This Wednesday marked the debut of Marvel’s What If…?, the animated anthology series that dives into a different alternate reality each week. The premiere posed the question: “What if Peggy Carter was the First Avenger?” As that suggests, it’s basically a retelling of Captain America: The First Avenger, but in a reality where Peggy had to take the super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers, becoming Captain Carter in the process.
And Marvel lovers are going crazy for Hayley Atwell’s heroine on social media. After the backlash that revolved around the Captain America Twitter account rebranding itself as a Captain Carter page earlier this week, this episode of What If…? has successfully managed to side-step the controversy and make her into an instant fan favorite.
How times change…
She’s the First Avenger…
The woman out of time…
… And she is the moment.
Folks really dig the sword.
Shout-out to ’40s Bucky too!
Whatever the reality, they still never get to have their dance…
Once Captain Carter is created, the episode mostly follows the plot of The First Avenger—but with one major difference. Peggy is able to capture the Tesseract before Red Skull is able to use it to power-up his HYDRA army. Instead, Howard uses it to build the HYDRA Stomper, an Iron Man Mark 1 style-armor for Steve. This leads Red Skull to develop an alternate plan—kidnap Steve and use the Tesseract to open a portal and summon “HYDRA’s Champion,” AKA Shuma-Gorath, an interdimensional monster. Peggy pushes the creature back into the portal but gets trapped inside with it. When she emerges, she finds she’s now in the modern-day, much like Steve when he fell into the ice.
Captain Carter fans can rest assured that there’s more from her to come as What If…? continues Wednesdays on Disney Plus.