Marvel’s Agents Carter’s eight-episode season comes to a close Tuesday night, and I spoke to executive producers/showrunners Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas about what to expect. The duo discussed the big character death in the penultimate episode, Leviathan’s master plan and the role Howard Stark still has to play.

Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter in the Agent Carter: Season 1 finale.

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Shea Whigham as Dooley in Agent Carter.

Ralph Brown as Ivchenko/Doctor Fennhoff in Agent Carter.

Dominic Cooper ("Howard Stark") and Chad Michael Murray ("Thompson") in Agent Carter.

I think what episode seven did, driving into episode eight was, not just Dooley dying -- I mean Dooley’s death is the thing that sort of focuses everyone and affects everyone. But also prior to that, Peggy gave up the Captain America blood, which at least for Sousa and Dooley made them feel like they could trust her again. Then, of course, everything she told them came to pass and even more. So I do think, going into episode eight, there’s no suspicion. There’s no “Howard Stark is doing this.” They’re a united front barreling through this episode.I feel like it was a really old idea. It was almost like from the very beginning, when we were breaking the season early on, that we knew. There were actually several things at play. We knew that we wanted to have stakes. The problem is everyone knows Peggy lives. You have to have stakes to show that there’s true losses that can happen.Dooley dies was an idea I think we had before we even had cast Shea Wigham, because we knew we were only going to have him for seven of eight episodes.Right and it puts Thompson in this leadership position, which is he ready for? It was someone that they all cared about, even Peggy, and the fact was Peggy wanted his respect and it's such a nice thing that literally his last moment is giving it to her.Yes. This is sort of the lynchpin of Ivchenko -- although now we know his real name is Fenhoff -- of his big plan. We’ll find out, in episode eight, why this particular item, why Howard Stark…It wasn’t a coincidence that he chose to take one of Howard Stark’s weapons. All of that comes out, which is I think a nice nod. One of the things that was fun was having a nod to the Marvel comic book universe by being able to use Doctor Fennhoff, who other people also know as Doctor Faustus, and, you know, kind of connect our world to the greater MCU.That’ll be the last time that Peggy lets Dottie get the drop on her. It’ll be a, hopefully, very satisfying showdown between those two.Howard has a very big role in the finale. We’ll actually see a little bit more of a vulnerable side to him because he actually has a tremendous guilt over his involvement in what is happening and feels at least partially responsible for it, even though he’s only responsible in the broadest sense. But sort of beneath the bluster and bravado, there’s a real guy down there. He has some emotional, lovely scenes. But at the same time he can still be self serving. There’s one scene I’m thinking of where we’ll actually see both. We’ll see him be genuine and then in the exact same scene, see him do something that’s kind of a dick move. Both of those things are true about him.

Marvel’s Agent Carter’s season finale airs Tuesday, February 24th at 8:00pm ET/PT on ABC. Check back Tuesday night for my review and for another interview with Fazekas and Butters, discussing the events of the finale.Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricIGN , IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman