5 Things You Need To Know About Agent Carter Season 2

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Agent Carter season 2 is back in a new city with new adventures, new characters and new costumes. But don’t worry, everything you love about Agent Carter remains from the quick wit to the lovable characters. I had the opportunity to visit the Agent Carter set and meet Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter), James D’Arcy (Jarvis) and executive producers Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas. My favorite part of the interviews is that the day was filled with laughter. 

Marvel Agent Carter Season 2
Photo Credit ABC

Talking to Hayley Atwell James D’Arcy you really get the sense that they are great friends and love what they do. It was a lot of fun to listen to them cut up about moments on set (I cannot wait to see this season’s episode with Jarvis and a flamingo) and how they tease each other off screen as well. 

Agent Carter season 2 premieres January 19, and I can’t wait to see how the move from New York to LA works for the characters and the costumes! (More on the costumes next week.) In the mean time let’s look at what’s happening in Agent Carter season 2.

Agent Carter Season 2 Peggy Carter Jarvis
Photo Credit ABC/Patrick Wymore

5 Things You Need To Know About Agent Carter Season 2

You Don’t Have To Love Marvel To Love Agent Carter

One of the unique things about Agent Carter is that although it lives within the Marvel Universe, it stands alone. Fans of the show need not to have seen any Marvel movies to enjoy and appreciate Agent Carter for what it is. There is something in the show for everyone. (Although fellow Marvel fans can also appreciate the show!)

Hayley Atwell: I do feel that because it’s 1940s, and we do exist in our own world, really. And it feels unrelated. This show has its own tone, it’s very different from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., for example. And because of that, there’s a freedom.

James D’Arcy – What’s great about this is you really don’t need to know anything else. We do pre-date all the other stuff that comes along, with the exception of the first Captain America film, so you can watch it kind of in its own bubble.

Agent Carter Season 2 Peggy Carter
Photo Credit ABC/Patrick Wymore

Girl Power Rules

Above everything else Agent Carter is a show about a strong female character during a time when women were expected to be home in the kitchen – not kicking butt as a spy.

Haley Atwell recognizes and appreciates that her character is a role model for young women. In a world of oversexulized characters, she is very happy to portray a woman who embodies the everyday hero.

Hayley Atwell: I love it. I love it so much. It’s a very humbling experience. I’ve been doing lots of conventions, and that comes up all the time. Young people and parents of young people going, “It’s so nice to see a woman represented.” And it’s always a shock to me ’cause I’m like, “Well, women are strong. They’ve just been underrepresented.”

Peggy doesn’t have these superpowers, and she’s at fault, and she makes mistakes, and she’s terrible in love, and she’s trying to sort things out. But she has this drive and she has a determination and she has this tenacious desire and purpose to get things done and to endure and despite the situations that she finds herself, to get up every morning and put her curlers in and put her red lipstick on and get out there and get, be a part of the world and to engage in the world. And I think that’s something that’s a very appealing quality for especially young girls — that heroic quality of just getting up in the morning and doing what needs to be done is very appealing. And it is very appealing to me, and completely underrepresented in this industry.

By the way, we learned from Michele Fazekas that in addition to battling chauvinism at every turn, fans will also see how Peggy Carter reacts to the blatant racism of the 1940s in Agent Carter season 2. Tip – she doesn’t like it.

Agent Carter Season 2 Hayley Atwell
Photo Credit ABC/Bob D’Amico

All Business And No Play

You know what they say about all business and all play, right? Makes for a boring day. Well, perhaps that’s part of the reason Agent Carter is never dull with quick wit and well-timed dialogue. Because when the camera isn’t rolling, the cast and crew are busy having fun.

Hayley Atwell: Alright, so at any given time, you don’t know what’s gonna happen. My trailer is, is still, because I can’t really take it down since your too knackered, but it’s covered in pictures of James. He went on to Google and got the art department to print every possible online picture of himself and plastered it all over my trailer. I was like, “Oh for God’s sake.”

James D’Arcy: I also got her hat, her red, iconic hat and struck the Burt Reynolds 1970s pose complete with mustache, with the hat. You’ll never see that picture, but you are, I permit you to know that it exists. It was my Halloween gift to her.

Hayley Atwell: It greets me every morning. I even found a picture of you in the toilet.

James D’Arcy: Yes, if you open up the loo, there’s a little picture of me staring up at her. 

Hayley Atwell: We do very good work, but it’s all in the spirit of creating a lot of joy in something that’s upbeat, which really helps with the speed in which the language is delivered, ’cause the thing of a lot of the scenes especially between the three of us, there’s a rhythm to it, which carries it own wit and you have to kind of hit the mark. And in order to deliver it in such a way that feels like it’s hitting it, we have to create an absolute perfect atmosphere of fun, of joy, of tongue in cheek, and silliness.

Agent Carter Season 2 Jarvis Flamingo
ABC/Patrick Wymore

Peggy’s Love Triangle

Spoiler – Agent Sousa is engaged, and it isn’t to Peggy!!! At the end of season one Agent Sousa felt rejected when Peggy turned him down for a drink, and in the six months to a year since that night he has moved to LA and moved on. But Peggy, she still thinks there might be something there.

Hayley Atwell: So the first time they meet is a misconception, because Peggy has been told that he’s asked her to come out. So she’s like, “Oh, oh my God!” And she gets out there and she’s like, “I’m here.” And he goes, “What are you doing here? I asked this, anyone, anyone, and not a woman.” So that immediately makes her feel little bit rejected and backfooted again. So they’re kind of back to their awkward stage, really, so they have again this kind of long way to go.

Jarvis Is One Of The World’s First Feminists

I love Jarvis. His dry wit and his ability to see Peggy Carter as a spy and not just a woman. James D’Arcy is the perfect Jarvis and during a time when Peggy was often overlooked for being a woman D’Arcy said that Jarvis was really one of the world’s first feminists.

James D’Arcy: In season 1 all the men just dismissed her [Peggy]. They didn’t even bother hating her. She just didn’t even count. And Jarvis was like the only person who saw her as a fully rounded three-dimensional human being, and I love that about Jarvis and I do identify with that actually.

I really like Jarvis. He’s my favorite character I’ve ever played. Because he just plows his own furrow. He really doesn’t care if people don’t like him. He has his way of doing things, and he’s totally at peace with that. And I respond really well to anybody who is just very comfortable being themselves. I like people that are nothing like me, but they’re really comfortable in their eccentricities.

Agent Carter Season 2 James D’Arcy
Photo Credit ABC/Bob D’Amico

Agent Carter season 2 premieres January 19 at 9 pm EST on ABC.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJdu2Ho8xp0
This Agent Carter season 2 set visit and interview was part of my Disney press trip that included Star Wars. Don’t miss all of the coverage:

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