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Back when Hayley Atwell got the lead role in ABC’s Convinction, the Marvel Cinematic Universe alumna and S.H.I.E.L.D. founder talked about her future with Marvel’s Agent Carter: “ABC said, ‘This is not us cancelling Agent Carter,’” Atwell recalls. “‘This is us having a great new project and we really want you in the center of it.’” Back then it seemed like there was hope for the TV show’s return, but in May of this year this hope was shattered with the announcement of the show’s cancellation.
Other interviews since then have shown Hayley Atwell’s disposition to come back to the role she first birthed in Captain America: The First Avenger — and Marvel TV would be very happy to accommodate her. Atwell suggested a TV-movie special, but there’s no network offering to make this (or any other type of revival) into a reality. Speaking to TVLine, TV chief Jeph Loeb has said that “unlike the movies”, Marvel’s TV division can’t go forward with a project without knowing where the broadcast will land first.
“[Marvel Studios schedulers] get to say, ‘In 2019, were going to bring you Captain Marvel,’ and when it shows up in a movie theater, [no theater owner] is going, ‘Whoa, hold on a second — we didn’t say that that was OK!’”
“What Marvel Television does every day is it connects with our partners — ABC, FX, Fox, Netflix, Freeform — and they tell us when they would like it. So the short answer is: Sure, if someone wants to call and say, ‘We want a two-hour Agent Carter for May 2017,’ boom. We’ll put together the greatest Agent Carter movie we can.”
Sadly, Netflix has passed on the opportunity to bring this to fruition. It seems like no other network is jumping out of its figurative seat to answer all the questions that we were left unanswered after the show’s second season finale. What happened to Agent Thompson (Chad Michael Murray) after he was shot? Who was the gunman that stole the Peggy Carter file? Is Sousa (Enver Gjokaj) the man she eventually married? When did Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) marry Maria? What ever happened to human Jarvis (James D’Arcy)?
Oh and the best lingering question of all: When was SHIELD founded?
Us diligent fans of the show sure hope these questions get answered eventually, and Loeb agrees:
“Every person who’s reading this sat in a movie theater and saw Phil Coulson die in The Avengers, and we’re now about to start our 67th episode, on our way to 100 episodes, of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., none of which would have happened without Phil Coulson and Clark Gregg. I’m incredibly grateful that Hayley has been bold enough to say that she would love to play that part again. So… ‘I hope so’ is the short answer.”
Atwell did offer to work weekends, after all.
Images: Marvel/ABC/SDCC
