She’s Who You’ve Been Waiting For

Finally, a series with a strong female character lead that’s not one-dimensional has arrived.

Marvel’s brand new television series Agent Carter premiered on January 6th 2015 with a 2-hour debut on US network ABC.

The series follows Agent Margaret “Peggy” Carter (Hayley Atwell), a British woman and intelligence officer working for an American counter-terrorism agency called the Strategic Scientific Reserve (S.S.R, which in later years becomes known as S.H.I.E.L.D.).

Having returned from service in World War II and mourning the loss of her lover Steve Rogers AKA ‘Captain America’, Marvel’s Agent Carter is set one year later in America where the world is a very different and lesser place for women.

 

Struggling with her purpose which calls for more than being treated like a menial secretary, Agent Carter must respect her male dominated environment to keep her job, but by no means does she take her co-workers chauvinist behaviour passively.

Carter assertively does all that she can to stay ahead of the game, making herself apparent where possible, hoping to be assigned a field mission to prove she is just as good as any man. Carter’s patience pays off as an opportunity arrives…

As Howard Stark (a rich, womanising inventor and father of Tony Stark AKA Iron Man) is accused of selling weapons to the enemy Carter secretly works to prove his innocence and is tempted into the fray once more by doing what she does best – being a spy. If the agency were to find out she was going behind their back, she could lose her job or worse: be jailed for treason.

Both episodes are full of details that once again make clear that this story exists within a very connected universe, so let’s get into that.

[SPOILER ALERT: Spoilers from Agent Carter Season 1, Episode 1 and 2, are below]

 

RECAP

Howard Stark, now a wanted fugitive, takes off to Europe to follow leads as to who is responsible for stealing his technology. Agent Carter investigates on US soil (with the aid of Edwin Jarvis, Stark’s butler), taking her to places that puts herself and all around her at risk.

Carter’s covert operation takes her to a club where she is expecting to find a stolen plan for one of Howard Stark’s weapons.

Instead, she finds that the super weapon has been built, which is a high tech grenade capable of causing a very large area to implode: imagine a building made of paper and a giant hand screwing it up into a ball – it’s like that, as what happened with the entire Roxxon Oil refinery imploding with Agent Carter and Edwin Jarvis barely escaping.

We learn that there are more of these grenades and both episodes have Agent Carter, the S.S.R. and two mysterious assailants after them. After a couple of confrontations, Carter discovers one of the assailants worked for something or someone named Leviathan (more on that soon), with the episode 2 ending with Carter left with a mysterious clue as to what Leviathan could be.

 

 

WHAT IS LEVIATHAN?

In Marvel comics, Leviathan are a covert super terrorist group. Like HYDRA, who were born out of Nazi Germany, Leviathan were born out of Soviet Russia with agents, resources and weapons as formidable as HYDRA. Leviathan play a big part in the 2009 comic book series ‘Secret Warriors’ (that Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. draws much of its inspiration from).

Nothing has been confirmed about what exactly Leviathan’s existence is within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but I think Leviathan could link to my theory about Black Widow (see article AVENGERS 2: IS BLACK WIDOW A TRAITOR?!).

 

MEET EDWIN JARVIS

“Jarvis” should sound familiar, as it’s also the name of Tony Stark’s artificial intelligence program called J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just Another Rather Very Intelligent System).

Edwin Jarvis seems reluctant about the “hours” of espionage and his commitment at first is flakey, but he proves to be quite a support system for Agent Carter and giving her the support she is so reluctant to accept.

 

VANKO

Anton Vanko, a Russian scientist that works for Howard Stark, is enlisted by Jarvis to help Agent Carter’s investigation to the missing super grenades. We know in future from Iron Man 2 that Vanko was deported from the USA because it was believed he was selling secrets to the Soviets. He is also the father of Iron Man 2’s villain Ivan Vanko AKA ‘Whiplash’.

 

Overall Review

I’m amazed at how a character like Agent Carter, who was essentially a small part in a movie, became a major character and lead of her own television show. I was never a big fan of Agent Carter from what I saw of her in Captain America 1 but I truly am now, as the character has been given great depth and is more than just “Captain America’s girlfriend”.

Peggy holds her ground as fiercely independent and intelligent, proving she is a superior agent compared to her pig-headed peers (their sexist attitude really made angry watching!). There are even some emotional scenes which really give the show and the character some heart.

The series has great potential and was a good start. Not the most exciting of pilots but it definitely promises to be a good show. The pace was much better than Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s first debut, which had started off quite slow.

I’m excited to see what happens next.

Did You Watch Agent Carter, Too? What Did You Think? Comment Below!