ABC just announced a few renewals and orders for new series, but in addition to those shows, the network will also have two Marvel dramas on the air during the 2014-15 TV season. ABC has renewed Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a second season and has given a series order for the Captain America spinoff Agent Carter. Though Marvel’s first foray into television was highly anticipated, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was met with a rather tepid critical response and the ratings have dwindled since its premiere. Regardless, the numbers never dropped to critical levels and the show is lucrative as a brand property, so it was highly likely that ABC was going to order a second season.

Hit the jump for more, including details regarding the setting and focus of the Agent Carter series.

Though Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. took a bit of a critical shellacking in its initial run of episodes, it has apparently improved as it closes out its freshman season and begins to incorporate the events from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Hopefully the show can continue to find its footing during season two, where it will also be joined by a companion series of sorts.

Marvel’s Agent Carter will star Hayley Atwell as the titular Marvel character, who was initially seen onscreen as Steve Rogers’ love interest in the first Captain America film. In the subsequent Marvel One-Shot (ie. short film) Agent Carter, it is revealed that after Rogers’ disappearance, Carter became one of the founding members of S.H.I.E.L.D. alongside Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper).

Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely penned the script for the Agent Carter pilot, and we previously spoke to the duo at length about their plans for the potential series. They revealed that the show would start in 1946 and find Carter in a world where “people are disrespecting her and she’s proving herself and going on missions and things like that.” Additionally, their hope is that Dominic Cooper’s Howard Stark would be a recurring character on the series.

Markus and McFeely also told us that they envisioned the show as a maximum of 13 episodes per season, maybe less, with one idea being that each season is almost like a limited series that spans the length of one year.

We recently heard that ABC was strongly considering ordering Agent Carter to series without the production of a pilot, since the Marvel One-Shot acted as a sort of proof-of-concept, and now we can see that is certainly the case. Additionally, rumor has it that the network has been mulling over the idea of using Agent Carter as a midseason show that will fill in the gap while Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. takes its winter hiatus. Should the series only span 10 or 13 episodes, that would certainly be a smart way to keep Marvel fans happy while Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. takes a little break.

We’ll know more about the specific plan for Agent Carter next week when ABC unveils its full schedule, but for now this is very exciting news. Of course, ABC isn’t the only small-screen network that will host original Marvel content, as production begins this summer on the first of four Netflix series based on Marvel characters.