Hayley Atwell Teases Agent Carter's Surprising Dark Direction, Peggy's Grieving of Captain America 

, which is set some time after his (presumably) fatal arctic plunge — and all Peggy Carter can do is shrug.

In the second half of the ABC series’ two-hour premiere (airing Tuesday at 8/7c), SSR Agent Carter (played by Hayley Atwell) catches a listen of “The Captain America Adventure Program,” a live radio play populated by breathy heroines and a Hitler-pummeling hero. But the artifice, as patriotic as it is, leaves her unimpressed and visibly missing the real man she and the Howling Commandos once fought alongside.

Now, with the men home from World War II, Peggy’s biggest fight is with those who marginalize her potential and contributions at the SSR. (Spoiler alert: It’s a battle she is sure to win.)

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‘s eight-hour run now under her belt, Atwell tells TVLine that what most delights her about Peggy “is that she doesn’t sacrifice her integrity, her morals or her femininity when she’s up against tremendous personal and external obstacles.” As seen in

, “She is a fighter and a survivor, but she doesn’t have any superpowers,” her portrayer notes. “She has to rely on her wits and intelligence and determination to navigate what comes her way.”

And sometimes, yes — as witnessed in this sneak peek — that means playing into her male colleagues’ assumptions (or donning a blonde wig) to gain the upper hand, as she stealthily angles to retrieve a stolen cache of Howard Stark’s (

‘s Dominic Cooper) “bad baby” inventions before the SSR can. “She’s highly skilled in being a chameleon and using what she can in any given situation to get what she wants,” Atwell observes. “And sometimes that means using her sexuality, sometimes that means outwitting the men.”

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‘s Lyndsy Fonseca) — a waitress who believes Peggy to be a mild-mannered telephone company secretary — Carter has precisely two fellas in her corner: SSR Agent Daniel Sousa (

‘s Enver Gjokaj), who’s oblivious to her private agenda, and Stark’s manservant Jarvis (

‘s James D’Arcy). Due to a crippling war injury, Sousa walks with a leg brace and thus, amid chest-puffing peers such as Agent Jack Thompson (

‘s Chad Michael Murray), “experiences prejudice, which makes him instantly relate to Peggy,” Atwell says. “Not that being a woman is seen as a ‘disability,’ but back then to an extent it was.”

moving on without her biggest champion — the aforementioned guy who wields the mighty shield. But make no mistake, that hero lives on inside her. Much of who Peggy is now “stems from her relationship with and her love of Steve Rogers,” Atwell attests. “I think she found in him the love of her life, the greatest man that she’s ever known in terms of his character and his values. And in that grief we see her own personal struggles and her own kind of exhaustion, but also the determination to carry on his work.”

As Peggy forges on in the face of much adversity, “You’re seeing someone who has her own demons and her own character flaws, and she’s having to struggle with that while keeping up this facade of a put-together, perfect agent who can cope with everything. But there’s a cost to that,” Atwell warns. “Everyone on the planet is only strong until a certain point, everyone has a trigger, and this season really shows that. [In Peggy] we don’t have someone who is superhuman in her abilities. We see her cry, we see her private moments, we see her loneliness. We see the emotional and psychological costs of the position that she’s in and the loss that she’s had of Steve.”

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‘s two-hour bow largely revolves around the search for a highly volatile

plosive concocted by Stark, Atwell makes clear that this is

a Case of the Week show. “It’s not like, ‘Let’s find this ‘bad baby,’ now let’s find that ‘bad baby,\'” she says. “It goes to a much deeper, darker place.

“I was absolutely shocked and delighted when I started to read the later episodes and see the direction we’re going in,” she continues. “That’s one of the advantages of having only eight episodes, is that it’s not diluted over 22. This has a very strong story and is essentially four films.”

That said, is the actress at liberty to spill any intel on any of the other stolen Stark creations, to figure into later episodes? “Oh, my goodness…,” she answers, pausing to think. Quickly latching onto one, she then teases, “It’s not so much a ‘bad baby’ as a bad monster.” With a laugh, she notes, “Yeah, ‘babies’ is a soft, misguided term!”

Agent Carter premieres Tuesday at 8/7c, before moving into its regular Tuesdays-at-9 time slot starting Jan. 13.

“Angie (Nikita‘s Lyndsy Fonseca) — a waitress who believes Peggy to be a mild-mannered telephone company secretary” I suspect Fonseca’s character is no more a mere waitress than happens to befriend Agent Carter, but most likely some sort of agent for a rival organization. I was thinking the other day that she could be like some of proto/Golden Age-esque Black Widow working for the Russians. It has been established that a Black Widow doesn’t have to be just one person, but it can be more than one woman.

I must agree with Michael about Angie not being a mild-mild mannered waitress. I wouldn’t be shock if she don’t turn out to be another future shield agent in training or a future villainess.

It is rare to see a great villainess in her own right because she is either the girl friend of the the main villains or worst the victim. Remember when Xenia Warrior Princess in the Hercules series before she spin-off to her own right. She was the bad person in the Hercules but when she got her own series she became one of the heroine in her own right.

Heh, it would be funny if Lyndsy Fonseca was once AGAIN playing a badass Russian spy. I loved her on Nikita, so I was glad to learn that she was cast here.

Heh. Indeed. At first I thought she might be Hydra, which would make her German, but though that could work and fit in with the idea of Hydra infiltrating SHIELD from the very beginning, it might be too repetitive, so I thought making her a Russian agent who is somehow connected to Black Widow might be more interesting. This would also be specially true as since, coming out of WWII, the Russians became the “bad guys”.

I’m just going to put this out there because I have already seen examples of it elsewhere… I like Peggy Carter as a character and I am super excited to see her in her own show (if it ever gets shown over here in Blighty) but I don’t want people to use Agent Carter’s existence as a lame excuse to bash Agents of SHIELD for the millionth time. So so tired of it.

I hope that Agent Carter will become a big hit and get renewal for the second season.

Matt, this has to be your longest article! I’m very excited about the show and ABC using a Sydney Bristow callback to sell the public in commercials.

Does anyone know if any of the other Howling Commandos will be making any appearances in the show? It seems strange to me that they wouldn’t, especially when we saw some of them with her in the SHIELD episode flashback this season. But the cast list doesn’t mention any of them … Anybody know what the deal is?

I hope that the howling commando will make a guest appearance in Agent Carter and I will light a candle for the ABC will renewal the show for the second season.

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