AGENT
CARTER.

A SOLO MISSION PEGGY WAS NEVER ASSIGNED

WHAT PEGGY CARTER ACTUALLY RETRIEVES, AND WHO NOTICES

One year after Captain America: The First Avenger, Peggy Carter is confined to desk work at the SSR’s New York office, filing paperwork and decoding transmissions under Agent John Flynn (Bradley Whitford), a boss who treats her wartime record as irrelevant and keeps every field assignment for the men around her. After Flynn and the rest of the office head out for the night, a late call on the office hotline hands Carter the location of a target the SSR has been chasing: a key called the Zodiac, a job the caller suggests needs a team of three to five agents.

Carter goes alone instead, carrying a gadget-rigged briefcase, fights her way to the Zodiac and retrieves it herself. Flynn starts disciplining her for insubordination the next morning, until the phone rings: Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), calling to tell Flynn that Carter’s unsanctioned mission just won her a promotion he can’t overrule, co-heading a new organization Stark is standing up called S.H.I.E.L.D. The short then cuts to its mid-credits scene, Stark and Howling Commandos veteran Dum Dum Dugan (Neal McDonough) relaxing poolside.

“It’s called a bikini.” “You invent it?” “No, the French.”

Howard Stark and Dum Dum Dugan, in the short’s mid-credits scene

THE FOURTH ONE-SHOT, AND THE FIRST WITH A REAL ACTION BUDGET

WHO WROTE AND DIRECTED IT, AND WHY IT COST TWICE AS MUCH AS ITEM 47

Agent Carter was written by Eric Pearson, who had written every One-Shot before it, and directed by Louis D’Esposito, Marvel Studios’ co-president, taking his second turn behind the camera after Item 47. D’Esposito has said the production doubled Item 47’s budget specifically to build out Atwell’s spotlight: “We doubled the budget,” he said, “we intentionally want to make it bigger and showcase Hayley.”

That extra money bought the short its first real action scope: three fight scenes, more than any of the previous One-Shots combined, shot over five days against Item 47’s four. D’Esposito has also admitted the ambition nearly outran the schedule: “I think we bit off a little too much this time.” Iron Man 3 director Shane Black, working in an adjacent edit bay while that film finished post-production, voiced the caller on Carter’s hotline, an off-the-cuff, uncredited favor for D’Esposito rather than a planned casting choice.

A WELL-REVIEWED DISC EXTRA, AND A PRESCIENT GUESS ABOUT WHAT CAME NEXT

HOW THE SHORT WAS RECEIVED, AND WHY IT GOT READ AS A SERIES PITCH

A contemporaneous September 2013 review called Agent Carter the first One-Shot that read as a genuine prologue rather than a disc-extra curiosity, praising how it let Carter be “at her best” against a dismissive, male-dominated SSR without turning the short into a lecture about it.

That same review went further than most period coverage, guessing out loud that “a series (tv or web-based) starring Ms. Atwell as Agent Carter would be well-received by fans everywhere,” months before any such series existed. Retrospective coverage has since treated the short more directly as the project’s proof of concept: within a year and a half of its release, ABC and Marvel Television ordered a full Agent Carter series straight to air, premiering in January 2015 and picking up the character’s story not long after the short’s own ending, a connection this site covers in its own Agent Carter season entries rather than here.

THE REWATCH

A DIGITAL RELEASE THREE WEEKS AHEAD OF ITS OWN DISC

Agent Carter broke from the first three One-Shots’ release pattern. Rather than arrive exclusively with its disc, it reached buyers on HD digital download on 3 September 2013, three weeks ahead of the 24 September Blu-ray and DVD combo packs carrying Iron Man 3, after first screening for a Comic-Con crowd that July. It remains the only One-Shot built around a period setting and a workplace plot rather than a direct feature-film tie-in moment.

For viewers working through the catalogue in release order, Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter sits in the MCU release order guide directly after Iron Man 3, best watched by anyone who’s already seen Captain America: The First Avenger.