“I’m just saying…maybe the problem is you.”

Ten minutes in to the season finale to Marvel’s Agent Carter, Howard Stark—played by Dominic Cooper from Captain America: The First Avenger—said that line to Agent Peggy Carter, Hayley Atwell’s titular character from a wonderful show Marvel and ABC may not bring back for a third season, but absolutely should.

Stark was referencing the fact that almost everyone on the show keeps trying to kill Agent Carter, but the network may use the line because, well, ratings haven’t been all that good despite a wildly adventurous second season.

The season finale is as fun and madcap as the ending to a 10-episode arc about a government agency’s duplicity and a handful of secret agents, rich scientists, genius doctors and, yes, one butler trying to save the world can be. If that sounds confusing, well, it is, but that’s part of the joy of watching Agent Carter—both the show and the character—figure out a way to save the world time and time again.

Atwell is endearing and smart and strong and everything viewers could ever ask for in this role, and Marvel was smart to take a character that, let’s bet honest, gave Captain America—both the movie and the character—a soul and give her this vehicle all to her own.

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In the first season of the show—billed as a bridge between the fall and spring arcs of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.—Atwell had to severely carry the load, helped mostly by Edwin Jarvis, played by James D’Arcy, as Mr. Stark’s famous butler. The two played off each other well in season one, but that ante was upped in grand fashion in season two, as the buddy team shined every time they were on the screen together.

D’Arcy’s mannerisms and quirky nervousness as Jarvis plays so well off Atwell’s sure-handed Carter, and season two allowed D’Arcy to become more than just a vehicle (sometimes literally) to get Carter from place to place with a bit of added comic relief. He became a star in the Marvel Universe, at least, if not ABC’s television one this season. He, too, deserves a third go.

Alan Sepinwall at HitFix wrote last week that Agent Carter may not be renewed by ABC, even a truncated season that it is, because the ratings aren’t good and have actually dipped since the first season, which really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if people would have given season two a proper chance.

This is a business, and between the ratings, the exit of the man who greenlit the show, and the development of Marvel’s Most Wanted as the thing to fill in at mid-season for Agents of SHIELD, the writing seems on the wall for Peggy, Jarvis and friends. Maaaaaaybe Marvel convinces their other TV partners over at Netflix to pick it up, though Daredevil and Jessica Jones are a lot more graphic and “mature” than what Agent Carter is aiming for.

Sepinwall noted that the first season and the first half of season two of Agent Carter aren’t available to stream anywhere, which could potentially make it easier for Netflix to obtain the streaming rights and, perhaps, be willing to greenlight a third.

Surely the producers of the show think they will get another season out of Agent Carter—both the show and the character—because season two ends on a series of cliffhangers that surely set up some kind of resolution.

If the show doesn’t get renewed, there’s nothing left in the air that would make watching seasons one and two less enjoyable. (This isn’t a Deadwood situation, where the show just up and left pretty much everything unresolved.) We, as comic fans, know what happens to Agent Carter. Even if you don’t read the comics, we’ve seen Atwell in both Ant Man (with graying hair in the 1980s as part of the contingent heading S.H.I.E.L.D.) and in Captain America: Winter Soldier as an older woman who finally gets reunited with Steve Rogers. Peggy Carter lives, and thrives, in the Marvel Universe, whether we get to see it on the screen or not.

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So we know what happens to Peggy Carter, and to Howard Stark, and we know that Edwin Jarvis is so important that Tony Stark names his operating system after him.

But what happens to the SSR—the governmental organization Carter somewhat inexplicably continues to work for, given the way they all treat her—and the cast of characters from that office? We get some sense of what becomes of Daniel Sousa, the SSR agent played by Enver Gjokaj, but the season hinges on a mysterious key Carter was given by agent Jack Thompson, played by Chad Michael Murray, whose final scene ends up being the biggest cliffhanger of all.

Will we ever find out what happens to Thompson, who took the file on Carter and what that key opens up?

Could ABC greenlight a third season, despite the low ratings, because, sometimes, good TV is worth it just for the sake of good TV? Or because having strong women on television is so important to the growth and development of the industry and both Agent Carter and Atwell, herself, have become role models for young women and girls looking to empower themselves?

I had the chance to sit in on a Q&A Atwell fielded at Comic Con in Philadelphia last year and every question asked by the audience—my daughter had the NEXT question before they ended the panel, but she did get to ask it in the hall after the event, which was totally unnecessary and very nice of Atwell to do—was preceded by how important a strong female role model both the actress and the character were to them.

IMG_29871Is that a reason to keep a show alive if the ratings are poor? Certainly not, but it does show just how much can be built around a character people gravitate toward and look up to. Maybe the problem wasn’t Agent Carter, like Stark said. Maybe it’s timing.

That said, Agent Carter, just the show this time, is not without its missteps. Even with more given to the supporting cast in season two, far too much falls on Atwell’s shoulders to carry. They did, thankfully, give her a viable villain this year, as Wynn Everett was wonderful as Whitney Frost. Plus, the whole storyline of zero matter—a black ooze from another world that absorbs people—neatly ties in to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which returns next week.

But what S.H.I.E.L.D. lacks, outside of a few weekly quips from Clark Gregg as Director Phil Coulson, is humor and heart and joy. Agent Carter—yes both—has that in droves.

If there is a season three, it should quickly wrap up the cliffhanger it left this week and jump ahead a few years to give fans a look at the official creation of S.H.I.E.L.D. And yes, it’s difficult to do that when Cooper is the lead on another show, Preacher, but they could figure something out to bring Agent Carter a little more into the Marvel fold.  Perhaps if not a full season, fans might get a two-hour movie to officially launch the start of S.H.I.E.L.D.? The show deserves at least that.

For now, all we can hope is that the streaming rights get settled and people can binge on Agent Carter on their own time, to see just how much fun the show has been.

At one point in the finale, with a portal to another world spinning in front of them, Stark is hitting golf balls, shanking one right, then left in a failed attempt to hit one into the floating, dark abyss, before asking Jarvis what he’s doing wrong.

“Sir,” Jarvis replies, “we are standing before an incomprehensible rip in the fabric of our world.

“Use a seven iron.”

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That, in so many ways, is what’s great about Agent Carter, and what the show added much more of in season two. Mostly, though, it’s Atwell’s radiance on the screen that drives the show. As season two comes to a close, it will be a lot of waiting—last year’s renewal wasn’t official until early May—and hoping fans get a chance to see Peggy Carter again.

About Dan Levy

Dan Levy has written a lot of words in a lot of places, most recently as the National Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. He was host of The Morning B/Reakaway on Sirius XM's Bleacher Report Radio for the past year, and previously worked at Sporting News and Rutgers University, with a concentration on sports, media and public relations.