MarvelVision: What If…? Season 1, Episode 1 – What If Captain Carter Were The First Avenger?

What If Episode 1

Marvel Studio’s first animated series What If…? kicks off with the question: what if Peggy Carter got the super soldier serum, instead of Steve Rogers? We break down all the big moments in the episode, discussion the animation style and voice cast, and much more as we talk What If…? Season 1, Episode 1: “What If… Captain Carter Were The First Avenger?”

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Full Episode Transcript

Alex:                 Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about Marvel, the MCU. And right now we are kicking off the first season of What If. I’m Alex-

Justin:              What If. I’m Justin, and What If guys, this has really opened my brain up. Have you… There’s another universe where it’s three different guys doing this.

Pete:                What? What if there was a third host on the show? What would his name be?

Justin:              No, but there isn’t. In this reality? There’s only the two of us. What if there was a third.

Pete:                Let’s get into it, then I’m Pete.

Justin:              No. What If.

Alex:                 Oh my God. Anyway, we’re going to be-

Pete:                Wait, wait, wait. First off. Nobody says what if better than Jeffrey, right? And I’m glad that they got that right in the casting and magical to hear him.

Justin:              You’ve said that for years.

Alex:                 Thank you for jumping ahead of it. Let’s first set things up a little bit. This is What If episode one, we are going to be talking about that just dropped on Disney plus. If you haven’t watched it, get out of here, there’s spoilers.

Justin:              Get out of here.

Alex:                 We’re going to be talking about [crosstalk 00:01:57].

Justin:              Get out of here.

Alex:                 After you’ve watched it though, come back. We’ll talk through the thing. Very brief recap. This is What If Peggy Carter got the super soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers. So we follow her as Captain Carter, basic three through a riff on many of the adventures of Captain America: the First Avenger, the first Captain America movie. So also, go watch that. That’s going to be very helpful for you.

Justin:              It’s important.

Alex:                 Yeah. Super important. The other one you might want to check out potentially is the Agent Carter One-Shot. There’s some information-

Pete:                Yeah.

Alex:                 -there. That is, I think the only one-shot that’s available on Disney Plus. You got to go to Iron Man three extras and go like three pages over. And then you could watch that. But there you go, after one movie-

Justin:              We don’t, we don’t real quick. We don’t just review the content. We give you a digital map to where you can find it. And let me say, that’s almost just as important if not more so.

Alex:                 Yeah and it’s great. If you want to watch… Every time I watch a 20 minute episode of a cartoon TV show, I always try to watch a full movie and another short movie beforehand, just to really prep. It doesn’t matter what it is to be honest.

Justin:              Growing up the amount of homework I did to be prepared for my Saturday morning cartoons was insane. I was-

Alex:                 Well first.

Justin:              …like, let me find out how this hair bear bunch got together.

Alex:                 I had to eat a lot of pizza before I truly understood what the teenage mutant ninja turtles were going through. Yeah.

Justin:              Yeah, I had to really look up what a teenager was before I even got to mutant or ninja!

Alex:                 Let alone turtles. Anyway,

Justin:              Oh I didn’t even get to turtles. They were turtles?

Alex:                 Yeah.

Justin:              Holy shit, that [crosstalk 00:03:36].

Alex:                 As comic book fans, and I assume a lot of people listening to this are comic book fans as well. You know that What If has a long history in Marvel comics, we even get a rough approximation of what, P? What is this thumbs down already?

Pete:                I don’t like what ifs.

Alex:                 Wait. Okay.

Pete:                Uh oh, we got a problem.

Alex:                 All right. There was a little creak at my brain in there. Pete even put up a little woo emoji, a shocked emoji over here on the old zoom. Maybe we should get into that first then, right? What’s your deal with What Ifs?

Pete:                Here’s the thing. You read a What If comic, and they’re great, they’re so much fun. And you start to care about this new timeline, and at the end of the comic, it was like, “Hey, thanks for a fun ride. Peace out sucker. Thanks for falling for this really cool world. That will never happen again. But we wanted to play with your emotions to get you excited about something that you’ll never see ever again. So enjoy it.” It’s very frustrating.

Justin:              It’s not…. First off, it’s not a prank. It’s meant to be like a mind expanding, get your imagination going, take something you love and be like, haven’t you ever thought about how different or crazy it would be if it happened this way? Which I, opposite of Pete, love What Ifs. I love to see, get a little window into another creative world. And always, because we always return to the main timeline, the timeline that we do know, because that’s the one when they were writing the initial story, they were like, this is the best idea. The, What If is just something-

Pete:                Yeah, but no.

Justin:              …offer.

Pete:                This episode clearly proves that wrong.

Alex:                 What?

Pete:                Having kept Peggy Carter as Captain America is clearly better. This is so much more fun.

Justin:              Wow.

Alex:                 Oh, interesting. Okay, well, we’re jumping right into I guess the review portion for this episode. Proper, but just to stay on the what if for a second, I think I’m more on the page with you, Justin. The thing that I really like about them is how dark they’re able to take things very often because they’ll have a twist and it’s not a little twist or something that kind of tweaks it in just one direction. There’s a twist and then another twist, and then they’re usually able to take it to a place where like, Hey, what if Spiderman stopped the robber that killed uncle Ben and then the entire universe collapses and falls apart by the end of the book. And I love that cascading domino effect that we usually get with these stories. So I was very excited to see how that does or does not play out on this show.

Justin:              Well, and to your point once again, Pete, the thing of being sad that you don’t get to see more of the worlds of What If… I think these universes, as we’re talking about more about the multi-verse in the MCU, these universes aren’t meant to stand on their own. There’s usually a, like Alex is saying the world falls apart or bad things are happening. And so the heroes that you love don’t always win or it doesn’t work out for them. So it’s a different, it’s a whole different thing. It’s meant to be, what in this format.

Alex:                 The other thing though, just to jump off of that before we get into actual thoughts about this episode, because I’m curious what you thought about the animation style, the voices, et cetera, just broad strokes about it. But there’s a potential here for this actually to matter because they have explicitly said, this is all in canon, spoilers for Loki, but at the end of Loki, the sacred timeline fractured, we got a multi-verse once again. So this is clearly very specifically picking up off of that. And then we already know in Dr. Strange: the Multi-verse of Madness, the movie that’s coming out next year, there is going to be a multi-verse of madness. We’re going to see a multi-verse, he’s not going to be looking off screen and be like, that was crazy, wish you guys could see this. We’re going to see those things-

Justin:              You don’t know.

Alex:                 …rift outwards.

Pete:                You don’t know, you haven’t seen the movie. You don’t know what it’s going to be.

Alex:                 It’s all from his perspective.

Justin:              That would be crazy.

Alex:                 It’s like ahhh it’s crazy.

Justin:              Camera’s on him. He’s like oh god, I wish you, the viewer. I wish you Pete, the page, sitting at home watching this, could see what’s happening right over here. It’s crazy.

Pete:                Crazy!

Alex:                 And to a more limited effect, depending on how much you believe rumors, we’re going to see the same thing with Spider-Man: No Way from Home, No Way Home, excuse me. But that is going to focus a little more on potentially on previous Spider-Man movies versus all these other things. Point being-

Pete:                You don’t know that.

Alex:                 …they’re setting up Captain Carter in this episode, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to see Captain Carter later on at some point in some movie show up.

Justin:              Well, and I will say, this is jumping to the end of this episode, but the line that we get at the end, gave the multi-verse a new hero, I thought was very telling. I think it speaks to exactly what you’re saying. We may see, just even if it’s just a couple of frames of the actual real life Peggy Carter being a Captain Carter in like Dr. Strange, or in some other iteration.

Pete:                That would be amazing.

Alex:                 Yeah. And to be clear, you’re not talking about the actress, Hayley Atwell who plays her, you’re talking about the real life Peggy Carter.

Justin:              The Peggy Carter that nobody talks about.

Alex:                 It’s weird they don’t talk about her more.

Justin:              Yeah.

Pete:                She’s a big deal.

Justin:              Jimmy Carter’s son, or daughter, Peggy.

Alex:                 Son.

Justin:              Yeah.

Alex:                 Yeah, sure. Let’s jump into the episode. One of the big controversial things going in here that people are talking about a lot back and forth, was the animation style pretty much as soon as any of the trailers or footage came out. Now that you’ve seen a full episode here, a full half hour, what’s your take on it? Does the animation work, are you put off by the style? Where do you land there? Pete?

Pete:                I would say give it a chef’s kiss. It kind of gives me a little bit of the Batman animated series. It’s got a little classic kind of feel to it, which fits the time period for this kind of telling. I thought it was fantastic. Really phenomenal.

Justin:              I’ll give it a veterinarian’s kiss, which is a lesser known kiss. But I agree with Pete, actually, I like it a lot. It has the vibe of a video game cut scene, which I think actually fits well with what we’re doing here. Video games, obviously all about branching narratives, making choices-

Pete:                They’re super popular in video games.

Justin:              …in playing the game. Very popular, they’re like board games, but a little bit less handsy. Less hands on. If you guys are familiar with the video game-

Alex:                 I always hate it with a board game gets too handsy.

Pete:                Let’s not, let’s not, let’s not.

Justin:              Exactly.

Alex:                 Terrible.

Justin:              And it’s sort of like a video, except you play it. It’s like if the three of us were playable in this podcast, which I would like to open that up to people.

Pete:                That would be great.

Alex:                 Yeah, absolutely. Select your fighter.

Pete:                I would punch you in the face.

Justin:              Select your fighter. But what I’m saying is, the video game cut scene look… because it is about like a branching narrative, I think it works really well.

Alex:                 I liked it a lot more in the episode that I did in the trailer. I thought it looked kind of neat, but I wasn’t quite clear on how well it would execute. I think you’re absolutely apt with the video game cut scene thing. Which is, all joking aside, a predominant form of animation because video games are bigger than pretty much anything in terms of modern media. So of course that’s fine. Yeah. I mean, I think I disagree about the Batman, the animated series, look because I think it’s-

Pete:                How dare you.

Alex:                 … well, I think it’s the opposite of hand drawn animation. Like it’s very clearly computer generated.

Pete:                Yeah, but it has to feel, like an old feel with the colors and stuff.

Alex:                 Well here’s where I’d potentially agree with you, and this is where I think the animation really shines, is the action. The action is great. So good, so well done. It falls a little bit for me when you have dialogue scenes, there’s something around the mouths where they don’t move exactly properly, but there’s still a lot of really good work there. They get Hayley Atwell’s smirk perfectly right-

Pete:                Yeah they do.

Alex:                 … as Peggy Carter. There’s a lot of good looks from Steve Rogers as well. Again, some of the dialogue, some of the stuff where they’re just sort of standing there or sitting there feels a little stiff to me or more stiff than it should be. But the action is so good it doesn’t matter. Like it takes it beyond that.

Justin:              Yeah, I think that’s a hundred percent. I think the action sequences, the fact that we get to see action sequences, where we don’t have to worry about where the camera is and the cameras in a place where you could never really put it in reality, it really makes this a special way of watching these characters interact. And just the actual staging of the fights in this episode are so good.

Alex:                 Yeah, they’re great. Let’s talk down some of the voice cast, because another interesting part of the show is they got most, but not all of the MCU actors back to voice stuff.

Pete:                That’s the tough part.

Alex:                 Well, it’s one of the selling points and it’s also one of the sticking points I think, interestingly. Because there’s all this backstory that we don’t necessarily know and people assume a lot of stuff, the rift between Marvel TV and Marvel studios. This is a Marvel studios production, this is their first animated production, and the Marvel TV productions had great voice actors, but they didn’t necessarily have the movie actors in there. I think your mileage may vary, honestly, in terms of whether it is better getting the movie actors or professional voice actors here. But just to read down the cast list,

Pete:                As soon as you cast a couple from the real thing, you want all of them. It feels little weird to not have some key ones in there, it makes it feel less. If they had them all, it would’ve been perfect.

Alex:                 Well, let me ask you a question, Pete, I’m curious, and this is not trying to trick you. I’m just-

Justin:              I think there are-

Alex:                 Well, I think there are, well, I think there are some voice actors who did a better job of imitating the MCU actors voices than others.

Pete:                Wow.

Alex:                 I don’t know if you looked through the cast list at all, which ones work for you and which ones didn’t?

Pete:                Well-

Alex:                 And I will read… And again, this is not trying to trick, I’m just curious which ones actually popped.

Justin:              But there will be a pass-fail at the end.

Pete:                Yeah, exactly.

Alex:                 Yeah, I’m definitely going to mark it down. Well, and I say this I’ll couch this in, there was one actor in here who I was like, oh my God, that was a terrible voice actor they got to sub in. But it was actually [crosstalk 00:13:16].

Pete:                It was the, Yeah, it was the real one.

Alex:                 Sebastian Stan?

Pete:                Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Alex:                 So bad!

Pete:                [inaudible 00:13:21] reading was like, did you grab that from something else?

Alex:                 Yeah. Was he at a party or something? And they’re like, “Hey, say this line.” And he’s like, “Why?” And it was like, “I don’t know. Don’t worry about it. Just say it into the microphone.”

Pete:                Say it anyway, yeah.

Justin:              And especially because the way his character plays in here, the way Bucky plays, is he’s like delivering one-liners, he’s not in scenes. So when it sounds a little off, you’re like what?

Alex:                 Every one of his lines were like that line for the first Harry Potter movie where Ron Weasly is like, “She has got to get her priorities straight.” It’s all pitched at that level, 100%. But was that-

Justin:              I thought that was a perfect performance.

Alex:                 Thank you very much. I won’t test you Pete. Let’s just read through this. So we got Jeffrey Wright as the watcher, as you called out. We do have-

Justin:              Amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Alex:                 Great, definitely his time space reality has been stuck in my head ever since I watched the episode. Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter slash Captain Carter, which is great. Then we have Josh Keaton plays skinny Steve Rogers, I actually thought he did a pretty good job.

Pete:                Yeah.

Justin:              Yeah.

Alex:                 Yeah.

Justin:              Captain skinny.

Alex:                 Sam and, yes, you can tell he was skinny when he was reading the lines. Samuel L. Jackson is Nick Fury of course.

Pete:                Come on, come on!

Alex:                 Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton slash Hawkeye slash the Arctic dog, his most famous voiceover role. Stanley Tucci as Dr. Erskine.

Justin:              Tucc!

Alex:                 I was very surprised about this one because it was like one line from Dr. Erskine, but they got him back.

Pete:                But still, at least we get the Tucc.

Alex:                 Yeah, Dominic Cooper, of course, coming back as Howard Stark, who I thought was great-

Pete:                Yes!

Alex:                 …in the episode.

Justin:              Very good.

Alex:                 This was an interesting one, Bradley Whitford was there as Colonel Flynn, who was a character who only appears in the Agent Carter One-Shot, but not Captain America: the First Avenger, so it was interesting to see him weaved into continuity here. And then here’s another one that is an actor that didn’t play it in the movie, but did later on, Ross Marquand is there as the Red Skull, and he is great. I cannot believe what a mimic he is for Hugo Weaving’s voice. He played the Red Skull in Avengers: End Game, showed up and did, I don’t know if he did the bodywork, but he definitely did the voice there for it. And he’s just a really good mimic, it’s very impressive.

Pete:                Yeah.

Justin:              Yeah.

Alex:                 Yeah.

Justin:              I agree, I think this was a great mix. I think the cast came together. Well, I wasn’t stopped at any moment, except for a couple of Bucky lines and I was like wait, yeah. That sounds-

Alex:                 Oh, real quick, just to finish up, Neal McDonough as Dum-Dum Dugan-

Justin:              Yes!

Alex:                 Sebastian Stan as we mentioned, as Bucky Barnes, Toby Jones as Arnim Zola, Darrell Hammond as Nazi general and Isaac Robinson-Smith as Brick, who I assume was the big German soldier guy. But yeah, I agree with you, Sebastian. Stan was the one that was funny with me. That was the one that gave me pause.

Justin:              Yeah. And it’s because he was probably skydiving when he recorded his lines.

Pete:                Yeah.

Justin:              It’s the only free moment he had, because when you’re on the parachute, you got time.

Alex:                 Yeah, exactly, takes awhile to get back to earth.

Pete:                I think he left a voicemail saying the line or something.

Alex:                 Oh yeah. Do you think they tricked him? Like they just-

Justin:              Yeah, it’s like the movie Sneakers. This is another arch reference where they had to slowly trick the guy into saying like nine words.

Pete:                Yep.

Alex:                 I think this is the second podcast in a row or we’ve referenced Sneakers.

Justin:              That’s me both times, later.

Pete:                Let me sneak on out of here.

Alex:                 So cast out of the way, let’s talk about the episode itself. What jumped out at you? What scenes really popped and what did you think about the plot in general?

Justin:              Well, let me just say, the Watcher, having the Watcher be there was such a satisfying thing and I just loved having that intro and just it’s… A character from the Marvel comics universe that I hadn’t realized I have such an affinity for, but I just love that sort of like, let me pull back the veil and show you something that you won’t believe.

Pete:                Yeah. As far as like a way into this What If, I agree with Justin, I think that was a smart choice. Great use of a character and a great kind of introduction to start these and have some fun ideas and push some characters in different ways that we didn’t think about.

Alex:                 I am very curious going forward, because we know they have 10 episodes in this season. They’re already working on the 10 episode second season of the show, so that’s already a go. This doesn’t necessarily happen in the What If comic, but the Watchers MO in the mainstream comics, is he always shows up at big events, he’s always there, he’s like, all I do is watch. I’m not going to get in, I’m not going to interfere except for this one little thing I’m going to tell you, I’m going to tell you this thing, it’s not interfering, but I’m going to tell you this important piece of information you need to know that’s going to solve the problem and help you save the day because I kind of like this universe. But I’m not, I’m just watching.

Pete:                That’s why I’m glad that finally Red Hawk punched out a Watcher. Just one time, just one time.

Alex:                 Well, my question is, I do wonder if we’re going to get that aspect of the character or if it is just Jeffrey Wright, introducing the stuff, if that’s all it is, totally cool with it.

Pete:                Great.

Justin:              Well, that’s, I do think inevitably you have to get the Watcher reaching in and tilting the scale just a little bit, I think. But I agree with you, the Watcher’s like the friend where only comes to the big parties, doesn’t help out, like “Hey Watcher, I’m actually moving, would you mind helping me out?” Like “Ah, sorry, I got to go watch some other stuff.” Then you have a fun party, Watcher’s like, “I’m here. This is a big event. I have to see this. I must.”

Alex:                 Yeah. He’s also kind of like the guy who’s constantly saying, this isn’t a spoiler, but.

Pete:                Yeah.

Justin:              Yes! Oh, you mean, us?

Alex:                 We do watch a lot of stuff, so there is that. What are the ultimate Watchers? I’m going to say my negative take here first about the episode, just to get people really hepped up.

Pete:                Oh, come on dude.

Alex:                 Is, as much as I loved it-

Pete:                Be careful, watch yourself.

Alex:                 … as much fun as I had watching it, I wish it had gone farther afield from the plot of Captain America: the First Avenger.

Pete:                You fucking piece of fucking shit. You can’t enjoy one thing without crapping on it?

Justin:              Unnecessary swearing.

Pete:                You can’t just fucking enjoy what it is? You can’t just say, “Oh, look what they’ve done, they gave me a nice little idea in a perfect little thing for fucking 22 minutes.” You can’t just fucking enjoy it?

Alex:                 Pete, just to reminder, we are live streaming to a orphanage right now. So just calm down.

Pete:                What’s up, kids?

Alex:                 Power.

Pete:                I believe in you kids. I don’t care what happens, I believe in you.

Alex:                 I don’t care what happens.

Justin:              I don’t care what happens. Wow. What a great orphan master you will be. I agree with you, Alex. I think that, I expected this to go a little bit further.

Pete:                Is this how we’re going to do this? We’re going to pick fights at the beginning?

Alex:                 It’s not picking fights, it’s talking critically.

Pete:                It’s going to be the one versus two, I don’t care.

Alex:                 But it’s talking critically about something that we enjoyed. And I think if you generally enjoy something, it’s okay to take out parts that you think could have been stronger.

Justin:              Have we ever had this dynamic on this podcast?

Alex:                 No, it’s the first time. Otherwise, we’ve unilaterally agreed.

Justin:              And again, I’m not criticizing. I thought the episode was cool. I just agree, I wanted it to go a little bit further.

Pete:                Okay. Well, you know what, Justin? I think your beard is cool, but you could have done a better job. You know what I mean? Like there’s parts of it [crosstalk 00:20:41].

Justin:              You’re right!

Speaker 2:        Like, how’s it feel, buddy? How’s it feel?

Justin:              One time I look in the mirror and I ask myself What If with this beard? And here’s where we are.

Alex:                 I liked each of the individual beats, I thought they were fun. It was a fun riff to take Steve Rogers, put him in a Iron Man suit, that was cool. I liked seeing all of these things like the train scene from a different perspective, the little winks, like Bucky talking, “Well, I almost lost an arm there.” Very fun stuff across the board. But maybe, again, maybe this is my expectations from What If, but you have that tweak, that change of Peggy Carter becomes Captain America. And then it kind of follows along the same path. I would have loved to see Peggy Carter becomes Captain Carter, and then immediately wins World War II, like takes down the registrar.

Pete:                She can’t.

Alex:                 Why not?

Pete:                Because she’s a woman, she immediately, as soon as she gets her powers, she gets yelled at for doing the right thing. That’s what’s so great about this episode, is you get to see the difference between having a man and woman in this role. She’s immediately demoted, pushed down, people are like, oh women can’t fight. It’s fucking ridiculous.

Alex:                 I’m going to kind of correct you here, Pete, because the same thing happens in Captain America: the First Avenger to Steve Rogers. He is told he can’t fight, he’s told he’s going to go to the USO, he’s going to be a symbol. And ultimately, it does the exact same thing that Peggy Carter does here, he disobeys orders to go on a mission. In his case, is to save Bucky, which they do later on, versus what she does, which is to get the Tesseract from Arnim Zola, but it still follows the same exact path. Again, I wanted to see a little more and a little different, to the point that, like I mentioned earlier, we get the train scene. We even get a montage-

Pete:                The train scene.

Alex:                 …it’s a different montage that we see in First Avenger, but it’s still her with the howling commandos taking down Hydra. It’s these fun rifts. But I think it depends-

Pete:                But it’s better. What do you?

Alex:                 I enjoyed it. It just depends too much on the plot structure of First Avenger for me.

Justin:              Well let me throw this out to you, Alex, because I agree with you. It feels a lot like watching the movie just with slightly different things, characters in the different roles. I bet you, because the concept of What If, obviously we’re familiar with it, we’ve grown up reading these comics, we are steeped in this world. I bet, it’s a 10 episode series, right? I bet as the series goes on, they will get further and further afield as they sort of teach the new viewer what this actually means. Because the big move here was the Red Skull getting smooshed-

Pete:                Smooshed.

Justin:              …which I thought was awesome. It was very fun, like to have him like truly menacing villain from the movie cackle and a great ghost later on in the Avengers canon, and I think we all love that scene.

Alex:                 That’s my favorite, if I could have watched an entire movie set on Vormir, I absolutely would have.

Pete:                Oh, come on, we’re getting away from this.

Justin:              Yep. But like, that’s a moment where you’re like, oh, I see, now I see the potential here. And it’s fun to really shake it up in that way. And it’s just a good fun moment. So like, yeah, I think it’s going to get more-

Pete:                I thought it was-

Justin:              … what we’re asking for.

Pete:                I thought it was very interesting to kind of move some things around, but a lot, there is destiny, there is these things, like as soon as you saw the train, it was this thing of like, oh shit, who’s going to die now. Who’s going down with the train this time, because you knew it was coming. And I thought that was what was interesting about it, if like we have this kind of Captain America arc that we’ve seen, and now we’re just getting beats of, but to see Peggy Carter whoop ass was so amazing and powerful. She was doing things Captain do for a couple movies and she was doing it quicker and faster. And it was really bad-ass, especially the way she was handling tanks and stuff, like phenomenal. She’s like flying at one point, it was bananas. I just think that it was cool to see the switch of having her be that, but also their love story was still similar, which was so amazing and so powerful. The love stuff between little Stevie and her was just, it was so emotional and beautiful.

Alex:                 And I love that he went on to join the E street band, that was really powerful and emotional as well.

Justin:              That’s true, and have such a great acting career. The way that it, that’s a different guy, right?

Alex:                 I don’t know.

Justin:              Oh, okay.

Alex:                 I don’t even know if the thing I just said was correct.

Justin:              Great, let’s never speak of any of this again. I really wanted a What If What If? When I was watching this, I thought we were going to lose Steve and he was going to become the Winter Soldier. And what that would be like to have someone like Captain America who feels less compromisable, as the Winter Soldier, would he even be able to make it in that way? That is an interesting spin on it. And obviously that means maybe opening up too many questions, but if he had died [crosstalk 00:25:43].

Pete:                It’s too many What Ifs.

Justin:              Too many What Ifs, would have been a nice reveal for later on like the end of the episode.

Alex:                 Let me ask you guys a question about this, and I don’t know how easy this is going to be for us to process as we’ve been reading comics for decades, watching Marvel movies more-

Justin:              Our brains are broken.

Alex:                 Yes, our brains are broken. Do you think it is possible to enjoy this episode if you haven’t seen Captain America: the First Avenger?

Pete:                No.

Justin:              I think so. I think this stands alone as just a cool story.

Pete:                Yeah but-

Justin:              Your [flates 00:26:16] is a quick run-up to her being Captain America and Captain Carter and dealing with everything. But I do think it holds together as just a good story.

Pete:                If I can get improv nerd here for a second, it’s a second beat to something, it’s a callback. And if you haven’t experienced that first part, you’re not, and there’s things that you’re missing and there’s layers that you’re not enjoying without being able to watch the second part. Sure, you could walk up to it and be like, oh, this is cool. But there is specific things in there that you would be enjoying even more if you watched the first.

Alex:                 Yeah, I’m not sure, because like we said earlier, our brains are broken. I can’t really process the idea of not having watched that movie and knowing who Agent Carter is and watch the Agent Carter TV show and all of these other things.

Pete:                Also a great TV show.

Alex:                 So I’m just not sure, I think yes, as a story, it still works, but Pete, I’m kind of on your end and I’d be curious to hear from any listeners in the podcast who maybe, for whatever reason, have logged onto a Marvel podcast, but never really watched Captain America: the First Avenger or didn’t remember it, because I always do get worried from a viewer’s perspective, whether the experience of knowing that you don’t know something ruins that experience. And what I mean by that is you’re sitting there being like, I know that what she’s punching that punching bag, that is a reference to something, but you don’t know that is the end credits scene from whatever it is, the movie that was right before Avengers.

Pete:                He punches more than just that.

Alex:                 Yeah, but that’s like specifically the scene of Steve punching the punching bag. Maybe that’s a bad example, but my point being, all these things are rifts and it’s clear that some of them are clearer rifts than others. So, again, I just don’t know how it affects the experience necessarily.

Justin:              But if, for instance, the train scene, I don’t think, obviously that’s a huge scene in the First Avenger. Like, I don’t think you need to have seen that scene to know that that scene is a high stakes moment for our cast here.

Pete:                Yeah but it’s such more high stakes knowing, as soon as you see the train.

Justin:              100%. And that’s why you watch everything and we’re completed in the fans.

Pete:                To kind of jump back a little bit to what Dallas was saying. For me in the second Spiderman, they’re far away from home or wherever the fuck it was.

Justin:              It was the one with the home. It was the home one.

Pete:                So Mysterio-

Alex:                 It was Spiderman, wherever the fuck it was.

Pete:                Yeah, Spider-Man across the pond, whatever the fuck. So the Mysterio, I’m just sitting there with my arms crossed-

Alex:                 Poor orphans. They’re like-

Pete:                A bit like, okay, all right, when’s it going to be revealed that Mr. Rose, the bad guy, when’s it going to, you know what I mean? Because I already know this, so it did ruin that experience for me.

Justin:              Yeah. That’s fair. But I don’t know, I guess just, you don’t get the surprise, but you get to take so much more out of the movie because you do know who Mysterio is in the run-up. I mean, you can’t not know what you know. And when you first started reading comics, you didn’t know anything about any of these people. And then you just started in, it’s not like you started with issue one of all of these comic books, you start where you start. And I think everything’s enjoyable no matter where your entrance point is.

Alex:                 And I don’t know if this is a big spoiler, but it’s coming later in the season. I think it’s the sixth or seventh episode is What If you didn’t know who Mysterio was.

Pete:                Wow. Wow.

Justin:              That’ll be a good one.

Alex:                 Yeah, I’m excited. I’m curious to get your input on that one in particular, Pete.

Justin:              It’s just going to be a one-shot on Pete watching the movie and being like, “Whoa, this guy seems good. What a new hero friend for Spider-Man.”, and then eventually like, “What? No. He was his friend. Oh my God. I didn’t know Mysterio.”

Alex:                 Ugh, this is terrible. That guy looks like he doesn’t bathe. That’s some recent news for all of you.

Justin:              Very topical.

Pete:                Wow, what was that about?

Alex:                 Jake Gyllenhaal apparently doesn’t bathe. He doesn’t, he thinks the-

Pete:                He showers.

Pete:                No, he doesn’t shower or bathe, he thinks the skin cleans itself naturally.

Alex:                 What?

Pete:                Yeah.

Alex:                 And I can tell you for a fact-

Pete:                How was that a thing? How is that a thing? How can he think that?

Justin:              When you’re that wealthy, I think your skin.

Pete:                Out of context, that can’t be real.

Alex:                 Somebody cleans it while you’re sleeping and he’s just not aware.

Justin:              Yeah, exactly. That’s why you have a butler. Butlers secretly are cleaning you all the time. They’re dusting you all over.

Pete:                All over.

Alex:                 Those feather things.

Pete:                Feather dusters.

Justin:              And that’s where a lot of stink comes from on people, is dust.

Alex:                 Yeah. I love my stink cloud. I don’t know where that was going.

Justin:              Yeah. After I go running, big workout, I’m just covered in real wet dust all over my body.

Alex:                 Before we wrap up here, any moments you want to call out from the episode in particular, Pete? I’m sure you have some notes going on there.

Pete:                Yeah, just the first time she says Captain Carter, just fucking chills. I mean, I was just so happy with the way, when Peggy finally got to kind of, take up the shield the way she was wielding it, and the choices she was making was so really fantastic. It was a very emotional episode for me. I got, I was very moved. Especially when she was like, where’s Steve? Oh, just oh. Overall, I thought it was a real tight package. Justin loves those. So it was a great little What If, a little capsule to enjoy.

Justin:              Wow. Pete hates What If comic books, loves What If television.

Pete:                So far.

Justin:              Nice. Wow.

Alex:                 What about you, Justin?

Justin:              I thought this was good as well. I want to call out the Captain Carter riding the iron man suit. Very Iron Giant-

Alex:                 Oh yeah, I love that.

Justin:              … Star Girl vibes, was very fun.

Pete:                When she was flying through the air, it was unbelievable.

Justin:              Oh, that plane battle. The montage, oh that was so-

Pete:                Cap never rolled like that.

Justin:              Talk about flying through the propellers with the shield up-

Pete:                Yeah.

Justin:              Dope, very fun.

Pete:                That’s a boss move.

Justin:              And that’s expanding the character. That’s, Captain America doesn’t do that. And Captain Carter does, I thought that was really cool.

Pete:                Does! That’s what I’m saying. She’s the better Cap-

Justin:              Why rank them.

Pete:                …it changes the whole game!

Justin:              Why rank them? I do, and I liked the way that she came out of the portal. She found her own version of being trapped in the iceberg and came out into present day. I thought that was a nice little twist at the end.

Alex:                 I also liked the silhouette there of her getting the sword. I thought that was a fun moment. It’s, I don’t remember whether the Captain Carter that showed up in the comic books, I think she was in exiles, maybe, and a couple of other things. But I don’t remember whether she had the shield and the sword there, so that was eventual, probably?

Justin:              I think she did. Yeah.

Alex:                 Okay.

Justin:              Now you think captain Carter spends most of her time? Does she split time between Britain and America? Because the flags, a lot of flags.

Alex:                 Yeah. A lot of flags going on. I think she’s mostly British, mostly.

Justin:              That’s a lot of stars and stripes.

Alex:                 Yeah. Let’s move on to our vision board though, because there is an actual future for Captain Carter. We touched on it potentially in the movies earlier on, but the big deal is, she is going to come back in the second season of the show. They have already said that Captain Carter, even though it’s an anthology, even though every episode stands on its own, Captain Carter is a character that they’re planning on bringing back at least once every season. I think there was also some phrase about her being a character that’s very entwined with the watcher potentially. So looking forward, we don’t even know when the second season is necessarily going to debut, but what’s the next adventure for Captain Carter? What do you want to see?

Justin:              I mean, I do think some version of, I’m curious if it’ll be our Captain Carter, because she’s multi-dimensional she goes through the portal, she comes to, so she could technically go anywhere. And that’s why I also wondered if there weren’t going to be some elements that tied to any episodes of the season together. Like maybe there’s a season finale of this first run where we do get multiple characters from earlier episodes coming together for some situation, or maybe that’s what happens next season to your point. But I do think we sort of have to follow the tracks of the movie. Maybe we get a winter soldier riff for Cap. Like who would Peggy Carter’s Winter Soldier be?

Alex:                 I don’t know, Bradley Whitford, maybe?

Justin:              Nice. I think, I mean, I think it’s got to be Steve Rogers, so maybe-

Alex:                 Yeah.

Justin:              … we’ll find out that something happened to him after she got sucked into the Hydra portal and maybe she needs to rescue him. And I think it’s a nice thing because we get their relationship, like a Winter Soldier storyline with love involved feels like very fun.

Alex:                 Pete, what do you want to see going forward from captain Carter?

Pete:                I want to see you running the Avengers and fucking whooping ass.

Alex:                 So you want to see just Captain America’s next appearance, which is the Avengers, but with Captain Carter.

Pete:                Goddamned right.

Alex:                 All right.

Pete:                Hulk smash.

Alex:                 Great.

Pete:                Hulk smash.

Alex:                 I’m kind of with you, Justin, on the relationship between Peggy and Steve. I think that’s the important thing to follow there. And if they really do want to go for it and create something that feels more in continuity, potentially having Peggy find out about the Watcher, realize that there are these multi-verses, realize that there’s still a way to be with Steve, whether it’s in another universe, going back in time or something like that. I think that’s an interesting thread to follow potentially.

Justin:              Oh, that’s cool. She becomes almost the Watchers herald. The way that Galactus has a herald in the comic books, so origin of the silver surfer. And maybe she can just do what the Watcher cannot do.

Alex:                 Yes.

Justin:              And influence things.

Alex:                 Whatever it is, very excited to have Hayley Atwell back as Peggy Carter-

Pete:                Hell yeah.

Alex:                 … aka Captain Carter. Thought this episode was a lot of fun, very excited to talk about this series. I was a little trepidatious at first, I thought, ah, I don’t know, maybe this will just be kind of a whatever sort of thing, but this went so much harder than I thought it would. And I’m excited to talk about further episodes. If you-

Pete:                Me too.

Alex:                 Yeah. If you all would like to support this podcast, patreon.com/comicbookclub, also we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube, come hang out, we would love to chat with you about What If. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe, listen and follow the show @MarvelVisionPod on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, stay marvelous.

Justin:              I hope we eventually have the courage to not just ask what if, but ask how, if, where if-

Justin:              …why if? Most importantly, why if.

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