Steve Rogers was special! He proved Tony that everything special about him didn’t just come out of a bottle. He was different than others, and he was probably the most righteous man we’ve ever seen on screen. People make mistakes, and so did Steve, by keeping Tony in the dark about his father’s truth. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t special. Now that he’s gone, we’ve come to realize that there may be a reason why the Super Soldier Serum worked perfectly only on Steve Rogers.
We’ve come across a new theory from Reddit user TheLazerShell, and it states that Steve turned out to be the perfect experiment, because of what he was from the inside. It means that Steve’s worthiness is what allowed Dr. Erskine’s experiment to be a success. Well, the theory sounds idiotic if we put it this way, but there’s actually a pretty cool reasoning to it. Red Skull predicted that Steve Rogers would have the power of the Gods, and Steve did. That’s because he was special right from the beginning!
Let’s talk about worthiness for starters by looking into how the Reddit user has to say about it:
“What made Thor Worthy in the first movie is his Humility – “Not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less”. This was the beginning of his “That’s what heroes do” journey throughout the whole MCU. He stops thinking of himself and fully dedicates his life to helping other people.
And that’s Steve’s biggest quality. He rocks humility since day one up until Endgame where he finally decides to let himself enjoy life with Peggy. He’s the guy who jumped on a bomb, risked his life to rescue his fellow soldier, drove a plane into the sea etc. etc.”
But let’s see how that worked out for the Super Soldier experiment. Dr. Erskine said “My serum did not fail. It did…exactly what I designed it to do. It enhances…what is already within. It is Herr Schmidt…who has failed…at being human.” Red Skull was his first test subject, and the reaction of the Super Soldier serum upon him was diabolical.
The Reddit user states:
“Red Skull is a fanatic for Mystical and Mythological objects. Now, we know that the Asgardians consider their Magic a really advanced science. And just like the Eldritch Magic you can assume that there are thousands of myths and books written and made about it. And that’s right up Red Skull’s alley.
But Odin effectively cast a spell on Mjolnir with seemingly nothing but his words, a spell/enchantment. And if he knows it, maybe other people know it, maybe it isn’t even a Asgard Magic specific spell.
Maybe one day Red Skull found it but couldn’t figure it out, but Erskine could. So he placed the enchantment on his own Serum as a way to prevent people like the Red Skull abusing it, so it could only ever work on people who are Worthy of it and that could only do good with it.”
He continues:
Maybe Erskine found it, but he didn’t even know what he found. Maybe he only figured out what exactly being Worthy means once he met Steve. He was searching for the one person who could show him what being Worthy means.
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“I am looking for qualities beyond the Physical”
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“The serum was not ready. But more important, the man*. The serum amplifies everything that is inside. So, good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. This is why you were chosen. Because a strong man, who has known power all his life, will lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.”*
So, what this states is that the qualities that Steve had beyond physical strength were psychological, and perhaps even Mystical. That’s the kind of person Erskine was scouting for, and Steve fell right into his lap. He was the guy with an extreme sense of humility, and that’s what unlocked the “scientific” spell, that Erskine places on the Super Soldier serum. It’s the reason why the serum only worked on Steve, and no one was able to recreate it.
The Americans tried it later, and the results were only failures as we saw in Captain America: Civil War. All the Winter Soldiers were failures from the recreated serum. And even Hulk is a product of that. Black Widow is bringing in Red Guardian, and he is yet another product of a Super Soldier experiment. Russia worked upon their own program, and experimented upon Alexi Shostakov. But that also wasn’t a success. It’s because Erskine’s formula had an X-Factor. And that X-Factor could only be used if a person is “Worthy.”
This theory is over bloated and even Reddit user agrees. But it does work. The Redditor concludes:
“Yeah the theory is paper thin, and the Venn Diagram betwenn “People who can wield Mjolnir” and “People who successfully had the Super Soldier Serum” is 1, but IDK it just fits for me. Thor and Cap share a lot of qualities, and it just so happens that they are both one of a kind superheroes (Mjolnir/SSS). It even kind of fits with Tony’s “Everything special about you came out of a bottle”, but it didn’t. It came from Steve’s heart, and it was exactly that that was compatible with Erskine’s serum and Asgardian magic to turn him into Marvel’s Icon.”
It is a pretty nice, but complex explanation of something simple. And, it does add true meaning to Steve’s specialty & worthiness.
