Welcome to VOCIFERY, my attempt to re-watch every piece of media in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – every movie, every television series, every one-shot, every web series, and every tie-in comic book, using the Wikipedia entry on the MCU as a guide, before the release of Avengers 4 in May 2019. Join me as I write my thoughts about what I’m seeing, as I see it!
Also, spoilers follow – if you’re worried about that kind of thing, view before reading.
Marvel’s Agent Carter: Season 1 Eps 01-05 (2015)
It has always struck me as odd that Agent Carter was ABC and Marvel’s second attempt at a show.
Set initially in 1946, in the wake of the second world war – and in the wake of Captain America’s sacrifice to save the United States at the end of Captain America: The First Avenger – the show follows Peggy Carter (played by the overqualified Hayley Atwell) as she re-adjusts to a relatively normal life working in the Strategic Science Reserve (SSR).
After a storage locker full of Stark tech is stolen, Howard Stark – the father of Tony, and played again by Dominic Cooper – recruits Peggy to operate as a double-agent, helping him clear his name while the SSR tries to apprehend him for a series of crimes being committed with his technology.
The first five episodes do a lot of table-setting, reintroducing the returning characters from The First Avenger, introducing a handful of prominent new characters – including Stark’s loyal butler Edwin Jarvis (James D’Arcy), and SSR agents Jack Thompson (Chad Michael Murray), Daniel Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) and Roger Dooley (Shea Whigham), and bringing a new big bad to the table – the mysterious criminal organisation Leviathan.
By the end of the fifth episode, Stark’s weapons are found, Leviathan’s ties to the Soviet Union are made clear, and two stunning discoveries are made: Peggy’s neighbour Dottie is a sleeper agent for Leviathan, and Sousa discovers that Carter has been working for Stark and stymying the SSR’s attempts to catch him.
It isn’t really clear if this show replaces the Agent Carter one-shot, or exists alongside it.
The show has its technical flaws. I’ve always found the music overbearing – which seemed even more noticeable in this rewatch, especially compared to the relatively restrained music in SHIELD – and the sound mixing seems off; a lot of the foley sounds a bit harsh, a bit jarring. Maybe that was just the version of the show that I was watching.
But I always come back to that feeling of how odd this show is.
Created by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely as a spin-off from The First Avenger, the show portrays Agent Carter in the period immediately after World War II: the love of her life is (seemingly) dead and her mission is over, so she goes back to New York and deals with the patriarchal social order of New York in 1946 as she works at the SSR.
The show has plenty to say about the state of feminism, both then and now; I mean, it’s fertile ground, given how oppressed women were at that point in history (which kind of parallels how women are treated now).
I think that feeling of oddness comes from this: in the course of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we encounter Peggy Carter at four distinct stages: working on the super-soldier program with Colonel Phillips in Captain America: The First Avenger, working as one of the heads of SHIELD in the opening scene flashback in Ant-Man, on her death bed and revered as a legend in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War, and here – as an oppressed woman doing the filing for a bunch of agents who are half as talented as she is.
One of these things is not like the others. I just don’t get how Peggy Carter goes from a high-profile, presumably appointed position on the super-soldier program, to working as a vastly undervalued agent in the local office in New York. I get that you might think she is a character worth exploring – and she is – but I just find that this career progression beggars belief.
Agent Carter is a pretty great show, and benefits from strong performances from Atwell, Whigham and D’Arcy. But I just have a hard time reconciling it within the wider universe.
Next: Avengers: Age Of Ultron and Ant-Man Prelude comics!