Warning: SPOILERS for What If...? episode 1.

Episode 1 of Marvel’s Captain Carter and her timeline in season 2, or even earlier in season 1, it will have to reckon with some of these implications.

In What If…? episode 1, by choosing to stay in the control room when Steve Rogers is about to receive the super-soldier serum, Peggy Carter sets events in motion that lead to her becoming Captain Carter. As part of the butterfly effect fallout from this decision, the Allied Forces recover the Tesseract earlier than they do in the main MCU timeline and Howard Stark is inspired to build the Hydra Stomper, a mech suit for the unenhanced Rogers to pilot.  This suit bears a striking resemblance to the suit that Tony Stark builds in Iron Man in the original MCU timeline.

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At the end of What If...? episode 1, Captain Carter is transported forward in time and therefore makes no further changes to the timeline; it's shown that eventually, the Tesseract will end up back in Nick Fury’s hands in 2012. However, the effects of Iron Man being invented in the 1940s, with the suit being bestowed on Steve Rogers, who is known for his strong moral center, and the Tesseract being left in the hands of Rogers and Howard Stark are not addressed. Here are some of the things that these changes could mean for the timeline.

Steve Rogers Could Still Be Captain America

Steve Rogers pilots the Hydra Stomper in What If

Tony Stark’s concern about the U.S. military having access to the Iron Man suit was always that it would be used for the wrong reasons. These fears were realized in in with Justin Hammer’s army of military drones. However, this shouldn’t be an issue in the Captain Carter timeline.

The technology that made the Iron Man suit possible in 2008 was Tony Stark’s invention of the miniaturized arc reactor, technology that Howard Stark had only been able to make on a much larger scale. As the Captain Carter timeline Hydra Stomper suit relies on the single Tesseract as its power source, there can only be a single fully functioning Iron Man suit at one time for the foreseeable future.

At the end of What If...? episode 1, the Captain America mantle to a new individual at some point in that time.

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Howard Stark Could Build A Better Iron Man In The 1940s

Howard Stark What If

The suit that Howard Stark cobbles together for Steve Rogers in the middle of war-torn Europe in the 1940s is eerily similar to the one that Tony Stark created in his cave in Afghanistan in Iron Man. Tony was quick to refine the technology to be less cumbersome and more reliable upon returning to his workshop. It is safe to assume that Howard would have done the same thing upon returning to the United States.

The inclusion of the potentially volatile Tesseract as a central energy source in the What If...">What If...? episode 1 set up the potential of more super-soldiers being created, whether through a Soviet program or through Hydra's Winter Soldier program.

The Tesseract Could Be Further Weaponized

Tesseract What If

When, in the main MCU timeline, Howard Stark recovered the Tesseract from Arctic waters after the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, he tried to harness the power of it but was never able to. In the 1980s, the Tesseract was handed over to Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. and Kree scientist Mar-Vell used it to create a light-speed engine. An attack during this experiment led to the empowerment and creation of Carol Danvers, a.k.a. Captain Marvel.

However, in Captain Carter’s What If...">Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has the Tesseract at the end of the episode, it is likely that the Tesseract was still given to Mar-Vell and Captain Marvel was created, but many major timeline changes could have been caused by new Stark weaponry outside of that final scene.

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Fury Could Be Building More Super-Soldiers

Nick Fury What If

One of the biggest changes to the timeline would be in how the United States viewed the Tesseract. In the main MCU timeline, between the events of Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers, the Tesseract was viewed as a scientific curiosity to be experimented upon, but unable to be cracked. Howard weaponizing the Tesseract in the 1940s would mean that they knew more about the power it could hold and what it was capable of.

In 2012, Nick Fury would have been assembling the Avengers. However, with Captain America presumably not existing and Tony Stark presumably having a very different legacy, his team would be missing two of its key players and be reduced to Hawkeye, Black Widow, Hulk, and Thor. With Fury viewing the Tesseract as an object of power that could be used to create something good, like a Steve Rogers piloted Iron Man suit, it is possible that his reaction to it generating new energy signatures would be very different. It is possible that his experiments that led to the appearance of Captain Carter in 2012 were originally intended to find a new way to combat the rising threats he was facing. It would not be beyond Fury's mortality to experiment with making more super-soldiers. With a promise of a return to Captain Carter in the future of What If...?, more of these implications for the multiverse will need to be explored.

Next: Marvel Just Made 5 Other Secret Changes To The MCU Timeline

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