Hayley Atwell, actrice britannique

Michele Fazekas and Tara Butters break down the exciting and emotional season conclusion !

Peggy Carter’s first solo mission drew to a close last night as the mystery of Leviathan stood revealed, Howard Stark received his exoneration, and Agent Carter said one last goodbye to Captain Steve Rogers.

With the first season of “Marvel’s Agent Carter” now drawn to a close, we got to look back at its conclusion with Executive Producers Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, who also wrote the season finale.

Learn more about Arnim Zola’s surprise cameo, Agent Thompson’s final self-serving act of the season, and much more with our full interview below !

Marvel.com : In the closing moments of the season, we saw Arnim Zola from the Captain America films make an appearance in the same jail cell as Fennhoff. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about how that came about and what you thought that sort of added to the story.

Michele Fazekas : By my recollection, when we were pitching the story to Jeph Loeb, Kevin Feige, and Louis D’Esposito, there was some worry about if that’s going to bump too much into other Marvel properties. But then Marvel came back with, “Well, why don’t you do it this way ?” We gave him, essentially, the power of suggestion—hypnosis. That’s why he’s got his ring, which is like a version of swinging a pocket watch in front of somebody’s face.

Dottie (Bridget Regan) lines up her shot in Marvel’s Agent Carter - A Sin to Err
Hayley Atwell in Marvel’s Agent Carter

They said, “Oh, we can tie it into the Winter Soldier program,” and this is essentially the beginnings of the Winter Soldier program and what happened to Bucky. Of course we went crazy for that. Somebody added on, “Oh, wouldn’t it be funny to get Toby Jones to do a scene.” “Yeah, that’d be great. That’ll never happen.” As we get closer to production with a script, we’re like, “Well, I guess we can write this scene. We’ll never get him.” But then he’s available, and he’s interested, and then we’re talking on the phone with him, and then he’s on a plane. He came and shot the scene, one scene. I would have bet money against it, but it was nice to tie-in the features and the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe more. I also liked that we mimicked the features with the scene after the credits.

Tara Butters : Yeah. I know S.H.I.E.L.D. does a lot of those tag-scenes. We’d never done one with Carter, but it felt appropriate with this story.

Marvel.com : Speaking of ties into the MCU, there was something surprising to me about that last scene with Peggy on the Brooklyn Bridge saying goodbye to Steve, when she decided to dump the blood into the river. What do you think was going through her mind in that moment ?

Michele Fazekas : Well, what else would she do with it ? She can’t keep it because if somebody gets their hands on it, forget it.

Tara Butters : I also think that, to me, it’s a more personal thing of, yes, the scientists are all saying that this could hold the answer to all the mysteries of mankind—

Michele Fazekas : But to her it’s like you’re using him. You might as well be experimenting on his body, which they already did.

Tara Butters : Yeah, but the idea was that there was only one Captain America. Also, it truly matches what’s already been established in the MCU, that the U.S. government has spent years trying to recreate him and you end up with Hulk.

Michele Fazekas : And now we’re going to have Captain America fish in the East River. [laughs]

Marvel.com : Is that the next Marvel One-Shot ? Captain Fish ?

Michele Fazekas : Captain America Fish. I think she had to destroy it, and there’s something symbolic about doing it on the Brooklyn bridge. He’s from Brooklyn, and her final act was protecting him.

Marvel.com : Of course. One last thing that I wanted to touch on was Thompson’s decision at the end to take sole credit for the mission and leave Peggy out of it. Was there much back and forth on whether or not he would give Peggy more credit, or did you know that in the end this was the most true to Thompson’s character and who he was ?

Michele Fazekas : I actually remember this very vividly from when we had a mini-camp, early on before even our writers started, with [Christopher] Markus and [Stephen] McFeely thinking about Thompson’s journey over these eight episodes. He had that real moment of truth with Peggy in episode five, where he tells her really what happened in Japan. And even in last week’s episode, he’s almost the one that’s the most hurt by Peggy’s betrayal, when he thinks she’s betrayed him. He’s like, “But that doesn’t make sense with what you did in Russia.” So he’s actually struggling with this the most.

But we talked about that moment with Thompson where it’s a moment in your life where what you do here is going to define the rest of your life, and you can either do the right thing or the self-serving thing. And he chooses the path that is self-serving, which is almost worse than anything he’s done in the past because he’s actively choosing, “I’m going to do this thing that I know is bad and I’m doing it anyway.”

Tara Butters : I just think it made him more human. That’s the thing, as much as it may not necessarily be the most heroic moment for him, it does make him more of a real person.

Michele Fazekas : Yep.

With the conclusion of the first season of “Marvel’s Agent Carter,” catch new episodes of “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” beginning Tuesday, March 3 at 9:00 p.m. ET on ABC !

Source : Marvel du 25/02/15 par Marc Strom