Agent Carter completed its first season run on February 24th, 2015. While a few sites are already reporting that Agent Carter has been cancelled, we won’t have an answer from ABC until May, when they officially announce what shows will be renewed or cancelled. The show was billed as an event, but since the beginning, the showrunners and cast have been very open about there being a possibility of the show getting a second season if ABC decided to renew it. Now, the ratings haven’t been great, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a second season is impossible.

Since we’re still waiting confirmation on some sort of decision regarding Agent Carter, I’ve decided to make a post about not only why it’s worth your time, but also why it deserves a second season.

I’ve come across a few reviews from sites that felt that, in order to praise Agent Carter, they needed to bash Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Not only is that unfair, but it’s also wrong. These shows, while both part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, are rather different. To enjoy one, there’s no need to hate the other. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. experienced growing pains in its first season, yes, but as I’ve stated before, that show had to introduce characters that were not part of the Marvel Universe. We needed to get to know them and care about them in order for the Captain America: The Winter Soldier crossover to have any sort of emotional impact.

With Agent Carter, that wasn’t the case. We knew Peggy Carter. We’d seen her in Captain America: The First Avenger, the Agent Carter one shot, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The fans came to love Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, and the same goes for Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark. This was a show that didn’t need to spend a lot of time introducing characters to us, because they’d already been established within the MCU, and because of this, it was able to hit the ground running from the get-go.

And better yet, we’d come to have an idea of what to expect from Agent Carter thanks to the one shot. So when Agent Carter premiered, with two wonderful episodes on January 6th, 2015, fans were generally positive. But then, as the weeks went by, it seemed as though fans had begun to lose interest, and the ratings continued to decline. It didn’t help that there was also a break thrown in after the third episode for the State of the Union Address. When Agent Carter finally ended in February, it ended its run with 4.02 million same day viewers and a 1.3 18-49 rating, which wasn’t that great. Thankfully, in the Live+7 numbers released today, Agent Carter rose to a 2.2 in the 18-49 rating during the season finale. Is it a huge number? No, but it is a good sign that hope for a second season isn’t completely lost.

With that said, here are four reasons Agent Carter deserves a second season, and why it is worth your time. (Note: As I know many international fans are still awaiting the release of the show, I’ve tried my best to avoid spoilers!)

1. The show enriches the Marvel Cinematic Universe.



What I love most about Agent Carter is that it has helped to establish a stronger backstory of the MCU. While each new movie Marvel Studios releases helps to build upon the future of the MCU, Agent Carter has helped to expand upon the past. With Agent Carter taking place shortly after Captain America: The First Avenger, the first season helps to expand upon the time frame we haven’t really revisited since then. Sure, there have been a few flashback scenes in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and there was that one between Bucky and Steve in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but nothing that really expanded upon what we already knew.

2. It’s our first female led Marvel property.



Okay, maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal to some people, but to female fans of the MCU? It is. One thing the MCU has done right is write female characters that are flawed – they’re not only kickass women. They’re tough, yes, and I love that about that, but they don’t forget to showcase the humanity of the characters either, and this is what Agent Carter does best. We see various shades of Peggy Carter throughout the show. We see her at her worst, and we see her at her best. She is flawed, but she is strong. While she’s an important character within the MCU (she has become a much bigger part since Captain America: The Winter Soldier as she has since appeared on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., has been confirmed to appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron, and is rumored to be in Ant-Man), I feel she’s an even more important character to female fans of the MCU because she’s someone they can look up to – she isn’t a superhero in the typical sense, but to the female fans, she is.

3. The Easter eggs for the MCU.



Again, I promised I would avoid spoilers, so I’m only going to briefly touch on this topic. There’s the obvious one, the one that Marvel themselves announced before the show premiered: Costa Ronin portrayed Anton Vanko, the father of Ivan Vanko a.k.a. Whiplash, who was played by Mickey Rourke in Iron Man 2. This was just one of many Easter eggs from the first season, and they only continued to get better as the season progressed, leading up to the best reveal at the very end of the season one finale.

4. The cast.



Listen, I love the cast on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but the cast of Agent Carter is hands down fantastic. Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter) is incredibly talented, and seeing her get to showcase those talents every week on Agent Carter was wonderful. She knocked it out of the park week after week. And the supporting cast wasn’t terrible, either. James D’Arcy quickly became a fan favorite as Edwin Jarvis – he was the perfect balance to Atwell’s Carter. And let’s not forget about Dominic Cooper (Howard Stark), Lyndsy Fonseca (Angie Martinelli), Bridget Regan (Dottie Underwood), and Enver Gjokaj (Daniel Sousa). Dominic completely stole the season finale with his excellent performance as Howard, Lyndsy managed to shine even with little screentime, Bridget… well, she was great (again, no spoilers), and it was nice to see Enver get an actual part within the MCU as he’s a talented actor that I’m always happy to see more of. (And no, his role as a cop in Avengers doesn’t count.)



To sum it up: if you’re a fan of the world Marvel has built, there is honestly no reason for you to skip over Agent Carter.

To end this post, here are a few ways to support Agent Carter until we hear from ABC regarding the fate of season two:

Watch the first season again on On Demand, on Hulu, or ABC.com. Purchase the first season through iTunes or Amazon.

Unfortunately, there is not a known release date for the DVD or Blu-Ray release, nor is there any information as to when it’ll be available on Netflix, but here are a few things worth noting: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ended its first season run in May 2014. Season one wasn’t released on DVD and Blu-Ray until September 2014, and then it didn’t hit Netflix until November 2014. My guess is that we’re looking at the same release pattern for Agent Carter: four months later for the DVD/Blu-Ray release (September 2014), and then six months for the Netflix release (November 2014).

So if you haven’t started Agent Carter yet, now would be a great time to do so! You have plenty of time to binge watch the first season (only eight episodes) before May!