Agent Carter Season 2 Episodes 1-2 review - The Lady in the Lake/A View in the Dark

Marvel's Agent Carter may not have been a smash hit in the ratings, but someone has faith in it and it's back for a second season. What will it deliver, well lets take a look at its first 2 episodes

The Lady in the Lake

Now this is how you open a season!

Season 2 of Agent Carter opens with a great episode, setting up new locations, new conflicts, new characters whilst also giving us some great action

It’s fairly clear that Agent Carter has evolved from her season 1 self. She’s far more self-confident than before. Her first act is capturing the loose end from the last season, Dottie Underwood and attempting her interrogation.

Unfortunately, she’s got a new case to work on. A body encased in ice and on one of the hottest days of the year in Los Angeles. Her new case partner, none other than Daniel Soussa, who moved to LA following last season and has started up a new life. Now Carter’s appearance is set to rattle some cages and provide some interesting personal drama that isn’t ‘you can’t do that in this hotel’

But the case itself, bodies in ice, an old killer, a corrupt cop, a few payouts, some press relations and a rampant flamingo all play out in this first part of the 2-part premiere, which I’m reviewing separately as they are standalone episodes.

The one thing they have down is the humour. This episode had me laughing to myself, and the bulk of the credit there is their handling of Jarvis, exemplified by a great performance from James D’arcy in the role.

But that’s just it, it’s funny when it needed to be, but serious when it needed to be, and this is quite a dark first step in the case when the body count is already up to 3 before the end of the episode. Nice that we also see (potentially) the meteor from Agents of SHIELD as well

But we’re not entirely out of New York as the SSR is in danger of being disbanded by the FBI, who take Dottie into their custody. I can see this working out reeaaallllyyyy well, if you get my drift. But this episode was a fun romp from start to finish and I can’t wait to see what’s next. What’s that? I don’t have to? Bring on episode 2!

Rating 9/10 

A view in the dark

Enough shenanigans, it’s time to get to business as things get serious in more ways than in our second episode.

Firstly, I best mention a few characters I neglected to mention in my first episode review. First, is Jarvis’ wife, Ana. She is awesome in a quirky sort of way. She may be oblivious to potentially awkward subtext (man has Jarvis got tougher) but she does know exactly how Peggy thinks, even if she doesn’t share Peggy’s distaste for guns

Let’s look at our 2 ‘main’ villains for this section, I hesitate to say the whole season since a council exists controlling him a bit. But first we have Industrialist/Mayoral candidate Calvin Chadwick, he’s a businessman, he knows how the people think but ultimately is cowardly and when faced with the Council’s orders to shut down their project, related to the Zero matter which may or may not be the same rock that the inhumans were using, he bows to their wishes.

But I think it became clear pretty early on that the true antagonist of the season is the ice queen Whitney Frost, a name that is just asking to become a supervillain (she is the Supervillain known as Madame Masque in the comics) she clearly is the head of their relationship and demonstrates some prowess by going to recover the zero matter herself as the council were clearing the building. It seems she was exposed to it and has changed, we’ll see where that goes going forward

Finally, Jason, our sadly short-lived science expert of the group (who may or may not be dead yet) who provided some interesting sciency stuff and exposition whilst also giving subtle (thank you) commentary on the still racist American culture at the time.

I say the purpose of building a character to the highest of highs is to bring them crashing down, this happens early for Peggy and for Daniel to a lesser extent. Daniel was all set to propose to his girlfriend, who Peggy immediately liked so cliché avoided there (thank you!) but when she goes missing, he pulls out all the stops to find her and ends up not proposing when he has the chance (even though his wife is understanding, again cliché avoided)

Peggy’s downfall was the focus of this one. She may not have initially willed it but she did end up falling for Danny, and when push came to shove his death and I say death, it was not a sacrifice was a massive blow to her.

This episode still had some levity however, with Jarvis chasing the flamingo and the early on fighting and a few other nice moments, no sign of New York but that’s fine by me, I’ll be looking forward to the episodes to come

Rating 9/10

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Images/clips used in this review are from Marvel's Agent Carter and belong to their respective owners. All images/clips in this review are subject to fair use