russian oil team discovered the crashed Valkyrie. Eighteen hours later, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents arrived at the location of the plane, and exploring the wreckage they find the body of Steve Rogers, still alive and cryogenically preserved in the ice. The importance of the discovery prompted the agents to inform Nick Fury.[1]
Fury briefed Phil Coulson about the discovery, who went visibly excited due to his admiration of Captain America, and assigned him to fly to the Arctic, while Fury would join him there after taking agent Clint Barton to the Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility in the Mojave Desert.[3]
Search of the Clairvoyant
- "Cruising altitude reached, bearing 90 degrees just over the North Pole."
- ―Melinda May[src]
Phil Coulson and his team traveled over the Arctic region inside the Bus with fellow agents Victoria Hand, Jasper Sitwell, Felix Blake, Antoine Triplett and John Garrett, so that Coulson and Garrett could inform the rest of senior agents about their plan of investigating the candidates rejected from the Index as possible identities for the Clairvoyant.
Coulson and Garrett decided to be as far away as possible from his presumed psychic powers over the North Pole. Blake reminded Coulson about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s stance on psychic powers, but Coulson's recent experience with Lorelei's power to bend men's will with her voice made him be more open-minded.
As Deathlok attacked Garrett and Triplett in Sydney, they thought Garrett's plan of reviewing the Index rejects was getting them closer to learn the Clairvoyant's identity. Garrett managed to reduce the list to 13 potential candidates, an idea that Coulson agreed as S.H.I.E.L.D. interviewed dozens of people claiming to have psychic abilities, even though S.H.I.E.L.D. dismissed each and every one of them, so it is probable that they had encountered the Clairvoyant before.
Hand asked that, assuming what they said was possible, how they were going to combat the Clairvoyant's ability, and Garrett said that they were going to compartmentalize the information regarding the mission. Coulson said that a member of his team was an expert at pattern recognition and analysis, and then she would prioritize the candidates, locate them and pair the rest of the agents into random teams to apprehend them.
Hand said that this member would need to be a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to have the proper clearances to access all the information she would require to do that. Grant Ward then asked Skye to join their reunion, and she suggested to improve the compartmentalization by giving a member of the team the coordinates of the suspect and the other the identity of the same suspect, so that nobody knew the full specs of the operation until being on site.
Skye asked how would she access the classified files without another agent in the room, and Coulson promoted her to being an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., handing her a badge. Skye was left speechless and overwhelmed with emotion and thanked Coulson, who said that there was no need to thank him, as she earned it assisting them on multiple missions, even putting her life on the line.
Her friends Leo Fitz and Jemma Simmons embraced Skye to congratulate her, and she specially thanked Ward, her Supervising Officer, who answered that she could have done it without him, as he thought she was destined to become an agent.[4]
Trivia
- In the non-canon video game Iron Man, Iron Man travels to the Arctic to prevent a group of A.I.M. soldiers led by the Controller from stealing nuclear energy from a military ship.[5]
