SPOILERS AHEAD! STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE FIRST EPISODE!
Marvel's What If...? aired its first episode today featuring one of our favorite Avengers but different character. Yes, we are talking about Captain America, but not exactly Captain America, it's Captain Carter. Though a lot has changed from the actual movie, Captain America: The First Avenger, the result is "quite" the same.
The Story-view
We start off by hearing the voice of Uatu The Watcher, who is originally voiced by Jeffrey Wright. He explains that Time, Space and Reality are more than a linear path, it's a prsim of endless possibility, where a single choice can branch out into infinite realities. We witness this as a single choice of Peggy changed the entire Captain America story-line, making Peggy Carter the Super-Soldier. Peggy Carter decides to stay in the room while Steve gets the serum instead of going into the booth. As a result, the HYDRA spy bombed the place and shot Steve Rogers, making him unable to take the serum. To save the project, Peggy steps up and takes the Super-Soldier serum.
On the other side, Johann Shmidt (Red Skull) steals the Tesseract from Norway for his greater purpose to rule and annihilate the world. Peggy gets her suit and names herself Captain Carter. She fights HYDRA agents and takes the Tesseract which resulted in the creation of the first Iron-Man suit by Howard Stark, but named as the Hydra Stomper. Steve pilots the metal suit and fights HYDRA alongside Captain Carter. Carter saves Sergeant Barnes (Bucky) and others as we get into a fighting montage. Carter, Steve and the team gets into the train mission to capture Shmidt but instead finds the train to be full with bombs. Steve dies as the rest escapes the bombing. But it's later on found that the metal suit saved Steve and he's captured by HYDRA.
HYDRA takes the Tesseract and uses it to open a portal. Through it, a Monster with tentacles comes out, which could be Shuma-Gorath, though we didn't get any confirmation. The monster crushes Red Skull, killing him on spot. Bucky and the others save Steve, and Captain Carter fights the tentacled monster. But she finds out only pushing the monster into the portal is the only way to save everyone and so she went into the portal along with it, bidding a emotional farewell with Steve Rogers.
Captain Carter comes out of a portal, tentacles of the monster with her, finds herself in a base which is actually the Project Pegasus Research Base. She asks the whereabouts of Steve Rogers but Clint Barton aka Hawkeye recognizes her and Nick Fury reveals that it's been 70 years since the war has ended. Peggy is devastated hearing this as she says, "Of course. We won the war."
Similarities and Deviations from the Sacred Timeline
The whole episode's story-line is from Captain America: The First Soldier. We see Doctor Erskine and a military personnel who we haven't seen in the movie. The military personnel is Colonel John Flynn from Agent Carter series. This episode shows the exact same character from Agent Carter series. We see Colonel Phillips get shot instead of Erskine from the movies but Erskine also dies from the bomb explosion. As the HYDRA spy wasn't in the booth, the explosion damaged almost all the machinery and he ran directly to the serum to take it.
The moment Peggy Carter shoots the spy, is fully similar to the one in movie where Peggy shoots the driver of the spy car to stop him. Peggy Carter takes the super-soldier serum and it had the same angle and imagery used in the movie. The frame and angle of the whole scene was similar to Steve Rogers from the movie.
The identification of HYDRA bases captures the same scene from the movie where Steve Rogers identifies the bases through memory in the war room.
In the movie, the Tesseract stays with HYDRA as Johann Shmidt uses it to enhance weapons. But in this What If...? episode, Captain Carter retrieves the Tesseract and gives it to Howard Stark. This resulted in his super invention, an Iron-Man suit named the Hydra Stomper. As we know, Howard Stark couldn't make such suits in the original timeline as he didn't get his hands on the infinity stone, so he gave his ideas to his son, Tony Stark, through recorded video.
Steve Rogers becomes the Hydra Stomper and helps Captain Carter in missions, but he is just a skinny kid in a big metal suit. This is similar to the one in movie Avengers where Steve Rogers calls Tony Stark's Iron-Man nothing without the suit. Captain Carter also rides a bike to a mission similar to Captain America who dons the vehicles to destroy a HYDRA base. Captain Carter also smashes the door to a base with her shield, calling out to the one by Steve Rogers.
In the train scene, Bucky Barnes almost falls off the train but Captain Carter saves him by pulling his arm. At this he states, "You almost ripped my arm off" referring to his metal arm Winter Soldier counter-part in the Sacred Timeline.
Also Steve Rogers Hydra Stomper's first fight was against tanks which is similar to Iron-Man whose first fight was also against tanks.
Though we see Red Skull alive after the events of the First Avenger, here Red Skull is crushed to death. Captain Carter pushes off the tentacle monster through the portal along with herself, bidding farewell to Steve, an opposite from the movies where Steve sacrificed himself for saving people. But, in the ending, we see Captain Carter coming out from the portal 70 years after in Project Pegasus Research Base in front of Nick Fury and Hawkeye, where as in the movie Avengers, it was Loki who entered Earth through the portal to rule over the people.
Final Verdict
Even though the episode was short, the team was successful in properly summarizing the story of a long movie. Though it might feel rushed to some fans, the only way a person can enjoy these episodes is by gaining knowledge of the early MCU movies. The animation is not like any other animated movies or shows and it gives a unique visual of Marvel Animation. The difference of the story-line will truly amaze fans with more such episodes still on the line. The animation works really well, and with almost every voice actors being the actors in live-action movies, this makes the show a high budget project. Overall, it's a must watch for anyone, even for someone who doesn't like to watch animated stuffs,
Marvel Studios' first animated show is off with a promising start, carrying a familiar plot with deviations confirmed to shock the fans.
Rating: 7.5/10
Marvel's What If...? Episode 1 is streaming exclusively on Disney+ with new episodes coming every Wednesday.
){kind=link}
0 Comments