WARNING: The following contains spoilers for What If...? Season 1, Episode 1, 'What If... Captain Carter Were The First Avenger,' streaming now on Disney+.
Marvel’s What If…? gives Peggy Carter the moment the character always deserved: transformed by the Super Soldier serum into a physical paragon, she adopts a variation of Steve Rogers’ Captain America persona and goes on to win the war in his stead. But as Season 1, Episode 1, “What If Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?” shows, the implications go far beyond which heroic soul defeats the Red Skull.
It’s a subtler contrast than it first appears since the bulk of the episode compares how Captain Carter is different from Captain America in the prime Marvel Cinematic Universe. In essence, however, Captain Carter is far more than a variant version of The First Avenger: She may serve as a prototype for the MCU’s version of She-Hulk, and what audiences can expect from Jennifer Walters' live-action series on Disney+.
The pure Super Soldier Serum effects physical growth beyond enhanced strength and other abilities. Unlike John Walker, Bucky Barnes, and other subsequent Super Soldiers in the prime MCU, Captain Carter is physically transformed by the serum, growing physically larger and gaining significant muscle mass. The only other recipient to experience that change was Rogers himself. Even then, the comparative physical differences are considerable. Rogers began the experiment as a 98-pound individual beset by a host of chronic ailments and barely able to do so much as a single push-up. If the formula transformed him into the absolute peak of physical prowess, what might it do to someone already in top physical condition?
Carter is most assuredly in top physical condition: An adept combat veteran and intelligence agent possessing formidable marksman and athletic skills. To subject someone like that to the same process that turned Rogers into a superhero might create an exponentially more powerful being. What If…? doesn’t openly state that, and indeed the MCU as a whole has always been a little vague about the precise limits of Steve’s powers. Yet, Peggy’s abilities seem to be greater, judging not only by her looming physical height but by the feats she pulls off as the episode progresses.
For example, during her debut as Captain Carter, she punches a Nazi strongman so hard it creates divots in the pavement. A few seconds earlier, she stopped a convoy truck dead in its tracks in a thinly veiled visual nod to the Hulk famously stopping the Chitauri Leviathan in The Avengers. Later in the episode, as she and Steve Rogers’ Hydra Stomper take on a pack of German planes, Carter’s calibrated crashes through the Nazi fuselages further echoes the Hulk’s rampage against an attacking SHIELD jet in that film. Then, in the episode's climax, Carter faces off against a giant Lovecraftian creature unleashed by the Red Skull and succeeds in pushing it back into its dimensional portal. The scene deliberately invokes Rogers’ own sacrifices in the prime MCU, but it’s also a nod to the Hulk’s penchant for fighting monsters.
There is a meta-science connection between the two characters as well. Bruce Banner’s gamma radiation treatment was intended to emulate the Super Soldier serum, which means it had its beginning at the same spot as Carter's. (The Incredible Hulk in her universe presumably differs little from the Hulk in the prime MCU.) Furthermore, “Agent Carter” makes it clear that the only remnants of the Super Soldier serum are now in her blood, of which copious amounts were taken following her transformation. Jennifer Walters similarly becomes the She-Hulk after her cousin Bruce conducts a transfusion with his own gamma-irradiated blood.
Whether future appearances of Captain Carter make more overt reference to either Hulk or She-Hulk is less important than the way Carter is portrayed here. The level of strength she displays and the way the episode's fight scenes are built around it suggest Jennifer Walters could get a similar treatment in the She-Hulk series to come. Either way, Captain Carter resembles the She-Hulk here in every way but the green skin, and should the MCU show more of her, her power levels may be far closer to Walters' than those of Rogers' Captain America.
To see Captain Carter's adventures, watch the first episode of Marvel's What If...?, streaming now on Disney+.