It’s looking impossible at the moment, but Agent Carter will return if the producer, the star and the fans have anything to say about it.
It was a sad morning in May when fans of ABC’s Agent Carter learned that the show would not be returning for a third season.
The news came as a shock to many, including Jeph Loeb, the head of Marvel television. On August 8, he told Business Insider that “there were no conversations” between Marvel and ABC, Marvel’s sister company under Disney. They just pulled the plug.
The show, which was hailed by critics, ended its second season on a cliffhanger, so the news of its cancellation was not an easy pill for Carter fans to swallow. Minutes, maybe even seconds, after the announcement was made, a petition was posted on change.org for Netflix to pick up the series.
Sadly, they passed. The big cheese at Netflix, Ted Sarandos, told Entertainment Weekly that Netflix is “looking for truly original brands to own.” With successes like Daredevil and Jessica Jones under its belt and a long line of highly anticipated series on the horizon, they want to stick with what’s making them money: creating their own original Marvel productions.
A deal like this also gets complicated when a network as large as ABC passes on a show’s next season, because its viewership stretches past the United States. Sarandos explained that those international networks, also known as “output partners” would still have the show on air and would “argue it’s covered by their output.”
With these two major factors at play, Sarandos declared that it had been “a business decision more than a creative one.”
This hasn’t discouraged the fans, who have gathered 128,750 signatures on their petition, so far. Though Carter’s ratings were the reason for its downfall, it’s clear that there is a large enough fanbase to garner some attention.
At the August 4th Conviction panel for the Television Critics Association press tour, Hayley Atwell spoke about a revival, saying “I hound [Marvel Studios co-president] Louis D’Esposito on a regular basis saying, ‘Give me a movie.’”
Atwell is no stranger to the Marvel Cinematic and Television Universe, and said “Marvel is still such a big part of my career and I suppose my professional family that I would absolutely not rule out the idea of going back to Peggy at some point.”
It should also be noted that Hulu, which recently announced a series based on Marvel’s Runaways and also picked up The Mindy Project when it was dropped from Fox after its third season, could make a move for this much-loved series.
Don’t hang up your bright red hats just yet, Agent Carter fans. With Hayley Atwell and a hefty petition on your side, there may be hope for Peggy and co. in the near future.