The second and final season of the American television series Agent Carter, which is inspired by the 2011 film Captain America: The First Avenger and the 2013 Marvel One-Shot short film of the same name,[1] features the character Peggy Carter, based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name, as she moves to Los Angeles to deal with the threats of the new atomic age in the wake of World War II, gaining new friends, a new home, and potential new love.

Filming took place in Los Angeles in late 2015, with the season contrasting the lives of Carter and the Hedy Lamarr-inspired Whitney Frost, portrayed by recurring guest star Wynn Everett.

Visual and practical effects were mixed to realize the setting and more fantastical elements of the series, while David Zippel and Louis van Amstel provided a musical dream sequence for the season.

[2] In January 2015, showrunners Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters confirmed that Agent Carter was not intended to be a miniseries, and that a possible second season would not necessarily be limited to eight episodes like the first.

"[30] Additionally, the season avoids depicting real life Hollywood stars from the 1940s because "the focus would shift from story to: does that person look or sound like an actor?"

Members of the Council include powerful businessmen Calvin Chadwick and Hugh Jones, and their influence extends to "high levels of the government" as seen with War Department veteran Vernon Masters.

"[35] Atwell spoke specifically about the season's approach to diversity and prejudice, and noted that the series' crew had expanded to include African American and Asian writers as well as a female director.

Towers said, "The talent agent [who asks Frost to smile] may not be the Purple Man, but Whitney is certainly being ushered into a brainwashed mindset that will set her on a path she can't deviate from easily.

"[41] At the conclusion of the season, Fazekas recalled the potential story revolving around Carter having a girls night out, saying that they realized that "once Peggy is on the mission, it starts to become difficult for her to have a social life...we kept sort of punting that scene because every time we tried to do it, it was like, 'She's not going to stop to go out to dinner.

"[42] Hayley Atwell, James D'Arcy, Chad Michael Murray, and Enver Gjokaj return from the first season to star as Peggy Carter, Edwin Jarvis, Jack Thompson, and Daniel Sousa, respectively.

[1][11][12] By June 2015, it was reported that Marvel was working to have Bridget Regan (Dottie Underwood) and Lyndsy Fonseca (Angie Martinelli) return for the season.

[22] In August 2015, it was revealed that the character Whitney Frost would appear in the season,[28] and Currie Graham was cast as her husband, Calvin Chadwick, the owner of Isodyne Energy.

Dancers Robert Roldan, Malene Ostergaard, Amanda Balen, Serge Onik, Jenya Shatilova, Lacey Escabar, Alla Kocherga, and Paul Kirkland are also featured in the sequence.

[49] Discussing the series' location move, Head of Marvel Television Jeph Loeb explained that "Agent Carter season one took place in New York in 1946.

She added the season hoped to film at Musso & Frank Grill, the Formosa Cafe, the Griffith Observatory, racetracks, piers, and other locations in Downtown Los Angeles.

Effects created for the season included the Zero Matter and its related properties, such as people being frozen and shattered by it, the dimensional rifts and the levitated objects that get sucked into them, and Wilkes becoming intangible.

The main dimensional rifts were designed as black holes, based on the work of theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, which also inspired Double Negative's visual effects for Interstellar; the software developed for the film was reused for the series.

[52] In July 2015, Butters revealed that the season would feature the Darkforce, which ties to the characters Doctor Strange and Marcus Daniels, the latter having appeared in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Looking to the history of the Darkforce in the comics, Fazekas and Butters "were able to select what we liked and sort of make our own rules as to what it does, how it operates, and who it affects in our world.

[51] The showrunners also conversed with Eric Carroll at Marvel Studios to ensure anything they were doing with the Darkforce would not contradict the Doctor Strange script,[55] and to see if they could destroy Howard Stark's hover car, which was originally seen as a prototype in Captain America: The First Avenger.

[42][55] The mention in the season finale of the land Stark owns in Malibu is a reference to what will become the location for the home of his son, Tony, in the MCU films.

Alice Walker of Screen Rant felt that the promo "highlight[ed] the best parts of the show", calling it "[f]ast paced and slick" and Atwell "still incredibly charming".

"[58] Conversely, Kaitlin Thomas at TV.com called the promo "weird", asking, "Why is ABC marketing Agent Carter like it's one of the network's casually daft melodramas instead of a well-written drama[?

The website's consensus reads, "A move from New York to Hollywood gives Agent Carter new territory to explore, as the series continues to search for a storyline as dynamic as its heroine.

formula...it's sort of a shame Agent Carter isn't more compelling, since the impeccable period trappings and costumes make the series a nice change of pace, at least visually.

After watching Agent Carter develop Whitney as such a powerful and sympathetic villain earlier this season, the way the show wrapped up her storyline is a disappointment.