Quantcast
Agent Carter Season 2 episode 1 review: 'The Lady In The Lake' - SciFiNow

Agent Carter Season 2 episode 1 review: ‘The Lady In The Lake’

Contains extremely light spoilers for Season 2, episode 1

Oh, how we’ve missed you, Agent Carter! Sure, it’s only been five months since the last UK broadcast but it’s still lovely to have it back.

The first episode of the season, ‘The Lady In The Lake’, marks the start of a new arching adventure. When a woman is found dead and frozen in a block of ice in the middle of a lake in sunny Los Angeles, the police are at a loss as to who killed her and how they managed to pull it off. It’s not long until Chief Daniel Sousa (Enver Gjokaj), the new head of the SSR’s West Coast bureau is pulled into the investigation. In need of a capable helping hand, Agent Peggy Carter (played by the always-marvellous Hayley Atwell) is dispatched from New York to help catch killer.

If one thing is for sure this early into the mystery, it’s that Agent Carter and Hollywood are a match made in production design heaven. The combination of Marvel’s trademark action-meets-sci-fi element and the glitz and glamour of the 1940s’ West Coast is absolutely delightful. It’s difficult to tell if the new setting will grow tired as the season progresses, but for now we’re 100 percent onboard with the change.

Season 2 has also brought with it some new characters, including Hollywood actress Whitney Frost (Wynn Everett), her businessman husband Calvin Chadwick (Currie Graham) and suave scientist Jason Wilkes (Reggie Austin). We’re yet to get fully acquainted with Frost and Chadwick, but Wilkes has already proven himself interesting. As well as being a genius scientist, he’s also a massive flirt. Peggy becomes uncharacteristically flustered when she around him (but not to the point of being unprofessional, obviously), while he seems to give her deliberate sex-eyes in return.

22

Romantic subplots are often shoehorned into second seasons and, if we’re completely honest, we were a little worried when it was revealed that one would be slipped into Agent Carter too, what with the brilliant ‘strong, independent woman here, get out of my way’ themes of the first season. However, after one episode with Wilkes, we’re already pretty confident that he’s going to be a interesting addition to the show and almost definitely not a douchebag, like most of Peggy’s SSR co-workers. This is a blossoming romance we can get behind. Unfortunately, it looks like a clichéd love triangle might also develop with Sousa, who exhibited signs of harbouring a crush on Peggy in the first season, which are painfully re-established in ‘The Lady In The Lake’. We’ll just have to wait that one out and see what happens.

Happily, Peggy and Jarvis’ (James D’Arcy) partnership has managed to be incorporated into the new season, even after the location change. Jarvis is already in LA as the episode begins since his boss, Howard Stark, decided to start his own Hollywood film production company. Nothing feels forced, which can often be the case when a show decides to up sticks and move partway through the series. After just one episode, Peggy and Jarvis’ interactions continue to be sharp, entertaining and the show’s strongest asset.

Agent Carter Season 2 airs on Thursdays at 9pm on FOX.