Hayley Atwell Has Role In Avengers: Age Of Ultron, Plus Joss Whedon Talks About Movie’s “Darker, Weirder, Tougher World”

Though her Marvel character Peggy Carter, a love interest for Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) in the WWII-set Captain America: The Winter Soldier, had of course aged into an old woman by the time Cap was thawed out of the ice and tasked with saving the world twice more in The Avengers and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Hayley Atwell isn’t done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe yet. She’s toplining the ABC series Marvel’s Agent Carter, which will replace Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD at midseason, and it turns out that Atwell will be stopping in for a cameo in Avengers: Age of Ultron as well.

Funnily enough, Atwell has a night on the town with director Joss Whedon to thank for her Age of Ultron role:

“We went out drinking one night and he was like, ‘You know, it would be great to write something for you. And I was like, ‘Yes, Joss, it would! It would be amazing!’”

However Atwell ends up featuring into Age of Ultron (I’m betting Steve has to say goodbye to her around the same time he finds out that his possible love interest Agent 13, played by Emily Van Camp and introduced in The Winter Soldier, is actually Peggy’s niece Sharon Carter), it will be great to see the actress back on the big screen and in the MCU. Her fiercely independent, skilled and charismatic Peggy Carter is still my favorite love interest to appear in the Marvel movies to date – unless we decide to count Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), who is, of course, so much more than just a potential romantic foil for the Cap.

Meanwhile, Whedon has been letting slip some more Age of Ultron details. He said of introducing Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Ultron (James Spader):

“With the [first] Avengers, everybody pretty much had the power of being able to punch somebody. And now we have a woman who can get inside your head and move objects, and a boy that can move faster than anything, and a robot [Ultron] who can self-replicate and is out of his mind. So all of sudden, it’s a darker, weirder, tougher world that they’re living in.”

Avengers: Age of Ultron opens May 1st, 2015.