December posting meme: Agent Carter season 3

[sholio]

sgamadison asked: Where would Agent Carter have gone if they'd gotten a season 3?

Well, obviously there's what I wanted out of a season 3, and what we realistically were likely to get ...

Season 3 would have almost certainly had to do with Peggy's brother (M. Carter) and the mysterious key. It was my hope, back when we still thought season 3 was a possibility (*sob*) that it would've been more espionage-focused, with a broader, more international scope. If the main season 3 arc plot involved Peggy looking for her brother, it would have lent itself very well to a more globetrotting theme for the season, possibly relocating to London entirely (or a film set masquerading as London, anyway), or having Peggy go back to England and to continental Europe to run down clues.

I also expected that season 3 would have moved closer to the founding of SHIELD, with Peggy ending up even more out of step with the government bureaucracy she works for. In the first season, Peggy was basically a free agent with few to no allies, working against everyone in the SSR, even at odds with Jarvis and Howard for part of the season. In the second season she'd picked up some friends, so instead of Peggy as a lone wolf vs. SSR, it was Peggy, Daniel, Jarvis, etc. vs. the SSR bureaucracy and Jack. There was some friction within Team Peggy, but nothing like season one. So season one was Peggy vs. the SSR, and season two was Peggy + her friends at the SSR vs. the shadowy conspiracy controlling the SSR. So, in the third season, I was hoping for Peggy + the SSR (now almost entirely on her side) vs. the entire government -- with Jack as an ally, of course (very much not dead, thanks) and the entire SSR, or what was left of it, coming into conflict with various governmental elements stirred up in season two, as well as whatever foreign agency was responsible for whatever happened to Michael. And basically all of this would've set up Peggy breaking totally from the government and forming a freelance organization along with her SSR allies, which would have happened in season 4 or 5.

So yeah, Peggy being a globetrotting spy, looking for her brother with the help of her friends, and possibly ending up a fugitive from the government for a little while, was what I was hoping for in the Season That Never Was.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I want this Season 3! Also, I like your plot arc reasoning for the SSR/SHIELD being more of an underground organisation later on.

[sholio]

It just made so much sense to me! There's been this gradual trend over the first two seasons of Peggy turning her coworker-opponents into allies and her enemies correspondingly moving up the command chain, so season 3 being Peggy vs. the U.S. government + NATO (I mean, sort of, in the same way that season 2 is Peggy vs. the Illuminati & the lower echelons of the government), followed by season 4 or 5 being Peggy forming SHIELD from the underground SSR, seemed like a logical progression to me!

[selenak]

And basically all of this would've set up Peggy breaking totally from the government and forming a freelance organization along with her SSR allies, which would have happened in season 4 or 5.

My big problem with this is that she can't/couldn't have done that in any way that makes the MCU still remotely like our world. I mean, for all it's supposedly international, SHIELD comes across as US based. It is able to have its central headquarters in the US capital. It can operate on US soil. Even if we assume Howard initially funded the whole enterprise on his lonesome before it expanded, there's no way they'd have gotten permission for something like this in 1950s America without submitting to some (US) government control. Licensing an armed spy agency on US soil at the height of the Cold War was going to be an incredible hard sell anyway, but no way Peggy could have done that if she was seen as a rogue agent or likely to turn against the (US) government at any point.

It amounts to a basic problem between two fantasies the MCU both wanted to sell: on the one hand, Peggy as the independent heroine marching to her own drum, on the other, Peggy as the leader of the cool spy agency with all the fancy toys. If she was the later, she can't always have been the former. And I think that's why Agent Carter held off the foundation of SHIELD as opposed to the five minute one shot which ends Howard declaring it, so to speak. They knew they'd have to show Peggy as part of the system, and not in a "lowly keg" but as a "major player and carrier of the system" way, and in a day and age where ANY system is reviled (not without reason often, but still) and the only acceptable heroism is that of the lone rogue, they didn't want to go there.

[trobadora]

This is my take on it, too!

And personally, I would have loved seeing Peggy eventually becoming part of the system, seeing what it might have done to her. But I understand that's a story many wouldn't find compelling.

[selenak]

One of my unwritten story ideas which I'll get around to eventually is a "Five Times Peggy Carter Morally Compromised" which would span decades, and it wouldn't be audience-friendly compromises like letting Dottie - who is a loved character - go, or using the mindwiping gimmick on a jerk the audience hates. It would be things like, oh, Peggy finding indisputable proof J. Edgar Hoover is gay at the height of the McCarthy era. Now Hoover at this point is a force for evil and life ruiner. Also a blackmailer of people (including with their sexuality). But his own sexuality and life long partnership is probably the most human thing about him. So does Peggy a) ignore it, because that's not how she wants to bring Hoover down, or b) use it to make him step down as head of the FBI, thereby removing a life ruiner from a position of near uncontrolled power? (Since no President of either party was ever going to remove Hoover, as he had dirt on all of them.) And in my story, she would choose option C) use it, but not to make Hoover step down; she'd use it to ensure the FBI leaves SHIELD and SHIELD employees alone. (Of which a great many would fall in one of the Hoover-targeted categories.) (This also explains why she never does anything about Hoover as the decades long head of the FBI in the MCU.) There would be strategic reasons in her mind - the survival of the still rather new SHIELD and what it can do for humanity being more important than the removal of Hoover, who causes damage, but whom the US would ultimately survive - but it would also be the prioritizing of her people over the people. And I'd write this section from the pov of the young idealistic agent who found the evidence and brought it to her in the hope that of course now Peggy Carter, heroine extraordinaire, would get rid of Hoover.

Basically, I'd let Peggy end up as not unsimilar to Judi Dench's version of M in the Bond movies, or, to change spy fantasies, to a Le Carré type of spy leader. Still concerned for the saving of the day and world foremost, but also capable of sacrificing people for her goals, and most definitely a part of the system.

BTW, the way Marvel wanted to have their cake and eat it with Peggy reminds me a bit of how the BBC at times gave the impression of wanting to do the same with Torchwood in general and Jack in particular. On the one hand, shady agency, shiny toys; on the other, but we're rebels! Rogues! Not part of the system! Though of course Torchwood did it a bit better in that Jack and TW were part of the system for a century, and Children of Earth found a credible within the spying genre reason to make them outlaws.

[trobadora]

I love you, and I want to read that story so badly, you have no idea. Seriously, I'm sitting here with hearts in my eyes. Which is maybe not a very usual response to that kind of story, but, well, that's me. *g*

Agreed about Torchwood, too, mostly. They didn't shy away from having Jack do pretty awful things, even before CoE, so it never actually felt like they were protecting their immaculate hero. Still, the "rebel" thing is something I'm growing more uncomfortable with the older I get.

[selenak]

Same here, not least because we're currently seeing the poisonous results from the belief that working within the system is always wrong and disqualifies you. But even current situations aside, it's the basic dishonesty that gets to me more and more. If Peggy Carter led a spy agency for decades - and a very powerful agency which was able to secure alien tech for itself, instead of the CIA getting its hands on it, an agency which, again, had its headquarters in Washington - then Peggy Carter's story can't be that of a morally uncompromising heroine walking through the halls of power untainted. Then her story can't be "Peggy versus the system" but rather "Peggy becomes part of the system" - or rather, more of a part, because come on. Peggy was the daughter of at least very well of middle class parents who joined the war effort and worked for various departments through all of her life. She's not Robin Hood. And that's before we get to the "Hydra within SHIELD" part of the equation.

Another obvious choice for one of the five instances would be Peggy hiring Armin Zola for SHIELD. Now I think if the show had ever touched that subject, they would have tried to keep Peggy untainted and somehow created a situation where she's ordered to (either by the US government, which again would point out SHIELD is NOT an independent agency, or by the international council Fury later reports to, which, ditto), or someone else does it (Howard?) and for some reasons she can't go against it. (Because it's not like she's the head of the agency, oh, wait.) Which to me would be the cowardly narrative choice. I mean, clearly they did the whole Zola thing as a homage to Operation Paperclip. And "grab your German scientist" - though Zola would insist he's Swiss - was something the British, the US and of course the Soviet Union all did. So showing Peggy doing the equivalent of the NASA hiring Werner von Braun for exactly those reasons, and like her rl equivalents in the full knowledge of what the man had done (well, minus the Hydra spreading part) to me would be far more interesting than Round X of "Peggy versus Evil White Man/Woman Of Evil".

And as indicated in my story about Peggy and Joseph Manfredi at Howard's funeral, I'd write her children not as adoring fans, but as 60s/70s hippies who are convinced Mum (and Dad) is/are the establishment and thus co-responsible for, say, the Vietnam war. Her son would not be impressed by Peggy's status shielding (ha!) him from the draft, whereas Peggy would not be impressed by him calling soldiers murderers, and so forth.

You see, I have a headcanon about Peggy that's in many ways the opposite of fanon...

[sheron]

I don't think what we have in AC conflicts with MCU at all. As you see in Cap2 movie, SHIELD headquarters are underground in New Jersey with Howard, Peggy and Col. Phillips portraits on the wall. Obviously, Howard bankrolls the thing, and obviously Colonel Phillips is the government buy-in. As for Peggy being the lone rogue, the whole point of S2 is that she shouldn't do that. Jarvis explicitly states it in S1, that to do what she does she needs support and part of the premise of the series is Peggy learning to rely on other people rather than trying to take on the rest of the world on her own. What that means to me at least is that while she can be against the corrupt parts of the government (e.g. against Vernon) she can still work with other parts of the government (e.g. Daniel, Chief of the SSR). Which is sort of what sholio seems to be getting at with that.

Also when she & Howard & Phillips did start SHIELD, it wasn't going to be a major organization right off the bat. It's grown into what it is in MCU over the course of 70 years, no way it was that powerful in the 1950s. I can easily see Peggy convincing people in the government to fund/allow her "investigative agency" that hunts for "commies" back during the Cold War, and then using that agency to hire people she trusts and direct them to causes she wants investigated. There's absolutely no conflict in 26-year-old Peggy trying to do good on a smaller scope vs who she becomes as a Director of SHIELD in the later years.

[princessofgeeks]

This all sounds great to me.

[umadoshi]

I would love to see this. *wistful*

[trobadora]

not least because we're currently seeing the poisonous results from the belief that working within the system is always wrong and disqualifies you

This, so much. I agree with you about the basic issue, and I've never been fond of it, but RL has made it particularly grating right now.

Zola and the MCU version of Operation Paperclip is the obvious thing, yes! I gave up looking for fic that honestly dealt with that without either whitewashing or vilifying Peggy ages ago, but I still really want to read it.

So showing Peggy doing the equivalent of the NASA hiring Werner von Braun for exactly those reasons, and like her rl equivalents in the full knowledge of what the man had done (well, minus the Hydra spreading part) to me would be far more interesting than Round X of "Peggy versus Evil White Man/Woman Of Evil".

Yes! I don't know why stories shy away from such themes so often. (Well, okay, I do know, I just don't get it at a basic level because that kind of thing is narrative catnip for me.)

And I do love "Peggy vs. the system", but the more that basic equation gets complicated, the more I love it.

You see, I have a headcanon about Peggy that's in many ways the opposite of fanon...

Isn't that fun? *sighs*

[selenay]

That...I would have loved that season three (and four and five).