What If…?: What’s hidden in plain sight in episode 1
By Mike McNulty
Captain Carter and the Hydra Stomper
Though the episode is titled “What If… Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?”, its subtitle could have been, “What If… Steve Rogers Were the First Iron Man?” Because soon after Peggy dons her Union Jack costume and vibranium shield and recovers the Tesseract, Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) uses it to power an advanced prototype suit of armor for Steve dubbed “The Hydra Stomper.” Thus both Peggy and Steve become this Earth’s first superheroes and, as others have observed, it’s not difficult to see the parallels between them and DC’s Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor.
Yet the inspiration behind Peggy’s transformation into Captain Carter can also be found in the pages of Marvel Comics, too. Aside from Captain Britain, there’s another, less well-known Marvel superhero who acted as a representative of the British Empire known as Union Jack. Only this was no super-soldier but top-level athlete, spy, and aristocrat by the name of Lord James Montgomery Falsworth who fought in both World War I and World War II. He was also a member of Marvel’s first superhero team, the Invaders, which included Namor the Sub-Mariner, the original Human Torch, and Captain America. It doesn’t seem coincidental that Peggy’s Captain Carter costume is very much patterned after the one Union Jack wears in the comics.
Moreover, Marvel featured a super-powered version of Peggy Carter in the comics, too. The series Exiles featured a team comprised of alternate reality versions of various heroes who traveled to other dimensions. In Exiles Vol. 3 #3, they met a Peggy who became that world’s Captain America, the result of Steve being assassinated before ever taking the super soldier serum. And if you’re wondering why a British operative would don a Stars and Stripes costume, Peggy was born in Virginia, not England, in the comics.
As for Steve becoming a version of Iron Man, this isn’t the first time Marvel has done this. In fact, there was entire miniseries called Bullet Points dedicated towards this very idea. Created by J. J. Michael Straczynski and illustrated by Tommy Lee Edwards, Bullet Points envisioned a Marvel Universe in which Dr. Erksine is assassinated before Project: Rebirth ever happens. Instead, Steve Rogers becomes part of “Project: Iron Man” and fights in World War II wearing a suit of armor that’s very similar to the Mark I. Seems as though the folks behind What If…? did a little homework in this regard. (The series had some other weird deviations, like Peter Parker becoming the Hulk and Dr. Bruce Banner becoming Spider-Man.)
The Hydra Stomper also looks very much like the Iron Monger from the first Iron Man (2008). This is a clever Easter Egg for two reasons. First because it shows that, while Howard Stark is a technical genius, he’s not at the same level as his son, which means any suit of armor would look crude by comparison. Second, given that this is 1940s technology, it only makes sense for him to build what amounts to a walking – and flying – Sherman tank designed for combat and use in the field. Who says that Easter Eggs can’t have form and function?