The MCU hasn’t exactly been shy when it comes to churning out sequels as fast as they can, with virtually every character who ever scored a solo movie managing to get at least one follow up. Well, despite the Watcher actually mentioning an apparent dislike of sequels (surely asking for trouble in this current climate of comic book movie criticism), we are gifted with a follow up for Captain Carter, arguably What If…?’s breakout star.
While a Peggy Carter juiced with super soldier serum first popped up in in season one’s first episode, I personally found it a stylish, yet rather plain retread of Captain America: The First Avenger that stubbonly refused to do anything too new with the character, and even featured a Lovecraftian climax that copied the homework of Guillermo Del Toro’s first Hellboy movie. However, discounting her nerfed and bisected variant in Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange sequel, a more involving outing proved to be a member of the Watcher’s Guardians Of The Multiverse, which left us with a rather intriguing cliffhanger…
Switching from riffing on The First Avenger, to following the plot of the next Captain America movie, we find Captain Carter and Black Widow liberating the S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel, the Lemurian Star à la The Winter Soldier. However, while on board, they find the deactivated suit known as the Hydra Stomper that was piloted by Steve Roger’s back during World War II that had been reported lost during a mission – however, while the good news is that not only is Roger’s still inside it and miraculously preserved, the bad news is that he’s now a brainwashed killing machine that immediately tries to obliterate the two agents.
After a fight, that manage to seemingly break the programming of the Red Room, the Russian spy network that originally trained Black Widow, and subdue Steve, but upon returning to the Triskelion, it seems that Rogers’ true mission is to assassinate Secretary Of State, Bucky Barnes. Once again, after a furious battle, the spell is finally broken and Rogers snaps out of his crush, kill, destroy phase.
After going on the run to save Steve, Carter and Widow discover that to remove him from the Hydra Stomper would prove to be as fatal as smoking a stick of dynamite and that continued reactivations of his scrambled brain wave would also eventually cause his vitals to fail, so the decision is made to try and track down the Red Room and end its operations before they manage to score a win. But a visit to a creepy-ass former KGB test site that’s made up to resemble 50s small town America, turns up the true mastermind of this plot, former Black Widow and Natasha Romanov’s former fake mother, Melina Vostokoff whose talent with mind control is well known.
When Marvel is on a hot streak, it knows how to truly subvert expectations thanks to the fact that it lets you think you’re one step ahead before it bonks you on the head with a twist. For example, as we watch What If… Captain Carter Fought The Hydra Stomper?, we are supposed to think that this episode will merely be a rerun of The Winter Solder with the big wrinkle being that it’s now Steve Rogers who is playing the Winter Soldier role as Carter struggles to save her love in the face of overwhelming odds. For the first half of the episode, that certainly proves to be true, but after we get to that immensely unnerving KGB test sight that’s filled with dummies attempting to look as American as apple pie, the episode takes a sudden and welcome hard right turn.
Suddenly, all the Winter Soldier references (including a cool return by Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow), unexpectedly fall away to reveal that we’re now in the realms of Black Widow, the first real, in-depth reference of Phase 4 that the show has ever made. Not only do we get the Red Room hovering over the squad of Black Widows we saw in the movie, but we even get Rachel Weisz as the latest surprise return as she voices a Melina Vostokoff who now rules in place of General Dreykov.
Looking at the array of actors who have returned to offer their voices to a cartoon, I guess I should stop being so shocked when someone else pops up, and yet after Jude Law, Sam Rockwell and Laurence Fishburne all returned seemingly out of the blue to play their one-and-done characters, I’m still rocked that Rachel Weisz agreed to return. I’m fast beginning to think that this aspect of What If…? Is my favorite thing about the series as previously discarded actors and characters can finally make comebacks.
Anyway, while the use of Melina is a nice deep dive into MCU lore, the most endearing aspect of the episode ends up being the relationships. Nope, not the one between Peggy and Steve – the one between Peggy and Natasha. While this friendship between two warrior women not only helps the MCU in general nail the Bechdel Test, but it’s genuinely involving thanks to the fact that that the national treasure known as Hayley Atwell and Scarlett Johansson stand-in Lake Bell give truly stand-out performances. Also proving to be touching is the fact that the Watcher seems to something of a soft spot for the two-fisted dame as watches over her with something approaching a protective eye.
In fact, weirdly enough, the character stuff proves to be far more engrossing that the action which, while as well staged as ever, ends up being ever-so-slightly samey with Carter battling the Hydra Stomper no less than three times during one episode in noticably similar ways.
One thing that’s been apparent so far this season is that up until now, What If?’s second shot hasn’t been teasing an over arching story which previously took the form as a string of slightly annoying cliff hanger endings that we had no idea would all eventually tie up. However, seeing as Carter is now the official focal point of the entire series, the episode ends up with her being sucked through a Hex portal only to end up in a universe where we have Avengers assembled in 1602. Seeing as we have around three more episodes until we get to this episode, speculation will continue to abound, but I for one am glad we simply aren’t doing a redo of the Ultron Supreme storyline just with another cosmic character like Kang or a Celestial.
If there was a bit more of a variation in the action, What If… Captain Carter Fought The Hydra Stomper? might have been a strong contender for the strongest episode yet, but even then, this merging of The Winter Soldier and Black Widow proves that we don’t need team episodes and cosmic shenanigans to help What If…? hit the heights.
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