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As shown in What If…?, several versions of Peggy Carter now exist in the MCU and each of them is strong and influential.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for What If…? Season 1, Episode 1, “What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger,” streaming now on Disney+.
The Loki series introduced the concept of “variants” to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: versions of characters who deviated from their original timeline. The Time Variance Authority, the secondary antagonists of Loki, hunted down and “pruned” these variants and reset the timeline as needed, but after Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) killed He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors) and unleashed the multiverse, it doesn’t seem like these variants are going to be as strictly policed. The animated series What If…?, which once seemed like a fun hypothetical inspired by the premise of an old comics series, now seems to represent actual separate timelines in the MCU.
The first episode of What If…? introduced a variant version of Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), but she’s not the first alternate Peggy to appear. Let’s break down each different version of the heroine.
Classic Peggy Carter
Peggy is introduced in Captain America: The First Avenger as a member of the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) working with the U.S. Military and Project Rebirth. She quickly bonds with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and accompanies him when he acts as Captain America. She’s heavily involved in his shift from showman to soldier, and she fights alongside him during most missions. After the war, Peggy continues to work for the SSR; Agent Carter follows her adventures in New York (Season 1) and Los Angeles (Season 2). At some point after that, she and Howard Stark co-found S.H.I.E.L.D. and she acts as the organization’s director into the late 20th century. Her niece Sharon (Emily van Camp) also joins S.H.I.E.L.D., following in Peggy’s footsteps. Peggy later dies in her sleep in 2016, at the age of 95.
Endgame’s Peggy Carter
This version of Peggy goes through the events of The First Avenger and presumably at least some of the events of Agent Carter, beginning to build a life of her own and found S.H.I.E.L.D. after losing Steve. However, Steve from the future uses the time travel mechanics established in Avengers: Endgame to return to the past and surprise Peggy. At her home in 1949, they share the dance they’d promised each other, then proceed to get married and share a whole life. It’s likely that this version of Peggy still worked with S.H.I.E.L.D., but most of the details of her life outside of her relationship with Steve are unknown.
Captain Carter
In the timeline established in the first episode of What If…?, Peggy chooses to stay in the room when Steve is set to receive the Super Soldier Serum. She spots the Hydra assassin before Steve’s transformation begins, but he injures Steve before she can stop him. Howard Stark and the others fear that they’ll lose their chance to utilize the serum, so Peggy hops in the machine and takes it herself. Though she’s strong and capable, she gets pushback from higher-ups, who think it’s inappropriate to have a female super soldier, until she proves herself in the field. She takes the title Captain Carter and acts as this timeline’s version of Captain America while Steve pilots a Stark-designed mecha suit called the Hydra Stomper. She follows the monstrous Champion of Hydra through a portal to stop Hydra’s efforts and resurfaces in 2012 when the portal generated by the Tesseract spits her out in front of Nick Fury and Clint Barton.
Every version of Peggy shares some common traits: she’s tenacious and stubborn, and she tends to act first and ask forgiveness later. In all of these realities, she’s pivotal to the founding of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers, and even if she’s not technically a superhero, she helps and inspires the world.
To see Peggy become Captain Carter, watch the series premiere of What If…?, now streaming on Disney+, with new episodes releasing on Wednesdays.
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