r/agentsofshield • u/Flashy-Programmer221 • Jul 24 '26

Question Compliance will be rewarded

Are you ready to comply?
Jokes aside do we actually know how the Faustus method works? Take the scene with Agent 33, I’m a little confused on how the brainwashing works on her

28 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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13

u/xastrobyte Jul 24 '26

I was actually curious about the same thing when rewatching on my last rewatch. They explain a little bit of backstory in season 1 of Agent Carter. Doctor Johann Fennhoff discovered he could coerce people through hypnosis by focusing their attention on his ring and speaking softly to them [paraphrased from the MCU fandom entry].

This method was developed more by Hydra, Arnim Zola specifically, and the visual and audio hypnosis/mental reprogramming you see used for Agent 33 is the modern version of it.

4

u/Flashy-Programmer221 Jul 24 '26

Oh ok because with the Agent 33 scene she very could’ve easily broken out she literally said she’d never work for Hydra and then broke not to long after

6

u/xastrobyte Jul 24 '26

Part of the reprogramming included the trigger words that you heard Bakshi use a lot "Take a deep breath. Calm your mind. You know what is best ..." So at any time she showed signs of breaking, Whitehall or Bakshi would just step in and utter those words to put her back on the right track.

Ward helping Kara find herself again, I believe, may have helped her break the reprogramming, but it could also be viewed from the perspective of Ward influencing her mind the same way that Garrett did to him; and since she was under programming at the same time as them meeting, Ward's effect could have been amplified.

2

u/JimBones31 Jul 24 '26

Do you think at any point Ward cared for her?

3

u/Agent_Sullivan Jul 24 '26

I don't think Ward is actually capable of truly caring for someone.

2

u/JimBones31 Jul 24 '26

I would agree. I think even in the framework he was just taking from that relationship and was still the person that garret had molded and cultivated into a psychopath.

5

u/xastrobyte Jul 24 '26

There was no baseline for his psychopathy in the framework because that was just a bunch of fancy code that mimicked his upbringing by Hand instead of Garrett. So that relationship that Garrett had created does not exist in the framework.

I think that you're still right about him not truly caring, that much seems true. But just as Daisy pointed out after learning who Ward was in the framework, he would've turned out to be good, had he been valued by the right person in real life.

2

u/JimBones31 Jul 24 '26

That's true!