This is it: Agent Carter’s last stand! Will Item 17 be loosed on the population? Will Peggy be able to take on the impossible Dottie? Will the Doctor Formerly Known as Ivchenko be silenced? Will Souza ever get that kiss? Will we finally defeat sexism forever?! Find out, in today’s final review of Agent Carter — and beware, citizens: spoilers abound!
1. How Do You Solve a Problem Like Leviathan?
Last night’s Agent Carter confirmed two things: yes, that was Dr. Faustus all along, and yes, Leviathan was ultimately pointless. As it turned out, while Leviathan was teased as a big bad organization the likes of which we’d seen from Hydra, it all comes down to one man with a personal vendetta — which is pretty disappointing. For all the things we’d learned about the Red Room, for all the things we’d assumed about what this means for the MCU version of the Cold War, it really is just one man’s grudge against Howard Stark based on the things Stark did during the war (and ultimately making Agent Carter less about Carter and more about Stark, which is what it is; not entirely surprising considering what film franchise the MCU began with).
While I’d hardly call Agent Carter a disappointment as a whole, this central element was definitely a let down. That said, perhaps it’s my fault for expecting they’d go bigger? We’d seen Carter on Agents of SHIELD battling Hydra as a SHIELD agent and certainly everyone here has seen Captain America: The First Avenger by now (or even Winter Soldier), but as a fan of “Secret Warriors” I was certainly hoping Leviathan would mean more beyond a name check. While Agent Carter spun a few plates during its run, this was decidedly the one that fell to the ground and crashed. But hey, one dropped plate out of ten isn’t a total loss, all things considered.
2. The Biggest Surprise Of Last Night
Those of you who saw the Agent Carter one-shot that was attached to the Iron Man 3 Blu-ray will remember that, in addition to fighting Zodiac, the short ended with Howard Stark (and Dum-Dum Dugan) calling up Peggy Carter to start SHIELD. It was a nice way to give Carter her due and it set the stage for how SHIELD got going in the MCU for people curious about the history of the world’s most flawed international peace keeping organization.
Agent Carter the show, on the other hand, didn’t hit that mark. The SSR is still just the SSR, and while the show used footage from the short and even re-created the main fight scene from the short into the first half of the season, at the end of the day there is no SHIELD. Heck, Carter isn’t even technically an agent of the SSR anymore, having been fired and hesitating to rejoin under Thompson’s leadership, which would inherently change the main direction of a follow-up season.
I’m kind of confused as to why they didn’t include the formation of SHIELD, all things considered. If they were afraid they’d only get one season (which they seemingly are, hence the #RenewAgentCarter hashtag), then that would’ve been a great way to end the show in terms of overall closure (not just the character growth kind). Plus, it would’ve given the show a specific connection to Marvel’s other TV effort in Agents of SHIELD which is about, well, you know. Marvel has put in a lot of teases about the creation of SHIELD throughout their films, including Carter and Stark’s involvement, so it’s very curious that we didn’t get any more information on that from the Carter finale.
3. One Last Thought on the Gender Politics of Agent Carter
One of the main drums that was being beaten during the run of Agent Carter was that Peggy Carter was a feminist hero for a new generation of fans. I don’t disagree with that; Carter did things most female heroes don’t get to do on TV anymore, and she did so as a fully-formed and three-dimensional woman that doesn’t conform to 90% of TV femme fatale standards. However, this aspect of the show often also got weirdly muddled in the fact that the show took seemingly painstaking efforts to inject as much post-war 1940’s sexism into the show at all times, whether it was from her crappy co-workers like Sad Michael Murray or even the white knighting of others like Souza. By the end of the Agent Carter finale, in fact, all of the credit for New York being saved goes to Agent Thompson, with Senator Walt Cooper telling a crowded office that we “need more men” like him (pfft) — a comment made all the more insulting after Peggy walks into the room herself to everyone clapping, though obviously this was all on purpose. We all know Thompson knows she deserves the credit; that he doesn’t say anything is kind of par for course.
Continued belowYet, there’s an interesting line afterwards. Souza does his usual White Knight routine for Carter, offering to yell at Cooper and Thompson about how she deserves all the credit (and all but tipping his fedora in her direction at the same time). But Carter stops him, telling him she doesn’t need him or anyone to do things like that for her, because she “knows her value” — and damn straight. If there’s one thing that Agent Carter has shown us throughout the show, it’s that she knows her self-worth more than anyone and is absolutely unafraid of being who she needs to be: whether that’s a spy in a wig, a woman mourning the loss of her friend, a brawler in unfamiliar territory or a puzzle solver with the highest of stakes. Carter knows who she is, and thanks to dramatic irony we know even more, and we unabashedly love her for it. Forget the “strong female character” trope; lets get more Peggy Carter’s on TV.
In my first review of Agent Carter, I discussed the somewhat uneven gender politics on display from the first two episodes of the show, and at the end of the season my mind isn’t exactly changed. I personally think Peggy Carter is an amazing character, and definitely one we need to see more of on TV; Carter is a great character performed by a great actress, Hayley Atwell. But I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to hold a show of this kind to a slightly higher standard than others, and if we see a second season hopefully it’ll find a better balance between era-appropriate sexism and Carter standing above the crowd as the icon she clearly deserves to be. There is importance to Carter knowing her own value and it sends a strong message, but characters like Thompson and all that he represents need to see it just as much — and not because someone like a Souza tells him so, but because he recognizes Carter’s value as well beyond when its convenient for him. I think Thompson as a character (whose opinions are created for him and who has no free will) certainly sees Peggy Carter as more than just a coffee girl now, but when he’s unafraid to hurt his career by standing up to a state senator to prove that, I’ll be a bit happier. Fuck 1940’s politics.
4. #RenewAgentCarter
Alright, so lets get to the point of it all: should Agent Carter come back?
The answer is, of course, yes.
Agent Carter as a show started high, wobbled a little as it went on and finished strong. A flawed show but a highly entertaining one, Agent Carter offered a relatively focused story in a short time frame with one of the most charismatic and dynamic leads we’ve seen from the MCU yet. Hayley Atwell has absolutely killed it as Peggy Carter, with additional and memorable performances from her support cast (JAmes D’Arcy 5eva!), ultimately allowing us to learn more about her and see the Marvel Universe through a different set of eyes; the entire Carter experience from start to finish has been so different than the standard fair from either the films or Agents of SHIELD that this show definitively deserves a chance to get a second round at bat –especially since, as we all know, first seasons are where these kind of shows iron out their mistakes, and second seasons are when they become unbelievably great (see: SHIELD and Arrow). Agent Carter helps diversify the Marvel Brand in a unique way, and one that really needs to be explored with some stronger world-building elements embedded into its core.
Plus, there’s still a lot for us to see and stories to mine: Steranko-era Fury stories! Howling Commando raids! The rise of Zodiac! The formation of SHIELD/Hydra! Even the early days of the Inhumans! Agent Carter can set the stage for so much of what is to come in the MCU that it’d be almost a shame not to use the show and the character as a vehicle to expand the MCU. And also: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane Dottie Underwood? Don’t tell me that that’s the last we’ve seen of our favorite psycho killer (Qu’est-ce que c’est? Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better / Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, away!).
Agent Carter ended up being a really good show, but I think that Agent Carter and Peggy’s legacy has a chance to be something really great. From the moment we were re-introduced to Peggy saying goodbye to Steve on the radio, to her final mirrored moments sitting at a radio and addressing the Captain America legacy, Carter has had such great growth throughout this series that it’d be a shame not to see her and her friends and enemies again. After all, Peggy Carter is both the hero we deserve and the one we need right now — so it’s time to #RenewAgentCarter.
5. Plus, That Stinger
In the last minute of the show, we got the slightest of slight teases at what lays ahead for Faustus: a chance encounter with our favorite MCU Toby Jones character, Arnim Zola. Zola had a minor role in Captain America: The First Avenger, hardly making a dent or reaching the heights his Marvel Comics counterpart does before becoming a menacing digital plot device in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, now resembling his final form and revealing that all of America is Hydra. With Zola and Faustus meeting up in prison, it’s clear that whatever Leviathan was will be folded into what Hydra is slowly becoming, because with SHIELD not yet fully formed there is plenty of time for Zola to begin his master plan of creating the United States of Actual Crazy Nazism.
It’s certainly a daring tease on behalf of the show, and one I hope we get to see more of. Heck, we don’t even need another season of Carter to see it; Faustus’ influence could show up in SHIELD or in the Avengers films, where Hydra and Baron von Strucker are going to play some kind of role this summer. I’m pretty eager to see where it pops up, but that we have not seen the last of Faustus — and that Toby Jones still gets to show up as Zola — is a welcome MCU addition in my book.
And with that, my friends, I bid you adieu. I hope to see you again soon in a world where Agent Carter has returned for multiple seasons, but until then…
