What If Peggy Carters Nexus Event Explained

What If…?: Peggy Carter’s Nexus Event, Explained

What If…? apparently relies on nexus events to explain its alternate universes. In Peggy Carter’s case at least, it was very small.

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What If Peggy Carters Nexus Event Explained

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for What If…? Season 1, Episode 1, ‘What If… Captain Carter Were The First Avenger,’ streaming now on Disney+.

Marvel Studios’ What If…? has started off in fine fashion with Season 1, Episode 1, “What if Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?” As Uatu the Watcher explains in the opening narrative, each episode will present a parallel universe, created when an event in the Marvel Cinematic Universe happened slightly differently. The premiere has been featured in much of the promotional material, so there’s little surprise about the content. It depicts a universe in which Peggy Carter ultimately took the Super Soldier Serum instead of Steve Rogers. Within that framework, however, a number of details emerge both about how the freshly minted Multiverse works and how What If…? intends to portray them.

Chief among these is the “nexus event,” the moment when the episode’s reality diverged from the MCU as fans know it and created a new universe. For Captain Carter, it comes right before Steve Rogers is injected with the serum. Touched anew by Rogers’ bravery, Carter elects to stay down in the lab instead of going up in the viewing booth as she did in the prime universe. That lets Carter stop the Hydra agent who sabotaged the experiment, though Steve himself is injured in the exchange. With no time to spare, lest the experiment be lost, Carter takes Rogers’ place and gains the powers that he held in the prime MCU.

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What If Peggy Carters Nexus Event Explained

The first season of Loki goes into the details of how nexus events work. They consist of decisions of individuals that take them off the Sacred Timeline where the normal events of the MCU take place. In that moment, that individual’s actions cause a ripple effect which changes the course of history, creating an alternate universe. Before the events of Loki, the Time Variance Authority would arrive and “prune” the errant timeline to restore the prime one, removing the variant individual in the process. Indeed, sharp-eyed fans noticed what appeared to be a “variant” Peggy taken into TVA custody during the series.

That all has been thrown into chaos, as the multiverse exploded to life at the end of Loki. As the first of such new universes MCU fans have seen, Captain Carter will likely set the guide for what viewers can expect from subsequent episodes of What If…? In this case, the show draws attention to the nexus event that causes the episode’s given reality, and how seemingly small the difference is. Carter makes a snap decision on a minor manner because the already smoldering attraction between her and Steve Rogers flared slightly higher, slightly earlier than in the MCU.

It’s a variation on the old phrase, “for want of a nail, the army was lost,” as a tiny shift makes a staggeringly large difference. The remainder of the episodes will presumably work along the same lines, with the seismic changes all with seemingly innocuous beginnings. There are parallels in “Captain Carter,” such as the apparent loss of Steve during an attack on the Red Skull’s train, but with each change, the incremental effect on the universe gets bigger and it diverges further from the prime MCU. All of that begins with the nexus event.

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Among other things, it’s a reminder of how awful the TVA truly is, and how something as trivial as wanting to be there for a new friend could be deemed a crime punishable by death in its eyes. That would certainly have spelled the end of this Captain Carter at its hands, had Loki not taken the course that it did. The MCU seems poised to take advantage of it, and rumors swirl about Hayley Atwell reprising the role in a live-action movie such as Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness.

Ironically, that would be bringing the variant to life in more ways than one. Carter has remained an enduring part of the MCU seemingly in spite of numerous obstacles. The nexus event may give her an entirely new lease on life, and finally make the character the full-bore superhero she deserves to be.

To see Captain Carter’s adventures, the first episode of Marvel’s What If…? is streaming now on Disney+.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/what-if-peggy-carter-nexus-event/

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