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What If...: Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?

“That was brilliant!”

As a BIG Peggy Carter fan, when What If...? was announced, the concept of Peggy taking up Cap’s shield was pretty much all I cared about. Still is. I’m sure I’ll watch the other ones eventually but like…Peggy, guys. PEGGY! It’s not Agent Carter season 3 and it’s certainly no Captain America 4: Steve plays a stay at home dad to the couple’s twin children while Peggy works at the SSR and the two spend their weekends fighting HYDRA while Uncle Jarvis babysits. Not that I’ve put any thought into that.

The episode was mainly a retelling of Captain America: The First Avenger except Peggy does not exit to the viewing booth during Steve’s transformation thus allowing animated Richard Armitage to shoot Steve and Erskine and prevent the birth of Captain America, instead giving rise to: Captain Carter. Peggy hulks out to Gwendoline Christie size but, unlike Steve, the woman actually has some freaking training so I mean... I’m not saying she is a more effective superhero than Captain America but I’m just pointing out... she’s probably a more effective superhero than Captain America. She certainly enjoys the shield a lot.

I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of Howard Stark in this episode. I’ve always loved Peggy and Howard’s chemistry both in The First Avenger and on Agent Carter. Also, bit of a plot twist, Howard creates Iron Man. Only it’s called the HYDRA Stomper, it’s powered by the Tesseract, and Steve Rogers flies the suit. I’m not going to lie, I got really into the idea of Captain Carter and pint-sized Steve fighting WWII together as their romance kindles. Of course, the plot rears its ugly head when Red Skull captures Steve and then tries to summon a tentacled demon from the Tesseract and Peggy disappears into... I have no idea where... fighting it. She and Steve never do get their dance.

I was so surprised by the ending. I really thought it was just going to be a mirror for The First Avenger but then they had to go Avengers on my ass. “Ma’am, please put down the sword.” By the way, was the sword Excalibur? And if not, why not? It did glow. Normal swords don’t glow. Unless you’re in space and they’re lightsabers. Okay so Peggy has reappeared on Earth after 70 years, although time hasn’t passed for her and that’s the end of the episode. With the rumor that Captain Carter might figure into every season of What If...? it makes sense to set up her future instead of just having her turn up again.

Does this mean next season (although who knows when that will be?) we’ll get to see Peggy interact with the Avengers? I really need her to put Tony in his place. It is interesting that while most of the episode saw her trading places with a hero, her teaser scene has her trading places with... well, Loki. I don’t want to say villain because he’s definitely more than that but he was kind of the bad guy in The Avengers. Don’t come for me, Loki stans.

Bits and Pieces:

The show features most of the original cast but not Chris Evans or Hugo Weaving.

Bucky tells Peggy she almost tore his arm off saving his life.


Peggy knocks a punching bag off its chain the way Steve does in The Avengers.

Can we all have a moment to celebrate they didn’t draw Peggy in a skimpy skirt and a top with a cleavage window?

Blink and you miss it but the HYDRA agent shoots Tommy Lee Jones’s character Colonel Phillips which results in Bradley Whitford’s character taking command. Probably done because Col. Phillips knew Peggy and believed in her, whereas Col. Flynn doesn’t know her and is a sexist pig.

Three out of four Tesseracts

sunbunny

4 comments:

  1. *That's* why I kept glancing at her chest. It was the lack of inappropriate cleavage!

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  2. I appreciate the lack of cleavage too but wish they didn't reduce her proud bust.
    Captain Carter was awesome to see but all these sporadic instances of girl power lands on bitter footing to me, remembering that they still cancelled Agent Carter in the end. I loved that show..

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  3. I liked it. It was a lot of fun. The animation looked good. Not Chris Evans sounded exactly like him. But did anyone else feel like every character was speed talking? It felt like I had accidentally set my TV to 1.15 speed.

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  4. Fangirl, I definitely spent the first five minutes of the episode being like "is that Chris Evans? It sounds like Chris Evans." Did not notice the speed talking thing.

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