Captain America in the MCU: Who’s next?

Will Simpson (AKA Nuke)

In Nexflix’s Jessica Jones, Will Simpson (played by Will Traval) is a former Special Operations soldier turned New York police officer. After being mind-controlled by Killgrave he takes drugs from a secret military program in order to power up, hoping to kill the villain. The drugs also make him psychotic and amplifies his existing toxic attitudes. He sacrifices himself to protect Jessica and Trish.

Will Simpson’s character is based on Marvel comics Frank Simpson, a drug addicted, psychotic soldier from the Weapon Plus program codenamed Nuke. The Kingpin sent Nuke to kill Daredevil in the iconic “Born Again” story. Although Nuke was never part of the Super Soldier program that turned Steve Rogers into Captain America, he has often been presented as an extreme example of what can go wrong when weaponizing human beings, as well as nationalism.

Pros:

This could be a chance for the MCU to finally crack the wall between their movies and the very popular world crafted for Netflix. Those series have all been canceled, but there’s a significant grassroots movement to see the characters return. Nuke probably has a little better name recognition to comics fans than Patriot. Like O’Mara, Will Traval has a solid television resume with some film, he’s even played a version of DC’s Human Target on Arrow.

Cons:

It’s not likely Disney and Marvel are going to want to tell such a dark tale on the big screen with the Sentinel of Liberty. Disney has announced no plans for the ‘Netflixverse’ and seems to have abandoned the whole project. Plus, like Patriot I, the Will Simpson character is also dead.