1. It’s Very Conventional.
Captain Carter should feel revolutionary but she doesn’t, primarily because “What If Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?” is basically a retelling of Captain America: The First Avenger, putting Peggy in much the same situations as Steve was after he received his powers. The rescue of Bucky is there, as are the slightly altered train sequence and the attack on Hydra’s Castle.
I wanted more from this intriguing development. Yes, it’s a nice change that the reason Peggy is sidelined is that no one thinks a girl can really fight but there’s a disturbing lack of female characters around her. She has Steve’s supporting cast. Where are all her female friends? What a missed opportunity to introduce Spitfire at least.
In fact, the most revolutionary treatment is given to Steve, who becomes the first Iron Man. It’s a good development for him, allowing Skinny Steve to be the hero we all knew he was already, but it’s almost as if the episode could be “What If Steve Rogers Became the First Iron Man?”
2. The MCU Has Been Very Good For Peggy Carter.
When I started reading comics, lo back when What If? was a new comic series, Peggy Carter barely existed. She never appeared in Captain America’s original adventures in World War II but instead was mentioned in a 1966 story, in a single panel, as a wartime love interest.
The emphasis going was on Sharon Carter, not Peggy. Sharon Carter aka Agent 13 was fleshed out over many years and become Steve’s on/off longest-running love interest. Yes, there’s the whole ‘she’s Peggy’s sister, wait, niece, wait, no, grand-niece’ thing but that never seemed to matter much because Peggy was barely a character at all in any story. (Incidentally, the need to make Sharon connected to Steve’s first love in the comics seems to be a super-creepy idea in retrospect.) In any case, Sharon had all the vibrant comics history, complete with the requisite death and, thankfully, later resurrection via retcon.
But Captain America: The First Avenger changed all that, with Peggy brought to glorious, indelible life by Hayley Atwell. After their love story, switching the affections of the MCU’s Steve from Peggy to Sharon will always be a squicky non-starter. (Still, I am currently very unhappy with the MCU’s writing of Sharon. That is a rant for another time.)
MCU Peggy was a character you had to love, and I loved her late, lamented television series too. Now she’s back, in a new form. I just wish the story had been a little more interesting.
Still, not bad for a character introduced as a throwaway.
3. You Don’t Need to Read the What If Comics To Enjoy This (But You Might Enjoy Them Anyway!)
To research this series, I bought the omnibus collection of the first What If stories. I’m old enough to have read some many years ago. They’re fascinating projects of their age but this omnibus is relevant mostly to stories that would have been familiar to Marvel readers in the 1970s. There was one that took off on a Spider-Man plot point that I didn’t remember in the least.
The original What If stories tended to usually end badly for everyone involved. The story I most remembered from the omnibus, which featured Tony Stark putting the original Avengers in Iron Man suits to battle Hulk and Loki, ends with Stark dead, for instance.
Whereas “What If Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?” ends basically on the same note as the movie. Not a worse situation, not a better one, even. (Which is, again, disappointing! A hero like Peggy might well have changed the political situation for women’s rights in the MCU alternate timeline.)
4. The Brandenburg Gate Visual is Outstanding.
The sequence where Peggy stands atop the iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin before her first official attack on the Nazis gave the show an extra emotional punch. The animation as a whole is excellent, with a few other stand-outs being Iron Steve first rolling into action, the giant squid attack (but really?), and Peggy’s final sacrifice to save the world.
Continued belowOkay, yes, but REALLY on the giant squid? It looks great but…why an inter-dimensional giant squid that will inevitably remind people of Watchmen? Yes, yes, I know there are giant squids in Marvel Comics. But…transporting a giant squid across dimensions as a weapon is always going to remind non-comic readers or casual Marvel comics readers of Watchmen.
5. The Voice Acting Is Fine. The Dialogue Not So Great.
The biggest missing voice is Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers but Josh Keaton did such a nice job that I barely noticed the difference. Of course, Tommy Lee Jones is missing, but Bradley Whitford is terrific as the annoying, willing-to-hog-all-the-credit Col. Flynn.
Atwell is great, as always, but there was nothing in her dialogue that stood out for me. Nothing like “I can do this all day” or “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.” Sebastian Stan seemed somewhat wasted in reprising Bucky (Stucky fans will find nothing here), ditto for Neal McDonough. Dominic Cooper, however, seems to get all the best lines, including a running joke about pushing buttons, leading Peggy to exclaim that Howard Stark, being an American playboy, really should know how to push buttons.
