There was uproar among the Marvel Cinematic Universe fanbase when the official Captain America Twitter account replaced Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson with Hayley Atwell’s animated Peggy Carter as a promotional tactic to drum up buzz for the premiere installment of Marvel’s What If…? on Disney Plus.
It turned out to be a storm in a teacup after fans roundly praised the first episode of the franchise’s first animated series in the immediate aftermath, which has since led to fervent hope and more than a touch of speculation that a live-action Captain Carter project might end up seeing the light of day.
The opening installment of What If…? effectively re-tells Captain America: The First Avenger with Peggy acting as a straight swap for Steve Rogers, but it could have also positioned her as being more powerful than her star-spangled counterpart. Steve was the perfect candidate because he was selfless and pure, but Agent Carter was already a badass with plenty of experience in the world of espionage before she was given the super soldier serum, which could have potentially heightened the powers she was given as a result.
In Marvel’s What If…?, we see Peggy dismantling Hydra goons and swatting vehicles aside with much more ease than Steve managed in The First Avenger, and while animation always allows for an added layer of exaggeration and much more suspension of disbelief, the fact Captain Carter has been dubbed the closest thing the show has to a main character means it could have been a deliberate move on the part of the creative team to establish that she’s arguably a much more well-equipped and capable super solider than the man who was chosen for the job in the main MCU timeline.