What If: Captain Carter’s Costume Change Hints She’s Following Steve’s MCU Story
A fantastic detail in Marvel’s What If…? final of the first season reveals how Captain Carter’s arc is following Steve Roger’s MCU arc. Disney +’s recent Marvel series, What If…? explores various MCU scenarios, which begins with Peggy Carter transforming into a World War II super-soldier instead of Steve Rogers. The first episode of What If…? saw Peggy undergoing the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, but instead of ending up inside an ice cube, Captain Carter is sent into the future while fighting an inter-dimensional beast which was summoned by Red Skull.
Does Captain Carter follow the same path as MCU’s Captain America?
The finale of season 1 sees Peggy aboard the Lemurian Star similar to the opening sequence of Chris Evans’ The Winter Soldier. Just like MCU’s Steve, Peggy gets on the ship alongside Crossbones and Black Widow to fight Batroc. After this, she gets summoned by The Watcher and is made to fight an android whose chest is full of Infinity Stones and has hatred towards all organic life. Peggy leads the Lemurian Star mission which suggests that Captain Carter is fulfilling the role of Captain America of her own universe, but a small detail makes these parallels more prominent.
In Captain America: The First Avenger, Chris Evans’ superhero wore mostly American garb. Rogers’ costume remained patriotic throughout, boasting a big silver star in the center and a red-white stripe on the stomach. The Avengers also saw SHIELD whipping an updated costume with the same design, but The Winter Soldier altered Rogers’ threads, debuting a blue stealth ensemble with a subtle silver star-and-stripe chest motif. In What If…?, Peggy makes a similar cosmetic evolution. In the first episode of the series, her entire costume is taken up by the Union Jack flag, but in the final episode, she’s moved into the same blue-and-silver as MCU’s Steve.
The change in MCU’s Captain America seems significant, as it foreshadows the rebellious path Russo Brothers had planned for Evans’ Steve Rogers. Though it was Joss Whedon who bought the traditional Captain America colors back for Age of Ultron, Steve Rogers’ The Winter Soldier outfit had a unform of a more serious soldier with the less flagrant American overtones setting up how he would go on to become an enemy of the State. This visual metaphor continues till Infinity War where the Star is barely visible. We see a similar evolution in Captain Carter which suggests that she’s traveling the exact same path as MCU’s Captain America – and is destined to fight the government which created her.
What could be Captain Carter’s Journey In MCU?
So, what could Captain Carter’s journey in MCU could look like, both, after and before the season one finale? When Peggy lands in the future, she meets Nick Fury and Hawkeye while the Lemurian Star mission reveals that Peggy is ‘BFF’ with Black Widow. It’s safe to assume that Carter became a superhero recruit to Fury’s Avengers program, helping Earth during the battle of New York. However, the Armin Zola of Peggy’s universe survived – which hints that she will experience the same as Steve did in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. However, the post-credits of What If…? season 1 teases the Hydra Stomper instead of Winter Soldier which means that Steve will be her opponent instead of Bucky.
Age of Ultron will also be interesting as Captain Carter has already taken out a deadlier version of the android. Knowing where it could lead, Peggy will certainly try to stop Tony from creating Ultron. If Peggy’s costume change foreshadows the moral path taken by MCU’s Steve, she will need to pick up a different fight with the US government, and this may be worth the wait in What If…? season 2.
