ABC has produced another spin-off show within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but this time with a rare element that is what my dreams are made of: a kick butt, brilliant, leading female character laced with feminism, wit and charm.
Agent Carter takes place after the first Captain America movie, Captain America: The First Avenger, and a short Marvel film created called “Agent Carter.” However, the show can be still watched by people who are not caught up with the MCU without being utterly lost on what is happening. The show helps explain bits and pieces of the backstory that leads up to the time where Agent Carter takes place, so non-MCU followers have a better understanding on what is going on.
The best part about the show is simply the leading character, Agent Peggy Carter, who is played by Hayley Atwell. Agent Carter is a female action hero dream come true. Carter is an officer for the Strategic Science Reserve (which is also later known as Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, or S.H.I.E.L.D.) The Strategic Science Reserve an agency founded by Howard Stark after World War II in the MCU. Since Agent Carter is based in the late 1940s, women are still discriminated in the work place. Most of Carter’s co-workers, who are all men, think she only has the job because she was Captain America’s lover and the job was given to her out of sympathy. However, Howard Stark gives her the job because he knows what Carter is actually capable of and how brilliant of an agent she really is.
Even though the discrimination can be irritable for Carter, she uses it to her full advantage. For example, she uses the excuse of “lady troubles” to get a day off for a secret solo mission. She brings coffee into a meeting where her bosses are discussing valuable details on a certain mission, because back then, women were considered “not smart enough” to understand what men were discussing and women in the work place were mainly secretaries. Even though Carter was not a secretary, most of her co-workers treated her like one. Carter took full advantage of this and it is absolutely brilliant.
What I love about Carter is that she shows that girls do not have to give up their femininity to kick butt and be a hero or super spy. She uses all aspects of being a women as a tool and weapon, not just her sexuality. She is smart, she knows that she is probably weaker than her male counterparts, so she uses whatever object in her reach as a weapon during a fight. She finds use in even the simplest of things.
Carter makes an amazing role model, especially for younger and teenage girls, and I cannot wait to see what the rest of the season has in store.