Richard Briggs

rbriggs@thespectrum.com

America's British sweetheart, Hayley Atwell, is back as Peggy Carter in "Marvel's Agent Carter," and she's even better this year than in her debut season a year ago.

In the two-hour Season 2 premiere on ABC — which featured the first two episodes of the season — viewers are thrown right back into the action with a 007-esque cold open action scene that sees Agent Peggy Carter and her partners at the Strategic Scientific Reserve finally capture Season 1 villain Dottie Underwood, the Soviet spy.

Dottie is wearing Agent Carter's famous — and vastly popular — blue suit and red hat to rob a bank, and it leads to some sweet choreography in the fight scene between Peggy and Dottie in a bank vault.

The opening scene was Marvel's way of saying — in Mr. Jarvis' voice, probably — "Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Carter has returned."

In fact, please read the rest of this column in the voice of Edwin Jarvis (the wondrous James D'Arcy).

Mr. Jarvis reaches new levels of luminosity at the beginning of Season 2. He now lives in Los Angeles as Howard Stark opens a motion picture studio, and when Agent Carter arrives in Southern California to investigate a bizarre freezing lake phenomenon — in the middle of California's "dry heat," mind you — Jarvis is eager to join in "another adventure."

This year, we finally get to meet Jarvis' wife, Ana Jarvis (Lotte Verbeek). She's nothing like Mr. Jarvis, to say the least, and watching her friendship with Peggy grow this season should be quite a treat.

Hayley Atwell crushes it once again as Peggy Carter with displays of dramatic emotion and comedic timing. Her acting range is, frankly, above playing a seasonal mini-series on network television, but let's be grateful we have her on "Marvel's Agent Carter" while we do.

Everyone in the show looks stunning in her or his '40s costume. There's even a breaking-the-fourth-wall joke when Jarvis is pretending to be a motion picture studio executive where he pitches a fake role for a fake movie to an actress who says she is tired of wearing costumes in period pieces.

Of course, there is more to this actress (Wynn Everett) than meets the eye, as we find out by the end of the first episode.

Although the second season starts out quite film noir, it's still a Marvel series, which means aliens and inter-dimensional investigations. Remember the weird gooey stuff from "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." that Hydra used to travel to the other side of the galaxy? The entire plot of "Agent Carter" Season 2 surrounds it. It's an interesting story-arc choice having the characters in "Agent Carter" oblivious to what "zero matter" does, while the viewers know exactly what it does ... if you watched "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." that is.

Meanwhile, in New York, the government wants to shut down the S.S.R., unbeknownst to Agent Carter and the L.A. office. However, by the end of the first episode, the seeds have finally been planted for Agent Carter and the cast-offs of the S.S.R. to form S.H.I.E.L.D. once and for all.

I'm someone who loves James Bond — the movies and the novels — and "Agent Carter" is the most comparable spy thriller to 007 stories in the fact that chasing Soviet spies is considered down time for her real job, investigating the bizarre and taking down megalomaniacs.

Join in the fun of Peggy Carter beating up bad guys in post-World War II America. "Marvel's Agent Carter" airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on ABC.

Follow Richard Briggs on Twitter, @BriggsRich.

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