What If…? Captain Carter Was The First Avenger?

The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first anthology animated series starred a female hero none other than Peggy Carter. (Yes, the all-time love interest of Steve Rogers.)

What if..? is based in a parallel MCU. The first episode shocks the fans with the climatic switch of Steve Rogers with Peggy Carter as the first Avenger i.e. Captain Carter.  But what led to the swap, let’s contemplate.

The Vita-Ray Chamber Scene

For starters, in the transformation scene of the original timeline (Captain America: The First Avenger), while Steve was getting in the Vita-Ray Chamber, Perry was asked to stay in the booth.  But here Perry refused to go inside the booth. The people who were sitting inside the booth in the original scene were all standing outside. Even the bomb exploded outside.  

Read this too: Will Captain Carter Have A Live Action Movie After What If…?

The Character Development

A marked difference was seen with the characters and their roles played in this episode compared to the original timeline. Steve and his team did not know about the Tesseract but here Peggy and Howard Stark knew that the Tesseract was with Red Skull. Also, they managed to snatch it away from him.

What’s more interesting was to find John Flynn as the Colonel who was the Senior Agent of Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR). We had first seen him appearing in Agent Carter. The series explores the journey of Perry Carter in the original timeline towards becoming a field agent by undertaking the mission Zodiac.

Bucky Barnes experiences a déjà vu moment where he thought Captain Carter would rip his hand off but she didn’t. In fact, in the train accident, Steve was caught rather than Buck. And we might miss out on seeing our Winter Soldier in the upcoming episodes. (Might be a conspiracy theory, who knows!) 

You might be interested in this too: Know Which Episode Pitch Of What If…? Was So Dark That They Had To Discard It

In toto, if Captain Carter had been the first Avenger, Howard Stark would have made the first Iron Man suit and Steve Rogers would have been the First Iron Man (Tony Stark flabbergasted!). We wouldn’t even see Bucky becoming Winter Soldier and Red Skull the Guardian of the Soul stone. And most importantly, Steve Roger and Perry Carter’s last dance would have perished. 

Watch the first episode of What If…? here.