If you’ve not heard, ABC has officially picked up AGENT CARTER as a TV series to debut this fall. Starring Haley Atwell as the titular Peggy Carter (Captain America, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Marvel’s One-Shot: Agent Carter), we’ll see the character in the 1940s during SHIELD’s initial creation. This can lead to many opportunities for the Howling Commandos and a young Howard Stark to return to screen, without having them come back in a movie flashback.
Now, ABC has confirmed how Agent Carter will fit in with Marvel’s AGENTS OF SHIELD this fall, as both are going to be on the network. Anyone familiar with Agents of SHIELD knows that the show would go about three weeks straight with episodes, then pause for a few more weeks, causing frustration and forgetfulness of the show’s airtime’s. As an avid watcher, even keeping up with the schedule was a pain beyond belief.
Instead, we’re going to get the first half of Agents of SHIELD (presumably the first 11 episodes) straight in a row. Once the show pauses for its midpoint, Agent Carter will begin airing. This will act as a filler for the main series, while also giving Agent Carter a smaller run of episodes, which we feel will be around 13 or less. Once those 13 episodes are run in a row, the second half of SHIELD will premier and run straight into the AVENGERS 2: AGE OF ULTRON.
This gives us two awesome benefits for Marvel’s television series. The first benefit is the potential of 35 straight weeks of Marvel episodes on TV. That is 22 episodes of SHIELD and 13 of Agent Carter. Thats 2/3 of a year that we can get our Marvel Universe fix and not have any waiting, except for the summer. This common schedule will also help viewers return the same time every week without reruns and possibly even discovering an awesome new character, Peggy Carter.
The second issue that is resolved, is that of Agent Carter’s shorter runtime. Instead of asking for 22 episodes set in the 1940’s, increasing production costs and potential slow runs (look at you first half of SHIELD), this can be tighter and more focused each episode. This is the same format that Marvel is taking with their Defenders series on Netflix, 13 episodes acting like a small movie. I’m all on board for this format and look forward to this fall when it all comes back to us.
