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The biggest movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame is now available to watch digitally. The home release comes with plenty of special bonus features, including audio commentary.
Bizarrely, however, one of these features is actually only available on the digital release of the movie as opposed to the more expensive Blu-Ray. Who can say. Welcome to "Steve And Peggy: One Last Dance," a 5-minute montage featuring some clips from The First Avenger (and one from heavily truncated from The Winter Soldier) a handful of pointedly fluffy interviews in which cast and crew recap Steve's journey in the MCU for the first 3-minutes, and then Anthony and Joe Russo do their level best to convince us that the Captain America Trilogy, two movies of which they directed, were actually about to be made.
"I always found it very endearing about Cape Town," Anthony Russo says in the featurette, "that for all that character has sacrificed – and he's sacrificed a lot – the one thing he could never let go of Peggy Carter."
Cue the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme song, please.
Sure, the first movie in the Cape trilogy, Captain America: The First Avenger, is all about the sacrifice. But that's not where the story ends for either character – in fact, it's not even part of the story the Russo Brothers themselves directed. The First Avenger is one of a three-act play, and like every movie in the MCU, is not designed or intended to be viewed in a vacuum, no matter how badly the Russo Brothers seem to wish, now, after the fact, that we would all do just that.
The irony here is that the movies they seem to hope we are most focused on, all in favor of major last-minute changes to their arc cap in their final MCU movie. But to really get a sense of just how completely weird these badertations are, let's take a closer look at just how the Russo Brothers shaped Steve Rogers' narrative and thematic arches with look at Peggy Carter.
Recapping The First Avenger
For the sake of argument, we'll be taking a few things in good faith. One, The First Avenger really makes it difficult to connect Steve and Peggy, and that connection is extremely meaningful. Two, the connection between them is over 40 minutes (I did the math, do not worry) and 13 major scenes – these numbers are pretty significant. That's a little less than half of the whole movie's runtime.
Of those major scenes, which are clearly intended, for better or worse, to be certain of the romantic under- or overtones. From the cringe-y misunderstanding about the meaning of the first kiss, The First Avenger put a lot of weight on the shoulders of the chemistry between Steve and Peggy and for the most part, it paid off. The end result is a sweet, heartbreaking story of Steve Rogers, a character within the wider MCU. Their last bit of dialogue with another set dates, "8 o'clock, The Stork Club, do not you dare be late," for a dance they both know they'll never have. Cue the waterworks.
Joe Johnston and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are looking at the story of the world. It's a nice shorthand and a quick way to make hearings emotionally respond and empathize (who does not love a good doomed love) with new characters. It's also an easy, no-muss-no-frills way to build drama and tension in a lot of time. According to the text of the film, Steve and Peggy were in love, and that love never really came to fruition because Steve is just too damn heroic and too damn selfless. What a jerk.
But in the scope of the shared universe and the series of interconnected films that make up the MCU, those qualities run out of gas pretty fast. There is more to Steve Rogers than being the guy who sacrifices things if he's going to be a character in a multibillion-dollar franchise, the same way Tony Stark can not just be the snarky drunk and Thor can not just be the old English jock. He has started moving from where he started. The First Avenger does not exist in a vacuum.
Enter The Winter Soldier
The Russo Brothers' MCU debut was, inarguably, a smashing success as they cranked out one of the most beloved and universally acclaimed entries in the line up to date with Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Steve Rogers – that dubious honor belonged to the Avengers – TWS was the first time we got to really experience a wide cast. The Avengers relies heavily on the most basic principles of the game. He is a soldier, he has a shield, he's from the 1940s. TWS took the ball and ran with it.
Stripped of those basic tropes and cliches, what would a strategist from World War 2 actually be like in modern society? How would someone with such moral staunch code cope with working in the less-than-moral modern military sector? How was Steve Rogers, the man, rather than Captain America, the symbol, responding to his life being flipped completely upside down?
The answers to those questions were not simple or direct. TWS found forward momentum for Steve's character everywhere it could. It introduced Sam Wilson, Steve's first real comedian who was a friend of show to a humor and self-aware wit about the things he'd miss in pop culture; it partnered him up with Black Widow, who was delighted to keep him alive and tested his limits; it gives a new style, a new attitude, and a new costume. Perhaps most importantly, it is completely pivoted in his reconciliation of Peggy Carter.
Unlike The First Avenger, Peggy only gets a shot at the Winter Soldier. She's Still Alive, but well into her 80s here in 2014, struggling with dementia quietly in a civilian home. Obviously, this Peggy is no longer a romantic aspiration, she's becoming a sort of role model. She's "lived a life," and hopes Steve can go on live. Her small scene is juxtaposed against video footage showing her back in the 50s, well after Steve's death, where she talks about all the ways in which she moved after Steve's sacrifice and all the ways he positively affected her life. These clips are mirrored against a backdrop of modern-day telling Steve that "the world has changed and we can go back. "
The weight of this scene could be nostalgic if it was not for the time taken within the first two minutes of the movie for a conversation with Sam that allows Steve to directly confront the fallacy of living in the past. "You must miss the good ol 'days, huh?" Sam asks. "Well, things are not so bad." "No good polio's good." Internet, so helpful, "Steve responds. This is not a Steve who long to go back, even if he still feels the loss of his life in a very real way. It's growing and changing in a way that is anything but easy, but in a way that matters.
To get to know that, TWS includes a subplot in which Natasha keeps trying to set Steve up on dates. Sharon Carter, who is eventually revealed to SHIELD agent and Peggy's niece.
Sure, it's really awkward when you think too hard about it, but one of the Russo Brothers made the call to keep it that way, but their next one too – it was not just sneak by accidentally . And, when viewed in the context of the rest of the story, it's impossible to ignore the (admittedly extremely half-hearted) positioning of Steve Sharon's new flame. Again, we're back to a place where we're meant to see Steve moving on. Weirdly, begrudgingly sometimes, and in the most awkward way possible, safe – but moving on nonetheless.
There's not much time for bizarre inter-generational love connections, however. Things get sticky when the climax of the movie pits Steve against some of the ghosts of his past, revealing that his dead is alive and keen by the organization he gave his life to destroy in The War. The figurative, internalized fight Steve is having a relationship with him. Steve may be trying to be done with nostalgia, but nostalgia certainly is not done with him.
At this point, the symbolic weight of the past is shifted entirely from Peggy and placed squarely onto the shoulders of Bucky Barnes, removing Peggy from the narrative equation entirely for the rest of the movie. Unlike Peggy, Bucky does not represent a success story – he did not survive Steve's death to lead to a happy and fulfilled life and he did not have a lesson in his life. Peggy's singular scene emphasized the fact that she no longer needs Captain America to save her. Bucky, however, has never needed him more.
An interlude, and a Civil War
It's important to note that there was one movie featuring Captain America that the Russos themselves did not make in between The Winter Soldier and Civil War. Avengers: Age of Ultron is a bit of an odd duck in the sequence – but one that, nonetheless, did not pick up some of the threads TWS had ugly. Peggy was featured in a Scarlet Witch-induced hallucination that not-so-subtly highlighted just how troubling the idea of Steve "going home" to the 1940s actually would be – troubling enough that the thought actually clued him into the that it was all an illusion.
Later, in conversation with Tony, Steve really brings it home. "I do not know." The guy who wanted all that went in the ice 75 years ago. Melodramatic, sure, but the point holds true. Steve's priorities have changed. We knew that from TWS, but here we are talking about existence on screen.
Those new priorities do not just go away. Against all odds, the Russos' next Captain America movie managed to make Peggy's symbolic position in the Steve Rogers story even less subtle than her literally speaking words "start over" to his face. Like TWS, Peggy is only one of the few in Civil War – but this time, she's not actually in it. It's dedicated to her funeral.
After a while, Steve listens to Sharon, who inspires him to really commit to the tension between him and Tony. They're actually fighting over superheroic accountability (among other things), but the argument is controversial, diplomatic tug-of-war over the Bucky Barnes fate.
Remember how Peggy acted as a springboard for Bucky's Steve's life back in TWS? We're doing this all over again, this time with the stakes cranked up to 11.
Peggy's off-screen role in Civil War is, in that way, to drive Steve even closer to the proverbial (or literal, depending on who you ask) arms of his best pal Bucky. Gold, alternatively, to wingman her niece from beyond the grave on one of the weirdest on-screen kisses in the MCU, when Steve and Sharon "finally" admit they have feelings (?) For one another -chemistry back in The Winter Soldier.
Either way, the narrative throughline of the Russo's take on Peggy Carter has reached its inevitable conclusion. She is gone. The past is literally buried. And there is a lot of energy in the engine that keeps you going strong.
Also, yeah, making sure to include a scene of Steve kissing her niece is perhaps the least part of the movie that she's moved on – now, you know, actually burying her, I guess.
So where does that leave Endgame?
Here's where things start to get strange. If the bonus features and the final cut of Endgame are any indication, we're meant to believe that the arcs occurring in both the Winter Soldier and Civil War, were, somehow, unintentional. That the repetitive reasons that painted Peggy as the center of Steve 's forward trajectory, and the constant refrains involving "starting over" were actually just very tricky ways to say that Steve had, in fact, never gotten over her.
It's not that that is the wrong or an invalid story to tell – The First Avenger is just a bit of a hit with Steve and Peggy at the center just fine – but that's not the story that the Russos elected to tell. Instead, they used Peggy for a grand total of two scenes, and then pivoted Steve into the arms of another woman – perhaps more honestly, on a collision race with Bucky Barnes.
Each moment the Russos' included in their films was deliberate. It's not an accident that the compbad with the second Avenger with Peggy's photo made only one second appearance in one of their films (and never again in any other MCU films until Endgame for that matter). Nor is it an accident that Sharon Carter was painted, however briefly, as a romantic lead. It was not incidental that Bucky Barnes was the crux of the drama for years, and it was not for nothing that Peggy's scenes were built to emphasize the future. Steve's stories could have been built around their inability to let go of their loved ones – but they never were.
At least not until Endgame. Not until the Russos – or someone at Marvel Studios – had a very abrupt change of heart. It turns out all of Steve's heroism has really, secretly, revolved around his inability to get over his girlfriend from The War. It was all just waiting game; It could be said that it could be given in one of the halcyon days of the 1950s. The Stork Club, 8 pm, 1945. It was something else entirely, which is just as satisfying, because it was something else. 're cherry-picking which parts of your stories do you want to remember?
The scene is meant to be understood in a vacuum, devoid of any and all context of Steve's cinematic journey and relying specifically on the information contained in Endgame and only Endgame. We're meant to feel happy, that he's finally gotten the thing he's secretly wanted all this time, despite what the other stories have told us over and over again. We're supposed to feel like we're "win," or that he's "earned" this moment of selfishness.
But like every movie, viewing things in a vacuum is not the name of the game. So much for the internet, modern food, and polio vaccines. So much for starting over being the best we can do. So much for the guy who went into the ice being different from the guy who came out. So much for never being able to go back. So much for a narrative arc that does not suddenly wrap around itself. Part of the journey is the end, right? And sometimes the end is back where you started, I guess.
So, please, if you could just casually forget this, and pretend to be a little over two-thirds of the Cape trilogy does not exist at all, the Russos would, apparently, really appreciate it.
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