What If S02E05 Review: Winter Kills

What If, Season 2, Episode 5: What If... Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper?

While the previous episode acted as a prequel to a character in What If's first season, this one acts as a more proper sequel to the adventures of Captain Peggy Carter, who's one of the main characters in What If's first season, the star of her adventures in Earth-82111. Peggy hung out in the final crossover team-up at the end of that season, before being transported back into her own reality. We did get a glimpse of her going through a variation of the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier as she battles against Batroc the Leaper, but this episode straight-up crafts the 'Elseworlds' version of the events of that episode, with a different set of characters, and smooshes in the storyline of Black Widow in for good measure. 

And... it's mostly a straight-up supehero spy fiction. And while I think some people are quite tired of Captain Carter's spotlight in this series that's supposed to be about an anthology, I actually really like Peggy's story in episode 5. It does really help that Captain America: The Winter Soldier is one of the best MCU stories ever mad, and by shuffling a couple of characters around and making the tragic, doomed romance between Peggy and Steve be another layer of angst between the sacred timeline's Steve/Bucky dynamic makes this actually a rather engaging episode.  

We got to see some additional changes to the world of Earth-82111 -- including their version of the Avengers, which features a non-speaking Wasp in place of the Hulk. And that's the first of the many changes to the cast of this universe's version of events. Bucky Barnes, who doesn't get tossed off a train and got himself turned into a programmed assassin by Hydra ends up becoming the Secretary of State. Brock "Crossbones" Rumlow ends up being a perfectly nice, professional soldier. And, as it turns out, things happened a fair bit differently for Black Widow and Steve Rogers in this timeline as well. 

During the raid on the Lemurian Star, Captain Carter and Black Widow find the Hydra Stomper suit that Steve Rogers ran around in during World War II -- only, just like the Winter Soldier in the main timeline, the Hydra Stomper is essentially programmed to fight under someone's orders, and attacks Carter and Widow. We get a confrontation between Carter and Nick Fury after this sequence, mirroring main timeline's Steve and Fury's fight. The handwave is extremely flimsy, however, with a vague "you are emotionally connected to this" on Fury's part. Because unlike Winter Soldier (who no one knew was Bucky until his mask fell off), everyone couple probably very easily guess the identity of the guy running around in the Hydra Stomper armour. 

Nick Fury tells Carter to sit out the next mission, which they have intel about, which Carter obviously disregards. This turns out to be an attempt on Secretary Bucky's life -- and Bucky's like an old man that's probably 100 years or so at this point in time. Again, for a story that's otherwise a copy of an MCU movie, there's a surprisingly nice amount of built tension as Peggy and Bucky discuss about the fact that Steve is still in the armour, and they even try to talk him down. It is admittedly a bit silly that we had a similar plotline with the alternate-universe Bucky not two episodes ago, but eh. 

There's a nice bit of a bunch of superheroes fighting with different motivations as Black Widow bursts in with a 'shoot to kill' order from Fury, but the episode also lays it on that Widow's got some personal grudge because the brainwashed Hydra Stomper is associated with the Red Room. Bucky stands in the way of Natasha's kill-shot, while Peggy and the brainwashed Steve tear through and burst through stairwells and walls. It's pretty impressive for what it is. 

Widow ends up picking both Carter and Steve up and they retreat to a random island away from SHIELD's radar, because she ends up realizing mid-battle that she values her friendship with Peggy more, I guess? Natasha and Peggy and up trying to figure out how to safely remove Steve Rogers from the Hydra Stomper suit -- with his super-old and frail body basically being kept in suspended animation with the power of the suit and there's no guarantee that he'll even survive the next activation. With time running out and the world being on the lookout for the Hydra Stomper, they decide on the plan of hunting down the Red Room. 

At which point Steve Rogers wakes up, apparently gets his wits back, and tells them that he's willing to take our two leading ladies straight to the Red Room. And... I guess the episode did do a pretty good job at setting the mood and Peggy's emotional state, because when I typed it out, it does seem really silly that Peggy and Natasha are so willing to trust Steve. 

Which, again, I think is one of the better strengths of this episode. Peggy's desperation to be reunited with Steve, especially when he's right there in front of him all sentient and awake and talking and stuff... I've never been too big on the romance aspect of the MCU, but this is definitely rather well done -- all the more impressive since it's all animation.

In a gloriously fun sequence, instead of taking us to one of the locations from the movies, Steve leads us to an old Red Room training camp... which is a ghost town that's designed to look "ALL-AMERICAN", filled with animatronics that yell out stereotypical American suburb phrases at each other and kind of crosses the line of being both unsettling and hilarious. 

While the three heroes await the arrival of the Red Room's transport, Peggy and Steve get some pre-action-drama-scene, we get some nice conversation between the two star-crossed lovers. Steve never could settle down after WWII because he didn't have Peggy, while Peggy herself has clearly suffered throughout so much of time and space as she gets dragged into conflict after conflict that she didn't understand. 

They were about to kiss before they get interrupted by... a literal town's worth of evil animatronics. Which is honestly kind of fucking silly and hilarious in what's otherwise a pretty serious and dramatic episode. I can't decide if the animatronics make the whole situation more silly or if it adds a much-needed sequence of levity into the drama. 

We get some action scenes as Captain Carter, Hydra Stomper and Black Widow fight a whole bunch of animatronics... at which point the giant flying spy base that is the Red Room comes into view. It's actually quite cool, and I've always felt like the space-base Red Room in Black Widow was kind of poorly utilized. In this timeline, Black Widow apparently successfully killed Dreykov, but it means that the Red Room is now ran by Melina Vostokoff -- who is Natasha's adopted mother from the Black Widow movie. Apparently Melina in this timeline has gone full-on mad scientist, having perfected the mind-control technology much earlier than she did with Taskmaster in the main timeline. 

And also, it turns out that, in a plot twist that surprises no one, Steve is just pretending to be off the hook for a while and the true target of his mission is to get Peggy and Natasha to the Red Room. We get a fight as Peggy is forced to fight the Hydra Stomper, now put under mind-control again. Meanwhile, Black Widow fights a whole bunch of angry Widows. And... the fight scene is okay, I guess. It's not underwhelming, but I think we've seen much cooler in both seasons of What If. 

Peggy is really world-weary not just from all the fighting, but from losing something she had thought she's lost and just gotten back... and she's just done. She drops her shield and dares the mind-controlled Steve to kill her dead, which stops Steve and allows him to regain his mind... just long enough to decide that it's not going to last long, says farewell to Peggy and flies up to take out the Red Room in one last heroic sacrifice. 

(Oh, and Black Widow sticks Melina with a grapple line onto the self-destructing Hydra Stomper, getting rid of her as well). 

And... that's the end of the main storyline, with Peggy screaming in grief as she loses Steve for the second time, and seemingly final time. Although who knows, with these superhero stories? I really would go out on a limb and say that this is what a dramatic What If episode should be, with the characters actually having some connection with each other that is remixed and feels like a nice, organic change from the original sacred timeline. This does everything what the tepid Gamora/Tony Stark episode failed to do. 

The end of the episode is a sequence that sets up the season's serialized finale, with Peggy being teleported away by some Scarlet Witch magic... into a take on Marvel 1602, as she comes face to face with medieval versions of Nick Fury and Scarlet Witch. But that's something we'll talk about once we get to those episodes. This episode itself is really nice, though, and while it didn't impress me too much during the time I watched it, I've grown a fair bit of appreciation for it. 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• 
  The events of this episode is an alternate take on Captain America: The Winter Soldier (substituting Steve Rogers/HYDRA Stomper for Winter Soldier) with major elements from Black Widow -- namely the Red Room being a flying ship and employing mind-control tactics like what they did to Taskmaster and the Widows in that movie. 
• Chronologically, the Captain Carter universe (Earth-82111) has events equivalent to Captain America: The First Avenger in What If S01E01, and we get to see glimpses of the opening act of Winter Soldier in the final episode of the first season.
• Various characters are in different places, most notably Bucky (who survived WWII) essentially taking over all the leadership roles filled by Nick Fury or Alexander Pierce in the sacred timeline; Steve being captured and used as a brainwashed agent; and Melissa Vostokoff having ascended as the leader of the Red Room. 
  
• The plot point of the Winter Soldier analogue being unfairly branded a criminal by the rest of the world is borrowed from Captain America: Civil War. 
• The equivalent events of The Avengers has the Wasp as part of Captain Carter's Avengers. In the comics, the Wasp is one of the founding members of the Avengers, something that should but didn't happen in the live-action movies due to the Ant-Man movies being pushed to 'phase two'. 
• While Bruce Banner is apparently not the Hulk (or at least not part of the Avengers) in this timeline, he is clearly affiliated with our heroes, with Peggy name-dropping him alongside Tony Stark as someone who could help figure out the Hydra Stomper situation. 
• The main present-day story begins with Peggy picking up Natasha, in a nod to how Winter Soldier opened with Nat picking up Steve from the jogging. Also just like Winter Soldier, after fighting Batroc on board the Lemurian Star, Captain Carter gets into an argument with Nick Fury over secrets. 
• Returning Live-Action Actors Are: Hayley Atwell (Captain Carter), Frank Grillo (Crossbones), Rachel Weisz (Melissa Vostokoff),Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Sebastian Stan (Bucky), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch)
• Notable non-returns are: Lake Bell and Josh Keaton, again voicing Black Widow and Steve Rogers respectively.