Marvel finally released What If…? Season 1 on Disney+, the first episode was quite the rocker. We got to explore the world of Captain Carter, a different version of Captain America from the MCU’s Multiverse. The Watcher specifically shows us the moment in time when everything changed. Peggy Carter is the one who takes the Super Soldier Serum in this version. It leads to a wildly different universe, one where she is treated with the respect which a woman of her caliber deserves. The episode had some overt feminists themes which give it a very nice flavor. But there are still some questions we have about What If Episode1. Take a look:
Where does the portal lead to?
At the tail end of the episode, we get to witness Red Skull use the space stone inside the tesseract to summon his “champion of hydra”. But unbeknownst to him, his “champion” is an inter-dimensional monster with never-ending tentacles. Captain Carter fights the monster and keeps it at bay but at the crucial junction, she has to push the monster back so that the portal can close. She chooses to sacrifice her and enter the portal to keep the eldritch monstrosity at bay. But our question is where does the portal lead, and does time move faster in there?
So what about the Avengers?
Captain Carter took over the role of Captain America, and thereby Steve Rogers was enlisted by Howard Stark to pilot the “Hydra Stomper”. Now I am not saying that that suit is iron man, but if it talks like iron man and fights like Iron Man, then… However, I suppose things are better this way. The creation of the suit may have also affected other things, such as the Avengers Initiative. Since the Iron Man suit and Captain Carter existed simultaneously, it is possible that Tony Stark takes the mantle from Steve Rogers when the time came in this universe. Also, since Bucky Barnes never killed Howard Stark, Tony may have grown up to be a completely different person.
All of this is pure conjecture, but it does beg the question, how much of the timeline was changed. If Peggy Carter is now Captain then who or what else is different with the Avengers?
Would Tony Stark’s parents still have died
If Doctor Who has taught us anything it’s that there are some fixed points in time and other parts are mutable. Time travel never greatly affects the universe because unless the fixed things are changed, the timeline largely resolves itself out. This may not be so in the MCU, but entertain my conjecture for a moment longer. If we take certain points as fixed, then my question is – Howard Stark and his spouse would’ve still died with the Iron Man to save them?
Also, the fact that the Winter Soldier was never created may hamper the assassination attempt. We may find out what happened in a future episode but we are inclined to think that the Stark parents may have still perished, albeit in a different way. Do you have the same opinion? If not then let us know in the comments below.
Does Tony Stark Still become Iron Man?
Now that Steve Rogers has become the Hydra Stomper, the future of Iron Man has become buddies. We do not know whether the mantle is ever passed on to the next generation or if the arc reactor technology is even invented given the Tessaract’s unlimited capacity to create power. The entire thing can go a lot of different ways and we cannot know what would happen until the writers will it so. We think that Rogers would have eventually retired from active duty and Tony would have inherited the mantle one way or the other. But we think that Rogers would have also mentored Tony and taught him temperance rather than overindulgence.
What happened to the Tesseract?
The Tesseract was lost for decades in the original timeline. We never got to research it to the fullest extent. But in the new Captain Carter Universe, it seems that the Tesseract is in the possession of the US Government. Steve Rogers is seen kneeling beside the artifact at the end of the episode, what became of the space stone is unknown. Perhaps it was shunned to the deepest darkest corners of the vault of undercover agencies so that it could bring no harm but then how does Fury acquire it.
How Does the Space Stone Transport Peggy to the Future?
When Peggy Carter pushed the Hydra monster into the portal and went along with him. And then, she ended up almost 70 years in the future. Now, this shouldn’t have been possible. The MCU has never established the fact that the Space Stone could be used to travel through time. We always thought that it could only transport people to anywhere in the Universe, and not anywhere in the timeline.
Only the Time Stone should have that power. If not just the time stone, then as Endgame showed us, the Quantum Realm has to be used for that. I’m pretty sure that even the TVA’s TemPads use Quantum travels. But the Space Stone certainly shouldn’t be able to allow time travel. Maybe it opened a portal into the Quantum Realm, then Peggy got sucked into a time vortex.
So these are the questions we have about What If. Let’s hope that future episodes will answer these questions. What do you think about our analysis? Tell us in the comments below and keep watching this space for everything Marvel, DC, and Hollywood.
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