MARVEL'S AGENT CARTER SHOWRUNNERS DISCUSS THE SEASON FINALE, THE SURPRISE CAMEO AND MORE
Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters on everything Peggy faced
24 FEB 2015 BY ERIC GOLDMAN Note: Major spoilers for the Agent Carter: Season 1 finale follow.
Now that you’ve seen the Agent Carter season finale -- and if you haven’t, what are you waiting for? And what are you doing here, reading spoilers? -- check out what executive producers
Michele Fazekas and
Tara Butters told me about the big events that closed out Peggy Carter’s first television adventure.
Fazekas and Butters discussed Peggy saying goodbye to Steve Rogers, how the
Howard Stark airplane sequence almost played very differently and more, including that surprise cameo from Marvel Cinematic Universe/Hydra villain
Arnim Zola (Toby Jones, reprising his role from the Captain America films).
IGN: Ultimately, Peggy saying goodbye to Steve turned out to be a big, emotional arc for her by the end of the season. Is that something you knew you wanted to tackle from the get go, given that you were picking up just a year after the events of World War II?
Butters: That was always our goal. Her defining character arc is that ultimately, to move on, she needs to let go. And we liked thematically that it also tied in for Howard. He himself has his own things that he had to let go. Actually, all of our characters, to a degree, have to let go of what happened to them during the war.
Fazekas: And some of them do and some of them don’t. The interesting thing, for instance about Thompson, is Thompson has actually learned nothing. Which is an overstatement - He’s learned something. I know this is a different topic entirely but his theme at the end of the show… We always thought of as this is the moment you decide how the rest of your life is going to go. And he thinks about it and he knows what the right to do is and he chooses to do the thing that benefits him the most. I think I’m actually probably wrong when I say he hasn’t learned something. He’s learned something, but now it’s almost worse that he’s actually making the active choice, like, “I’m going to screw a bunch of people over because it benefits me.” I find that really interesting because it’s growth, in a way, because he’s taking charge. But it’s growth in the wrong direction.
Butters: But I also think it illuminated Peggy’s growth. I really think that for all the things we’ve talked about, and the kind of feminist perspective that has been hinted at in the show, I think she walks away with, “It doesn’t matter what anybody else says.”
Hayley Atwell and Chad Michael Murray in Agent Carter.
Fazekas: Well that’s the thing. That’s part of her professional journey. She doesn’t need these guys to validate whether or not she’s good at what she does. She knows she’s good at what she does and there’s something very freeing about that for her.
IGN: There was also some nice parallels to the end of the first Captain America movie, as she’s on the ground, speaking to Howard, who’s on a plane. Did that happen organically or did you know early on that you wanted to mirror that situation, as she closes this chapter?
Butters It was all very intentional. And we knew that from before we wrote episode two.
Fazekas: There’s an interesting way that all came about. Initially it was supposed to be Jarvis on the ground talking to Howard, up in the plane. And we thought wouldn’t that be funny, because you could have a shot of Howard in the plane and hearing Jarvis’s voice and that really calls back to the Iron Man movies. Instead of having Jarvis up in the plane, we were going to bring back Dum Dum. It turns out he [Neal McDonough] just wasn’t available. He had another show to do, so we said alright, we can’t use him, so who can go up? The fact that it’s Jarvis up in that plane is kind of great. I really love what that illuminates about his character, what that illuminates about his relationship with Peggy and with Howard. It was a change we had to make but it was good fortune.
Dominic Cooper in Agent Carter.
IGN: The Zola scene at the end was very fun, especially since from the moment the show was announced, people have been wondering if you were going to bring up the Hydra situation.
Butters: One of the things that I love about being able to do that was, again, it really ties in to the Winter Soldier program, it ties in to Hydra. To me, it makes us a necessary piece.
Fazekas: This is something that I believe, when we pitched this idea to Marvel -- that there’d be Faustus and he has the ability to hypnotize people -- Marvel were the ones that said we could tie it into the Winter Soldier program. They were so open to connecting it to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and we had sort of, jokingly, said months ago, wouldn’t it be great to get Toby Jones? And we never thought it would happen. Then we got to, “Let’s just see if he’s available.” “He’s available.” “Let’s just see if we can afford him.” “We can afford him.” And it happened. So he came out here for one scene and we were very happy to have him.
Butters: That’s one reason why we keep telling everyone, make sure you watch to the very end!
IGN: Lastly, I have to ask the obvious question which is, what are you hearing about the future?
Fazekas: Honestly, we have nothing concrete. ABC, in our experience with them, typically waits until right before May Upfronts before they give anything out.
Butters: We’re very hopeful. We would love to do a second season. We think there’s a lot more story to be told.
Fazekas: And the ratings have been ticking up. I feel like people really seemed to love last week’s episode, so I hope that people like it and want to see it some more.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/02...season-finale-the-big-surprise-cameo-and-more
. Their relationship of working together was the best thing about the 1st season, if it does come back I hope he appears as well. 
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