Many fans of Captain America’s best girl were perplexed as to why her self-titled television series was canceled. It had a great cast, storyline, and visual effects. Moreover, the show was seemingly canceled on a cliffhanger. What exactly happened after Peggy Carter realized her feelings for her co-worker, Daniel Souza? How would she reconcile this with the feelings she had for her beloved Steve Rogers?
The show may not have had the massive following that Agents of SHIELD did but it certainly had a dedicated and loyal fanbase. Because of this, it was often speculated that Agent Carter was ultimately canceled due to low ratings but according to Hayley Atwell, Peggy Carter, herself paints an entirely different picture in an interview with The AV Club:
“You know, Marvel didn’t want it to end. There’s lots of online campaigns to bring her back. Fans loved her. I think it was just a network economical thing: ‘Let’s put Hayley Atwell in something more mainstream that’s less genre-specific and see if we can get higher ratings’. And unfortunately, that isn’t, as an actor, anything I’ve got control over. But maybe, in small ways, characters like Peggy Carter very slowly pave the way for it to be possible for other female-led narratives to exist. We’re all part of the same conversation.”
The “less genre-specific show” that Atwell is referring to is Conviction which was a political drama that had an even shorter lifespan than Agent Carter, lasting only one season. It seems as though ABC was intending for Atwell’s popularity from Agent Carter to carry over into a more mainstream property while not realizing the ire they would receive from fans for canceling Cap’s best girl.
However, Peggy Carter fans will still have something to look forward to on the small screen: Hayley Atwell has been confirmed to appear in the final season of Agents of SHIELD this year as well as Marvel’s What If… series which will make its debut on Disney+ next year.
Source: Digital Spy