I’ve often said that I find Peggy Carter’s arc an amazing one, despite the fact that she really is a major character in only one MCU movie. However, we do get to see glimpses of Peggy at various stages of her life, glimpsing what she longs for, and fights for, after Steve has been lost to her. Her life and accomplishments, then, have reverberations throughout the MCU.
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we get two different snippets of Peggy, and both are important. I’m going to discuss them now, looking back, so here’s your spoiler warning if you haven’t seen Avengers: Endgame.
Steve Rogers is having trouble building a life and moving forward. He feels alone, stating that socializing seems unimaginable when Natasha asks him if he did anything exciting for his Saturday night, “Well, all the guys from my barbershop quartet are dead, so…no, not really.”
This feeling of loneliness is further emphasized in a subsequent scene where he, incognito, visits the Smithsonian Museum to tour the exhibit dedicated to his adventures back in the day, complete with artifacts, information about his childhood, and videos recorded by those with stories about Steve—such as Peggy. Here is our first glimpse of an older Peggy, in 1958, reminiscing about Steve:
“That was a difficult winter. A blizzard had trapped half our battalion behind the German line. Steve…Captain Rogers…he fought his way through a HYDRA blockage that had pinned our allies down for months. He saved over a thousand men, including the man who would…who would become my husband as it turned out. Even after he died, Steve was still changing my life.”
These words seem straightforward at this point in the MCU, and much press and fan commenting focused on who the man was who would be worthy of stepping into the very big shoes of Steve Rogers.
There is one other scene with Peggy in the film, this time with her in the present timeline, bed-ridden and sick. Steve, still feeling alone, goes to visit her. We see framed photos of her life by her bed, and while we can see one frame with her children, we don’t really see her husband. Seeing Steve look at her photos, she says, “I have lived a life. My only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours.” She gives him other advice, too, during this moment of lucidity: “The world has changed and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes, the best we can do is to start over.”
Looking back, these words are actually cryptic and can be read with even more depth and foreshadowing.
The writers for Winter Soldier and Endgame are the same, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley, and they assert that they have “had the idea of Steve returning to live with Peggy in mind for a while. But if this is true, then that means Peggy is lying to Steve in The Winter Soldier”
(https://screenrant.com/captain-america-winter-soldier-peggy-carter-old-lie/). In this article, “Oh Peggy was Lying to Steve in Captain America: The Winter Soldier?” the writer, Cooper Hood, argues that Peggy had chosen her words wisely here, and the lie is actually the line about him not getting to live his life. I don’t think this is a lie, though. The writers argue that it’s a loop (which, side note, contradicts what the Russo brothers say about this issue since they claim it’s an alternate reality), and Peggy’s husband is Mr. Steve Rogers, a man who supports his wife’s work in S.H.I.E.L.D. when he “starts over” by returning to her. Peggy's words about changing her life take on new meaning with this twist, as we think about coming back from being MIA as a definite life-altering event. But, if they had decided to keep this a secret to avoid altering the timeline in unknown ways, then everything does fit together like an intricate puzzle.
What’s interesting is that the writers set up Emily VanCamp’s nurse-next-door (who turns out to be a Fury-sent spy to watch over Steve) as a potential love interest in the same film. (Which, at the time of writing this blog, seems to be an abandoned storyline.) While her character is likeable, it’s still hard to compete with Peggy—even if she only has two small scenes.
It’s especially enjoyable to trace all these pieces of Peggy’s timeline in the MCU now that we know the “endgame” the writers had in mind (pun intended). I’m really looking forward to the Disney+ series What If… which will have an episode that features an alternative reality where Peggy takes the serum instead of Steve. I think that her popularity is a testament to how beloved the character is. I really would have liked to see the series Agent Carter have a few more seasons, but then again, filling in these gaps and connecting the dots as a viewer is half the fun. As Steve says to her, “You should be proud of yourself, Peggy.”
