“Smoke and Mirrors” goes into a lot of background for our two main female characters- Peggy Carter and Whitney Frost. It was interesting to see that they grew up on different continents and took very different paths in life, but had a lot of similarities. Let’s face it, the early half of the twentieth century wasn’t a great time to be a smart, gifted, driven, and strong woman.
Agent Carter’s trip to California continues in “Better Angels.” In the wake of the disaster at Isodyne, Dr. Wilkes has been very neatly framed. Between his being black, and the paranoia about communists, it’s not a hard sell to most. Carter, of course, doesn’t buy it. Equally of course, Sousa is about the only one willing to listen to her.
The second half of the season opener for Agent Carter is “A View In The Dark.” While they solved the murder in the first episode, they ended up with a lot more unanswered questions. Chadwick and Frost are clearly up to something or other, and the weird black floating stuff they showed last time is definitely SSR territory.
Agent Carter returns for a second season of post-World War II adventure as a fill-in while Agents of SHIELD is on break. As in the real world, now that the Nazis (and in their case, Hydra) has been defeated, the enemy is Communist Russia. Or at least, that’s the big one they’re talking about. There’s more going on behind the scenes.
Celebrating 50 years of SHIELD, Marvel’s premier spy organization, they have released a series of one shot specials. The two before this were about Quake (Daisy/Skye on the Agents of SHIELD tv show), and Mockingbird/Barbara Morse. This one features Peggy Carter. Like most of the SHIELD-related comics over the last year or so, this tries to straddle the line between fitting the comics continuity but also not contradicting the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s an old saying about if you chase rabbits, you will catch neither.
This seems like a good time to take stock in the various hero shows out there. Agent Carter finished her initial season with no real word on if the show will be back, ditto for Constantine. Flash is on another of those odd few week breaks with no explanation as is Arrow. Gotham is still driving ahead, and there are rumors of new projects all over.
Agent Carter finishes her limited series with “Valediction.” The show started with another episode of the Captain America radio show they’ve been using to either contrast Peggy’s life or as commentary on the times. This one seemed to be a dramatization of the mission where Cap crashed, which made a bit of the episode more poignant.
