Marvel's ‘What If..?’ Episode 1: “What if… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?” Recap and Review
In an inventive reimagining of Captain America’s iconic origin story, Peggy Carter replaces Steve Rogers as the First Avenger.
WARNING: Contains Spoilers
Less than a month after that explosive ‘Loki’ finale, Marvel Studios is back with their newest project What If..?, an animated anthology of alternative storylines within the MCU, debuting with ‘What if Captain Carter was the First Avenger?’. The episode, as you’d expect, examines what it would mean for the universe if Peggy Carter was given the super serum instead of Steve Rogers, and imagines how this would play out in 30 short minutes. Whilst this definitely feels like too short of a runtime to cover all the possibilities that come with this concept, the show does a great job of focusing on its characters and their relationships, which will prove extremely rewarding to many die-hard fans of the franchise. It’s certainly a promising start to the show, and successfully sets the tone for the rest of the episodes to come.
The Recap
The episode opens with a mysterious narration which we soon learn to be coming from The Watcher, who introduces the concept of alternate timelines and multiverses that pave the way for the stories that the show will be exploring. He then takes us right back to a scene that every MCU fan will be familiar with - the moment that Steve Rogers is given the super serum and becomes Captain America. However, as The Watcher explains, this doesn’t happen this time. Peggy decides to stay downstairs in order to oversee the procedure, and the timeline is changed irreparably. We see a Hydra assassin detonate an explosive before the procedure is over, injuring Steve and forcing Peggy to enter the chamber and become the world’s first super soldier instead.
As you might unfortunately expect, the concept of a female superhero in the midst of the 1940’s wartime wasn’t exactly smiled upon by the military in the same way that Captain America was. Peggy is given no special treatment by Colonel Flynn (the man in charge of the program), and is instead forced to step down from military duty. This is where the show takes a clear diversion from the classic original story, beyond merely a reversal of characters. With no super soldier in the American military, the war effort starts to fall behind and we are soon re-introduced to fan-favourite Red Skull, the hot-headed Nazi general heading the search for the mysterious Tesseract.
Upon learning of Red Skull’s acquisition of the Tesseract, the team (consisting of Peggy, Steve and Howard Stark) quickly realise that without a super soldier to defend the country, there will be nobody powerful enough to stop him. As such, Howard gives Peggy her updated USO outfit and a Union Jack-adorned shield, and the show quickly becomes a lengthy action montage. Wonderfully directed and choreographed fight sequences, interpsersed with that classic Marvel dialogue that can’t help but charm. After all that, Peggy hatches a plan to intercept the German transportation of the Tesseract. This plan brings her into contact with german scientist Arnim Zola, from whom she steals the Tesseract and returns it to Colonel Flynn, bringing the whole story to a much too satisfying, suspiciously easy conclusion…right?
Howard Stark uses the Tesseract to craft a mech-suit for Steve (which may remind eagle-eyed fans of Tony Stark’s original Iron Man suit from the 2008 film), which he then uses to fight against Hydra and rescue Bucky Barnes from his uncertain fate, and everything is looking great for our central team. But Red Skull has other plans, and we soon learn of his intentions to seek help from an intergalactic creature to recapture the Tesseract and gain control over the universe. He sets up a trap for Captain Carter and her team, drawing them to a cargo train packed with explosives, which naturally causes a huge disaster, in which Steve Rogers is presumed dead, and Red Skull recaptures the Tesseract.
It doesn’t take long for our remaining heroes to make their way to the Hydra Headquarters, but in classic superhero fashion, they’re just too late. Red Skull has used the Tesseract to summon the intergalactic creature, which turns out to be…a giant squid. After another wholly entertaining fight sequence which results in the creature turning on Red Skull and suffocating him to death, Captain Carter and the team soon find Steve, alive and well, and ready to join the fight. They attempt to reverse the polarity of the machine to send the creature back to where it came from, but Peggy is eventually forced to sacrifice herself by manually pushing the creature through the portal, and going along with it. In a touchingly sentimental moment that mirrors Steve’s ‘death’ in the original movie, Peggy is dragged away into the unknown.
The episode’s final scene shows Captain Carter returning through the same portal that we saw Loki’s iconic entrance through in 2012’s Avengers Assemble, encountering Hawkeye and Nick Fury, who explain what has happened to her, satisfyingly mirroring Steve’s character arc.
The Review
The main question I’ve heard recently surrounding What If...? is how it holds up in comparison to the previous three Marvel shows debuting on Disney, and I have to admit that whilst the first episode doesn’t ever quite reach the emotional highs or cultural significance of the other shows, this show almost feels as if it’s made for a different audience. It feels a lot more child-friendly than Loki or Wandavision, and much lighter in tone than The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. If you’re expecting the next mind-bending addition to Marvel’s Phase 4, then you might find yourself disappointed with this episode’s overall tone, and the way the story plays out. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, opting instead for more of a Saturday morning cartoon feel, which works really well if that’s what you’re expecting.
The visual style of the show is great, and it’s exactly what I was hoping for. It has a clearly distinct feel, and doesn’t feel like a cheap carbon copy of anything else. The characters, whilst sharing some of the same voice actors and physical appearances, feel separate from the characters we’ve come to know and love from the films - and that’s a good thing. It’s easy to enjoy What If…? without constantly comparing it and likening it to the MCU, or trying to figure out its overall significance. It very much feels like the outlier of all four Marvel series so far, in that it isn’t directly connected to the progression of the universe, and I don’t really see the stories having much of an impact outside of the show.
For some fans, this may come as something of a letdown. The MCU prides itself on its universal continuity, and whilst this isn’t totally absent from the first episode, it doesn’t feel as important in the grand scheme of things. It’s something that anybody can watch, without having to have seen every single instalment of the MCU so far.
The series as an isolated piece of TV, however, is very good. Like I said, the action scenes are exciting, the emotional moments work well, and the story has a satisfying structure that fits its short runtime. Sometimes it does feel like it’s trying to handle a little too much for a 30 minute cartoon, but I still loved watching it as a fan of the franchise. It stays true to its source material and paves the way for endless possibilities, which is just so exciting to consider. The series could really go anywhere, and that’s the beauty of the show. Of all the series’ so far, this is definitely the one I could see having a continuous future that isn’t bound to the MCU canon.