WARNING: Potential Spoilers For Marvel’s What If…? Episode 1, “What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger.” Read At Your Own Risk.
Marvel’s newest addition to their Disney+ catalog is the animated anthology series titled What If…? Its sole purpose is to reimagine the events of MCU’s Infinity Saga differently. The reason why this series was highly anticipated is that it literally walks on the ground of the multiverse which is the sole focus of Marvel’s Phase 4. Moreover, its first episode, titled “What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger,” had Peggy Carter in the middle of it all. She got the super-soldier serum instead of Steve. However, in the process, she entirely altered the Winter Soldier’s origins. Check it out!
Captain Carter Altered Winter Soldier’s Origins In What If…?
Hayley Atwell’s Peggy Carter takes the lead in this scenario. As the events were altered, she became the became Captain Carter who is always ready to serve and protect. But these events changed an entire sequence including Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier. In Peggy’s alternate reality, she captures Zola early on which leaves HYDRA without their chief. Hence, the Winter Soldier program could not commence. In this process, she also brings back the Tesseract by going over the head of her superior.
If we consider that someone else apart from Zola took over the program, Peggy still didn’t let Bucky fall to his evil fate. In the sequence where she rescues Bucky and his men from HYDRA’s facilities, Barnes is still treated as a normal soldier. But this alternate reality is further solidified when Peggy takes her team to her own version of the train raid. As seen similarly in the MCU, Bucky was falling off from the train. However, this time, Peggy saves him and pulls him up.
Bucky Never Becomes The Winter Soldier
So what happens now that Bucky never became the Winter Soldier? Well, first, dozens of killings are out of the picture. Plus, this also saves him from decades of torture and pain. Now that he is not an assassin, two main figures in the MCU are safe – Tony Stark’s parents. This leads to a major ramification in reality because Tony losing his parents had a great impact on his personality.
In the MCU, Bucky becomes the killer assassin after the event of Captain America: The First Avenger. He is taken into custody by HYDRA after he falls off a train. Then, he is brainwashed and used as a lethal killing machine. Bucky’s past in the MCU is dark, bloody, and really tragic. In What If…? Peggy reverses these events by saving him. Even though HYDRA Stomper was taken by HYDRA, Steve was never experimented on. And of course, Bucky on the other hand was completely safe. The guy finally got his redemption almost after a decade in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.
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