At the very least, he can help Howard cope with the trauma, having seen the same thing happen to James Rhodes in the future.
It sounds to me like someone introducing themselves, no more. What concerned me more was that I can pretty much paint how that’s gonna go; dumb ass John Walker will be manipulated into doing bad things, because now he’s bad.
Good point:
Not to mention Bruce Banner:
This kind of massive facial reconstruction seems distressingly common in the MCU. On the other hand, the result seems to uniformly be to transform a handsome man into a differently handsome man, so I suppose it could be worse…
It affects women too:
It’s a really fun “What if…” scenario. It also sets up a dilemma that can only be satisfyingly resolved by ridiculous slash fiction.
Because there’s two Steve Rogers in the universe. The one from the future, and the one who’s still frozen in ice. There’s no way Steve can just leave that guy there - he’d be effectively stealing his life if he does that. And once he’s found and unfrozen… which of them gets to be with Peggy? Steve being Steve (being Steve), when they start to fight over her, the argument is about which one of them gets to selflessly sacrifice his own happiness for the other.
Meanwhile, Peggy’s sitting in the background, her smile getting bigger and bigger.
Also, concept pitch: Avengers 1960s. Time-displaced Steve, now firmly in silver fox mode, in the Nick Fury role. Young Steve as Captain America. Peggy Carter. Howard Stark as Iron Man. A very young Hank Pym as Ant-Man, using reverse engineered Pym particles brought back from the future. Bucky, rescued from Hydra too late to prevent him getting super powers, but before he does tons of murders. Prince T’Chaka as Black Panther.
That was my inference too. And then, as Lobohan said,
I think the Old Cap we briefly saw in Endgame just came back to die in his original timeline and hand over the shield to Sam, after his wife Peggy had passed away in the alternate timeline where Steve “got a life”.
Yes, I’m sure the Cap-and-Carter couple were a very active team of agents in the lifetime they shared. But I bet Old Cap died quite soon after his return to his original timeline. By the time of F&WS, certainly, both Sam and Bucky seem quite sure that Steve is irrevocably gone.
We know they got him out of the ice, since NuSteve has the shield. But there isn’t a Captain America in that universe, since he’s taking the shield over to MCU-Prime.
My fanwank, is that they try to thaw Steve immediately, and fail to revive him because they didn’t have the tech, he dies on the table. Then Steve gets his happy ending, and Peggy gets a moment’s rest, since two of America’s asses would leave little time for a career.
It’s a different shield than the one he was frozen with. It’s got an extra line around it and the star design is different.
True. I assumed it was repaired for some reason in the other universe, but it’s probably more likely they just made a new shield.
Edit: Oh, maybe Steve took the shards from the original shield, then had Stark make a new one.
I think Mackie did an amazing job of conveying, “Hoo boy. Do I dare to do this?” when he looked into the case. It’s gotta be a Wakandan Cap suit. A new set of wings doesn’t make any sense.
I am rooting for a Wakandan Cap suit WITH wings. (And is this whole sister-and-nephews story arc really just so that the Falcon can be literally “Uncle Sam”?)
The most obvious answer to where that shield came from is probably just “Wakanda.” If we’re assuming that in the alternate timeline, Steve’s foreknowledge led to an all around better world, part of that would surely include contact with Wakanda, probably a lot earlier than it happened in the main timeline. By the time old Cap is ready to go back, it’s probably trivially easy for him to get his hands on any number of vibranium shields, just by asking the Wakandans.
Yes, yes it can.
I am spiritually ready for the vibranium top-hat and flag suit.
I prefer the theory that Cap gathered up the remains of the Thanos-smashed shield and brought them with into the new timeline. Then Stark rebuilt it. This has the fringe benefit of forcing Steve to explain to Howard how he’s got a broken shield when the one he gave him originally is still lost in ice.
Even in a happier world I don’t see Wakanda being super liberal with their precious metal in a pre-Killmonger and pre-assassination world.
I will also give major, MAJOR kudos to the costume designer if the Wakandan-Cap-suit wings have been subtly modified to look somewhat more eagle-y than falcon-y.
Also, I think Cap-and-Carter are gonna have some heavy lifting to do in their own time just helping dismantle Jim Crow, homophobia, etc., right at home. (Was just reading a reference to some lost opportunities in mid-1940s America for rejecting institutional racism in the aftermath of having defeated the pernicious hyper-racism of the Nazi Reich; with Captain America on board, I bet that could very well have happened in the Cap-and-Carter timeline.)
My concept, which is broadly compatible with yours, is that Steve becomes Commander Rogers, takes command of the SSR, and leads it into becoming the best version of SHIELD, the one that saves people above all else (and purged of HYDRA, of course). By the time we see him in Endgame, he’s retired, having handed over the directorship to a better version of Nick Fury that he’s personally groomed and trained for the role.
I have a vague recollection of Black Panther saying something along the lines of “Get this man a shield”
Did something happen to the original shield and Wakanda made a new one for him?
That’s from Infinity War, after Tony took the shield back. They gave him these:
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Thanos shattered it.
When Steve went back in time to return Mjolnir and suchlike, he didn’t have a shield. When Old Steve turned up on the bench, he had a shield of unknown origins that he gave to Sam.