Captain America in the MCU: Who’s next?

Jeffery Mace (AKA Patriot I)

The list of currently existing Marvel movie characters with any claim to the Captain America identity quickly dwindles to about zero after that Hawkeye, leaving us to do some legwork work and make creative connections.

The TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D has worked to tell stories in the background of the MCU movies on tv for six seasons. One plot introduced the closest thing to a “substitute” Captain America that has appeared outside of comics. Patriot is Jeffrey Mace, originally a supporting character from Golden Age issues of Timely Comics. The character was reworked and introduced as the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D who had undergone a version of Project Patriot, the same experiment that created Captain America. Mace is supposedly dead, but when has that ever stopped a hero?

Pros:

He’s familiar to MCU addicts who consume all the media associated with the franchise. Becoming Captain America is practically the character’s destiny. Jason O’Mara has paid his acting dues across a lot of genre television series, and even voiced Batman in several direct-to-video releases.

Cons:

“Who’s this guy?” It’d take a lot of work take a small screen character fans won’t recognize and make him look like a true heir to the mantle.