#SHIELDra founders

[amarriageoftrueminds]

How long did Steve actually know Peggy?

(with pictures!)

[ post with just the images here ]

Short Answer: 

626 days total / 20 months, 15 days, and only spoke on 8 separate days.

Long Answer:

Steve got his last 4F / first 1A on 14th of June, 1943.

When Steve arrived at Camp Lehigh, Peggy introduced herself and the SSR.

Directly afterwards, Col. Phillips introduced himself and explained that they would be there for a week only before choosing someone to be given serum:

If they had any common sense, they would’ve said Steve was at Basic Training for a while before being drafted into Project Rebirth.

This being Marvel, however... 

[ full meta under cut ] 

What If...?, Marvel’s Instagram, and Marvel Studios' The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline book gave the ‘official’ date of Steve’s serum as June 22, 1943.

.

This means: 

Steve was enlisted June 14th 1943,

shipped out to Camp Lehigh June 15th 1943,

was there for just a week (til June 21st 1943),

Had a conversation with Erskine about why he was chosen on evening of June 21st.

and was back in Brooklyn and receiving serum on June 22nd 1943.

Poor lad barely had any time to pack and unpack! 😲

Sidenote:

The first date shown in the movie is March 1942:

When Red Skull acquired the Tesseract. 

This implies (but does not conclusively prove) that Dr Erskine must have been captured by the Allies before March 1942, because: 

when he has his conversation with Steve, he merely said Red Skull believed “that there is a great power hidden in the earth, left here by the gods.” IE. he wasn’t aware that Red Skull had successfully seized that power (the Tesseract).

Stark is flummoxed by Tesseract-related tech when he sees it, which he  surely wouldn’t be if Erskine had known about Red Skull having the Tesseract because Erskine could’ve just told him.

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Anyway, back to the present and Steve was already in the local newspapers by Wednesday, 23rd June 1943:

Anyway, he and Peggy only spoke for 1-2 days during that time: June 22nd, the day he received serum, and (what was probably) June 23rd, the day after.

.

IMO it seems like it’s just the day after because: 

everyone who was at the blown-up Brooklyn base is there 👆 (wherever ‘there’ is) as if no time has passed at all...

...but we know that time must have passed, because Senator Brandt shows Steve a paper dated the 23rd [see above.] 👆 So enough time has passed for the newspapers to hear about Steve, for a journalist to write about it, print it, and for the Senator to get a hold of a copy. 

Enough time has passed for the SSR to get the saboteur’s Hydra sub out of the water at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in order for Howard Stark to be flummoxed by it, as he is in this scene. (And he is still in the pit with it; he hasn’t had long enough to look at it already. Ergo, not much time has passed.) 

You could say that it’s a later date, and Brandt just happens to have a newspaper from the 23rd. Except...

...Phillips mentions having talked to the president that morning... which makes more sense as something he would do immediately after the whole Hydra-saboteur bomb kerfuffle, not later. That’s not a phone call he could put off for days. That’s a call you make straight away. 

Although that doesn’t automatically mean that that-morning’s phone call is the first or only phone call Phillips has made to the President, since the Hydra-saboteur-kerfuffle, meaning this could be a date later than June 23rd. 

But the fact that:

everyone who was at the bomb site is still there,

Howard is still in the pit looking at the Hydra sub and admitting he’s clueless about it, as if that is new information he’s announcing,

they’re taking Steve’s blood, also not something to delay on,

and Brandt is asking basic questions about Hydra. If more than a day had passed, he would already know the answers to these questions, even if he had been distracted by the Press.

Suggesting it is very soon after. 

The lack of delay in Phillips’s actions also supports this idea. Earlier on in the movie he moaned to Erskine about having had to talk to senators multiple times before he could get the ball rolling on Project Rebirth. But now he’s cheerful and decisive. Which to me suggests he’s had one decisive phone call with the President, where they exchanged all the information they needed, and that’s it. (He doesn’t say “I spoke to the President again this morning,” for example.) 

Brandt asks Phillips what he’s going to do about Hydra. Phillips smirks and answers that the SSR is being re-tasked to go after them. As if he anticipated the question and got the President to sign off on that just prior; close enough to this moment that Phillips is only acting on those orders just now. 

"This morning" implies that this scene is taking place later on in the day of June 23rd 1943; after the morning, so that Phillips isn’t saying he called the president just now, for example. 

There’s strong sunlight coming in from the window behind Steve 👆, so I’d say we can place this scene at afternoon, June 23rd.

And we can infer that it isn’t evening yet, because Phillips refers to flying out “tonight,” as if if the night of June 23rd has not yet arrived.

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(Another maddening possibility: it’s all happening on the same day, a day that Phillips just happened to have spoken to the President on the phone in the morning already, but either the prop makers got the date wrong on the newspaper or the official Marvel instagram got the date of Steve’s serum wrong. 🤦‍♀️)

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So, timeline: 

June 22nd, 1943: serum, bomb/saboteur, Erskine’s death.

(possibly but not definitively) June 23rd, 1943: morning, newspapers reporting on Steve are printed (Senator Brandt sees them), the Hydra sub is shipped to dry dock for Howard to look at, and the President tells Phillips via the phone that the SSR is being retasked “as of today.” 

afternoon, Steve has his blood drawn, Phillips relays the President’s orders to him, Brandt, Peggy and Stark. Steve objects. Brandt recruits Steve for the USO. 

night, Phillips, Peggy and Howard fly out. 

.

Unless it’s all the same day, in which case the events go:

June 22nd or 23rd: 

morning, Phillips talks to the President who officially re-tasks the SSR, Steve gets serum, blown up, Erskine killed.

afternoon, the Hydra sub put in dry dock for Howard to examine, newspapers rushed out an edition about Steve, Brandt recruited Steve for the USO using said paper.

night, Peggy, Phillips and Howard flew out to London.

.

So Peggy was flown out to London that night, being (probably but not conclusively) the night of either June 22nd or June 23rd, 1943.

.

And then Steve was on tour with the USO for 4 months (from July 1943).

Probably starting mid/late July / early August, to give them enough time to find 20+ chorus girls, create and fit costumes, build sets, book venues, choreograph and plan a show, and do some rehearsals... though apparently not enough for Steve to have learned his lines. 🤦‍♀️ 

During this period, as the USO shows grow ever more elaborate (up to 40 showgirls, bigger sets, a fake Hitler, a military band, and harley davidson motorcycles) Steve also films multiple propaganda reels, signs autographs, takes photos with the public (and Senator Brandt), appears in his own comics, sneaks into the cinema to watch himself on screen, and travels to Buffalo, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York! 😵

Senator Brandt’s smooth patter in recruiting Steve for the USO, how he acts during it, and the fact that there was a cameraman there to take photos of Steve just before he got serum, to me suggests that Brandt was planning to do this USO show with whoever the serum worked on. 

So it’s possible a lot of the show logistics and planning were already underway before Steve was even chosen for serum. That would mean the USO show kicked off much sooner after Steve got serum (which might account for why he’s so nervous on stage...)

And it would explain how they were able to cram so much activity into four short months.

.

Meanwhile, in October 1943, in Azzano, Italy...

And then Steve goes to Italy, five miles from the front

on the 3rd of November, 1943:

We can see that Steve and Peggy were not in contact in between these times / while he was on USO Tour, because: 

no reference to any such contact is ever shown or implied (and Kevin Feige said Steve was sleeping with someone else while on tour).

Steve looks surprised to see her when she shows up. He hasn’t invited her to come -- which he could, by letter -- and asks her what she’s doing there. 

She’s cagey about why she’s there/what she’s been up to; so she’s not someone who even can carry on a correspondence, given the classified nature of her work. 

If they had somehow been corresponding anyway, she would already have told Steve by now that she can’t talk about her being there/why. So he wouldn’t need to ask.

As well as Steve not knowing basic things about her, she also still doesn’t know basic things about Steve, that a casual correspondent of four months would know by now [see below].

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We know the rescue of the 107 was on the night of November 3rd, 1943. 

Because Phillips cites that date when he’s typing up Steve’s official KIA letter:

The sequence before Steve’s rescue of the 107 also implies that Bucky et al were only captured very recently at Azzano, because:

the rest of the 107 are still there (haven’t been deployed elsewhere),

wounded are still being brought in, 

Col. Phillips is still engaged in writing up condolence letters about the lost soldiers when Steve barges into his tent.

(Why is the head of the SSR in Italy, writing condolence letters about the 107 when he specifically said he and his agents were flying out to London, where his HQ is? Here’s a clue from wikipedia: “Alsos personnel followed close behind the front lines in Italy, France, and Germany, occasionally crossing into enemy-held territory to secure valuable resources before they could be destroyed or scientists escape or fall into rival hands.”

However, those personnel would not include the head honcho (Phillips), the entire Army’s number one weapons contractor (Stark), or a desk jockey whose opinion is neither sought nor valued (Peggy). 

And the rest of the movie shows them back in London (and therefore not featuring in field footage of the Commandos), while Steve & Co. destroy Hydra weapons factories (not sweep them for intell.) 

And they stay in London, until the entire army hits a very important base at the very end of the movie. And even then, Stark isn’t shown attending!

So maybe he was just in Italy for the chorus girls...? 🤷‍♀️

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Steve and the Howlies had to have to covered 35 miles as the crow flies (30 miles behind enemy lines + 5 miles to the Army base), with wounded soldiers, and through what Phillips describes as “some of the most heavily fortified territory in Europe” which was also mountainous. They would’ve had to seek a flat route to get the jeeps through. And this with no resources -- like food, medicine, specialised clothing, etc. 

Covering 5 miles a day under those extremely difficult and dangerous circumstances, it takes them a week to get back to Camp. 

(Sidenote, I looked up a modern estimate of hikers on the Swiss Alps, and it said they’d traverse a 105 mile trail over 7-10 days. Viz. potentially 10.5 miles a day!)

Making the day of Steve’s return 👆 at least, November 10th, 1943.

Marvel Studios' The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline confirms this:

.

Afterwards, it seems they went straight to London. 

(No contact with Peggy in transit is shown or implied).

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Sidenote: although no other locations and no other interaction is shown in November, between the 107 returning and Steve being in London, it seems as if some time has passed. 

And once again, we can tell that because of Senator Brandt and newspapers.

There has been enough time for more than one newspaper (The Daily Mail, and Stars and Stripes), to publish stories about Steve. 👆

For Senator Brandt to announce that he’ll be giving Steve a medal for valour, and for that news to have travelled back to the UK.

And, at the very least, enough time has elapsed since the 10th of November for the Senator to believe that Steve could feasibly travel back to America in time to receive his medal in person. 

(Which he declines to do. LOLOL.)

So, say: 

11th: newspapers report (Steve & Co travelling back to London). 

12th: news reaches America / Brandt decides / announces the medal.

13th: Brandt expecting Steve to fly from Europe to America (which would’ve taken over 17 hours, then.) Doesn’t necessarily have to be the very next day, but based on past behaviour Brandt expects action to be taken the very same day as the press reporting on Steve! So...

14th: for the actual medal ceremony? (so that Steve isn’t travelling for 17 hours and then immediately appearing in public) Which seems like it’s happening simultaneously with Steve being in London; I don’t think he’d delay on relating his intell about Hydra.

(And that last day would also account for how the news has travelled back to the UK from the US in order to appear in The Daily Mail.)

We know that this day Steve is in London is supposed to be the day he’s receiving his medal, in person, because of this CATFA deleted scene: 

So IMO we’re looking at this date being 14th November, 1943 at a very strict minimum. 

NB: All this pre-supposes that it takes 4 days to move the Howlies from the Continent back to London, which it feasibly might if they had Stark and his plane, still in Italy. Stark’s deleted-scene surprise at seeing Steve in London suggests either he was not the pilot / his was not the plane responsible for flying Steve to London, or that he was / his was the plane but he expected Steve to move straight on back to the US. We know the SSR had at least one plane in the US Army base in Italy, because someone was flying multiple reconnaissance flights, trying to spot the 107 -- the last of which returned Nov 10th.

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In London, Steve and Peggy are shown talking on 2 separate days, total:

1) In the London HQ, relaying the intell about Hydra weapons-parts factories, gathered from the Krausberg weapons-parts factory and from Bucky, when Steve tells Phillips he has got his own team together. 

And in the pub, on the evening of that same night, when Steve goes to Assemble the Howling Commandos for the first time. 

(I’m saying it’s the same night as that day^ because no time passing between these conversations is implied or stated, not via montage or any other means. It’s a straight cut, and Steve is wearing the same clothes. Also: assembling his team is not something Steve could delay on, after already telling his CO he  had one. In fact it’s kinda nuts Steve didn’t think to do this before telling Phillips he had a team already. What would he have done if they’d said no?? 😂)

2) in the London HQ, the morning of the day after (8am) when Peggy shoots at him.

(Won’t dignify either of those scenes with triggery screencaps!)

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So Steve and the Howlies are officially a team from let’s say 14th November, 1943. 

(We know there must’ve been a bit of a time delay before the Howlies were deployed, to give Stark time to build Steve the version of the Cap suit he requested as well as supplying him with those Harley Davidsons WLA ‘Liberators.’ That Cap suit is the only thing Steve is shown fighting Hydra in, thereafter, meaning the Howlies did in fact wait until it was ready before deploying (they didn’t, for example, send Steve out in something else at first and then  get the suit shipped out later on. That isn’t shown.) 

Since Bucky was the one who suggested him keeping ‘the outfit’ I’ll bet he had some input on that suit. 🤔

So depending on how long you think that would take, could be the Howlies weren’t out on the Continent kickin’ ass ‘til December ‘43 or January '44. 

But despite this delay, no contact with Peggy is shown or implied in the interim.)

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For the next 15 months & 15 days there is also no direct contact shown between Steve and Peggy, while Steve is on the continent and she is in London.

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At first glance it looks like we can deduce roughly the dates of when Bucky died and Steve returned to London.

Because after capturing him Phillips tells Zola he sent a telegram about him*

*a prop which is not shown directly on screen

...a prop dated (the morning of) February 3rd, 1945: 

Soon followed by a tight 24-hour turnaround for the Howlies to go and attack the Valkyrie base in Austria, which we know from this 👇  piece of dialogue between Col. Phillips and Gabe Jones: 

But.

We don’t know: 

1) that the date on the telegram is accurate. This prop is not directly shown in the movie. And, in the scene, Phillips hints at this telegram being intercepted by Hydra and this being bad news for Zola (because it says he is working for SSR. The Foreshadowing is INSANE!)

So Phillips might have lied on that telegram -- backdated it to make it look to Schmidt like Zola had betrayed him and been working for the SSR since before the Howlies ‘captured’ him. Making the day of his interrogation... later than the Feb 3rd on the telegram.

2) that Zola Therefore told Phillips ‘you have 24 hours’ on February 3rd.  Since the telegram date could be false. 

Even if it wasn’t, Zola could’ve said this to Phillips on a subsequent day. He could’ve just told Phillips when the date Red Skull was planning to do something was, and not necessarily 24 hours before that date.

Meaning we can’t tell by the telegram what date the HQ briefing about the Valkyrie mission, and therefore what date the Valkyrie mission. 

However, Agents of Shield 2.01: Shadows...

and Marvel Studios' The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline tie in book, put Steve’s only possible death date as: 

Thursday, the 1st of March, 1945. 

(AOS’s Morita and Dum-dum capture Werner Reinhardt on 2nd of March, 1945, and Reinhardt remarks that Red Skull is dead. 

Given that Steve ‘died’ on the same day in March, and it’s already known about by the 2nd, that leaves the 1st of March as physically the only March date, before that point, at which the Valkyrie mission could possibly have taken place.)

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And we know (from CATWS canon) that Steve’s death was reported (as a disappearance) on 

Monday, 5th March, 1945: 

So I think we can definitively state that MCU intends for Steve to have ‘died’ on Thursday, 1st March, 1945. 😥

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And the KGB opened a file on Bucky on Friday the 23rd of March, 1945.

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It is not categorically stated that the mission where Bucky ‘died’ happened immediately before these late-February scenes in London.👆 

He could, theoretically, have died in late 1944, as his exhibit in the Smithsonian in CATWS claims:

However, that exhibit makes multiple other errors... 

(Such as: listing two different dates of birth on the same display, saying Bucky enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbour (nothing in CATFA shows this and his dog-tag number suggests he was drafted), saying he shipped out to Italy and was captured ‘that fall’ of 1942, when that year was definitely shown as 1943, and the Marvel Timeline tie-in book also shows Azzano as happening in October ‘43, etc.) 

...So I think we can safely rule this out 👆 as a prop-maker’s mistake! 

Plus, Steve’s grief in the pub feels very raw, very immediate, which to me suggest a very-recent bereavement, not something he’s had a couple weeks or months to weep over already. Steve’s a pretty stoic guy. So we know Bucky ‘died’ near to March 1st/end of February 1945. 

The only canon suggestion of time passing between Bucky’s ‘death’ and the pub scene is Steve having already had a chance to get back to London and write a report about it, in order to mention said report to Peggy and feasibly expect her to have read it. 

If we follow the previous observations / logic in this meta, then Steve reports things ASAP and actions are expected to be taken ASAP.  

As a soldier with a CO to answer to, that report about Bucky/Zola is not something Steve could delay on delivering. If Steve drinking in the pub is afternoon/evening, say this was the day he delivered his report (probably in the morning). 

Well that’s enough time to reasonably expect Peggy to have read the report, and for Steve to be drinking after delivering it, but still be neatly groomed in his immaculate on-duty uniform, having just gone off-duty (not, eg. dressed down as if this is another, later day, a day off). 

On the surface of it, it looks like we can’t say for certain that Steve’s drinking day is the day before Phillips interrogates Zola. Even if it’s framed as if the stoicism he exhibits at the end of that sequence is the signal that he is now galvanised to act ASAP, ie. the very next day, with one scene leading to / causing another...

Bucky’s ‘death’ date might have been any number of days before.  

Except: Zola is a hugely valuable acquisition. 

I don’t think Steve et al would’ve captured and brought Zola back to London, at extraordinary personal cost, only for Phillips to waste days before interrogating Zola. 

I think Phillips would’ve been in to interrogate Zola immediately. 

That to me is the closest to ‘proof’ that Steve is back in London, delivering his report and then drinking in the pub, either on or as close to the day of Zola’s interrogation as physically possible. 

(IMO this can’t all be happening on the same day. I don’t think Steve is the kind of guy to deliver a report in the morning, go off and try to get shit-faced while still on duty / in uniform, and then go back to HQ after drinking for a mission-briefing.  Not under normal circumstances, let alone when the mission (to avenge Bucky! and stop Red Skull!) is so important!  Steve appears to know already that he can’t get drunk... but that doesn’t stop him from trying. I don’t think he’d do that if he knew he was expected back to plan the very-important Bucky-Avenging Mission on the same day. CATFA writers may disagree and say this all happened on the same day, but that idea’s kinda wild to me!)

So when was that interrogation date? 

I think we can deduce that it also must’ve been as-close-as-possible to the Valkyrie mission briefing date. 

The fact that Gabe is asking how long they have means that that intell was fresh information to the Howlies on the HQ mission briefing date (which was 28th of February = 24 hours before 1st March.) 

Now, if Phillips knew about 1st March being significant in advance of 28th February:

it would be incredibly stupid of him to not tell anyone until only 24 hours before.

he would’ve told the Howlies already / Gabe wouldn’t need to ask.

But if Zola only revealed the date of the Valkyrie Mission Day very close to the mission briefing date... that would explain why Phillips didn’t mention it sooner. Another point: A lot of what Phillips says in the mission briefing sounds like a summary and continuation of what we see Zola telling him in the interrogation scene. As if there has been no further interrogation / no more intell to relate since that interrogation, a point in favour of it being the only time he has interrogated Zola (meaning it must be happening on 27th of February).

As in: Phillips went into see Zola as soon as they got him (27th of February) and Zola told him the Valkyrie mission was happening March 1st, and that was their only interaction.

This interrogation scene comes before Steve is shown drinking, alone. (Implying Steve is drinking in the later pm, since it’s ‘dinner’ time for Zola, just before.)

Assuming Phillips’ telegram about Zola is false (which is neater, and it being a lie is mentioned in the scene, and although we have the prop the prop is not directly shown on-screen in the movie).

Sunday, 25th February. Bucky probably 'died?’

Monday, 26th February. Howlies flying back to London, with Zola?? And since Phillips wouldn’t wait days to deal with Zola:

Tuesday, 27th of February. Morning, Steve delivers his report.  Phillips reads the report, and sends a falsely-dated telegram about Zola to Washington via SHAEF HQ. Dinner time, Phillips interrogates Zola, tells him about the telegram, and Zola tells him about 1st March / Valkyrie Day. Steve goes drinking, alone.

Wednesday, 28th February 1945, Valkyrie Mission briefing.

Thursday, 1st March 1945, Valkyrie Mission day.

NB: This pre-supposes that it only takes a day to move from the Continent back to London, which it would if they had a plane like Stark’s ready to pick them up any time. 

They well might, given how important it is to get Zola back to London, and get the Howlies out to take down the Valkyrie base.

If they didn’t have such a plane, of course, it would take them longer. However, nothing in the movie (such as, eg. a travel-montage) does show it taking longer. It seems to imply a very short turnaround.

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Sidenote: 

Steve never does anything Peggy says or does, always does the exact opposite -- which is the moral, heroic, selfless thing -- and also never asks what she thinks he should do. (They also try to create the illusion of Steve following Peggy’s orders, in the denouement, by having her irrelevantly interrupt to remind Steve to do what he was already doing anyway.*)

This is a symptom of poor / misogynist writing, whereby Token ‘Strong Female Character’ Love Interest is relegated to a Sexy Lamp with post-it note stuck to it* + behaving like a generic male bully in a female skin + idiot hetero-norms in writing that make any straight couple automatic foils, who must bicker miserably and be on the opposite sides of every argument in order to generate ‘Chemistry.’ 🙄 

Ergo, Steve never does what Peggy says, because as his foil what she says it always the opposite of what he says. Making what she says, defacto, the [unethical, cowardly, self-serving, tactically unsound] thing to Steve’s [moral, heroic, selfless, also tactically correct] thing.

. (disclaimer: any other aspects of Peggy being unpleasant must be put down to Atwell’s performance choices.) .

Her show erroneously claims that Steve relied heavily upon her for “courage, strategy, and moral guidance." 

Passing over the insulting and demonstrably-untrue suggestion that Steve needed external courage or ethical guidance...

(Metas on why this is untrue, and would actually make the plot impossible if it were true! HERE, HERE, and HERE .👈)

...If what Peggy is saying were true, this would mean Steve is somehow relying upon a person whom he doesn’t even speak to for 467 of the 473 days when strategic input was even relevant to his life. So he must have been clueless the vast majority of his life. 🤦‍♀️

The numbers don’t lie. Steve physically cannot have been relying upon Peggy for anything when they weren’t even in contact. That’s quite literally not physically possible. 🤷‍♀️

This simultaneously puts the lie to the idea of Peggy following the Howlies around Europe to collate intell in the places they hit.

A) because the Howlies aren’t shown sweeping these factories for information. They’re shown reducing them to fiery rubble, which you don’t do if you’re looking for documents. They’re not looking for documents; they’re looking for Zola.

B) even if the Howlies weren’t destroying the factories and were sweeping them for ABC (atomic, biological, chemical) Peggy isn’t the kind of specialist who would even know what to look for.  

She’s an intelligence liaison, not a scientist. Not even a linguist. That’s not her area of expertise at all.

Whereas the Howlies themselves by contrast are surprisingly well-qualified. They’ve worked in a Hydra weapons factory, so they know what’s important. Gabe is a fluent German-speaker. Frenchie knows ordinance. Morita looks like a radio expert / is shown operating captured Hydra tech more than once. Bucky as a sniper can do distance recon. And Steve has a photographic memory. 

So they really don’t need an eighth wheel telling them how to recognise or blow up Hydra factories (how would she even know?) 

That’s already their forte. 

C) even if Peggy was a technical expert somehow better qualified than them (which she isn’t), her opinion is repeatedly denigrated by Phillips who says she was a chancey (ie. ill-qualified) hire. 

He wouldn’t send someone to judge important documents who is ill-qualified to do so and whose opinion doesn’t carry any weight with him. He comes with an inch of firing her in this movie for this very reason. 

D) The only time she’s shown taking part in a mission, it’s actually more of a full blown Army Operation, where even the old man Phillips goes along in person. This is an unusual occurrence, i.e. not something she normally does.

AOS ineptly tries to retcon that she was with the Howlies more often.

(The Agent Carter show undermines this intent, because Dum-Dum is discombobulated by Peggy’s presence on a mission and doesn’t know how to act around her. 

This is showing that it’s not a familiar sensation for him, which it would be if she was an honorary Howlie. Ergo, even when they think they’re showing she was a Howlie, they’re actually showing she wasn’t. 

And this is why she didn’t join Steve on the mission to rescue the 107 -- that’s just not her job.)

But just like I can’t claim that Howard Stark fought alongside the Howlies in person throughout the war, if that is not what is shown, they cannot claim that Peggy did so either. 

Because that is not shown. 

*As mentioned: in the middle of the denouement, when Peggy asks Steve if he was about to do X important thing, and he goes ‘right!’ and carries on...

And later, her interrupting at a crucial point to make it about herself (to make Steve kiss her the same way Lorraine sexually assaulted him earlier on) and then telling him to carry on... 

Peggy telling him to do it is both the classic conditioning behaviour of someone who wants to control another person (by creating a mental association between their commands and the victim’s actions) and/or the behaviour of someone with a delusion of importance. 

They are ineptly trying to create the appearance of Steve doing what Peggy says, because she says so. But Steve is doing what he was already going to do anyway, before she spoke.

Her input is not a deciding factor in what Steve does, nor on the plot. Her net moral/strategic impact on Steve is still zero; and she’s still replaceable with a Sexy Lamp.

So that aforementioned claim that Steve relied on her, listened to her, would do what she says, etc. is false.

And they can’t claim he listened to her at any other point, because that is not shown; they weren’t in contact.

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Conclusion...

Steve and Peggy knew OF each other for 626 days 

or 20 months & 15 days.

(From mid-June 1943 to the beginning of March, 1945.)

They spoke on 2 days max in June, 1943 (the 22nd and probably 23rd, the day of his serum and day after) despite being in the same place for a week prior and sharing a prior car ride!

They spoke on 4 days max in November 1943.

3rd day-- Nov 3rd, in Italy, pre-107 rescue,  4th day-- Nov 10th, in Italy, post-107 rescue,  5th day-- Nov 14th(?) In London, the day Steve relayed Hydra intell and told Col. Phillips he was assembling his own team, while Brandt was expecting him to be in America receiving his medal for valour; probably the same day the Howlies were founded. 6th day-- Nov 15th(?) 8am, in London, when Peggy shot him.

They spoke on 2 days in February & March, 1945: 

7th day-- in the pub in London (Tuesday, 27th February?) 8th day-- the day of the Valkyrie raid (Thursday, 1st March.)

(While they are shown in the same place on another intervening day, February 28th, when they are both at London HQ during planning for the Valkyrie Mission, and it’s possible or even plausible that they did interact at that point... they are not actually shown speaking to each other on that day.) 

Totalling: a maximum of 8 days.

(could be as low as 6.)

.

And 6 months later, Peggy, Stark and Phillips founded SHIELD and had already recruited Zola into it in order for it to be front page news by 

Tuesday, 14th August, 1945:

(Thus putting the lie to the ridiculous idea that they didn’t know they’d recruited Nazis or what they were up to, btw. 👆)

.

So of the 20 months & 15 days total they knew of each other, Steve and Peggy were only shown being in the same place and in contact during (but not for the entirety of) 4 months -- Jun and Nov ‘43, and Feb and March ‘45. 

For 19 months & 15 days of the 20 months & 15 days they knew of each other, they were not even in the same place: 

4 months while Steve was on one side of the Atlantic, during the late June-October USO Tour, she was in Europe. 

And 15 months & 15 days / 473 days when he was on the continent doing Hydra weapons-parts factory raids (from probably mid-Nov 1943 - Mar 1945) and she was in London. 

And this is deliberate by the film-makers, to depict theirs as a thwarted relationship-that-never-was, a Casablanca style ‘we never dated’ situation. Not a romance, but what could’ve been a romance, had circumstances been different. Them not being together is literally the point. 

.

They show zero direct or indirect contact between the two during those 15 months & 15 days, and multiple things imply that there was none. 

For example: 

She doesn’t know that Steve has a friend in the 107 (which a correspondent would). 

Steve is surprised to see her (a correspondent wouldn’t be). 

Steve tells her about what he’s been up to, as if it’ll be new information to her. (It wouldn’t be, to a correspondent.) Sidenote: as per She Hulk, Bruce Banner is under the impression Steve slept with some woman during this time. SIGH.

Despite Agent Carter show’s attempts to retcon her history with Bucky’s  stolen valour / war record (nonsensically, since he is a soldier and she’s supposed to be a spy), the film and script are clear that she isn’t in Europe with the Howlies. 

She complains about having every door shut in her face, professionally, and Phillips says she was only at a desk job because he “took a chance with” hiring her. Ergo she’s complaining about not being in the field. 

Steve wouldn’t be carrying a photo of someone he sees in person for work all the time. The compass is physical evidence that she wasn’t there.  Sidenote: Steve wouldn’t be dating anyone Period, since he specifically said he didn’t want to do that. And Peggy also said she wouldn’t date until after the war is over. But anyway!

And, logically, if she's supposed to be a spy she also wouldn’t have her face broadcast in cinemas, making any cover she had useless, as Steve would know. But anyway!  It just highlights how they’re not really doing their jobs of writing her as a spy properly.

Steve wouldn’t need to take a photo out of a paper or SSR personnel file (which is what it looks like) if he saw Peggy regularly in person for work, or if they had been corresponding by letter, because she could’ve given him a proper photo personally. 

(This simultaneously rules out the possibility that she went out with the Howlies, and then went back to London; because if she had, she still could’ve given Steve a proper photo of herself, either via letter or in person.)

Likewise, Peggy wouldn’t need to steal a photo of Steve out of a personnel file if they had been in regular contact, either in person or by letter. (Because he could’ve given her a proper photo if they had been in contact.)

Steve and the Howlies are shown in direct contact with... each other, easily implying a long-standing relationship without having to go to a lot of film-making effort, via montage... but she is not. 

Whereas she is shown in the montage, but not being in direct contact. If the film-makers had wanted to show direct contact between them during this montage, they very easily could have. But they didn’t. If she had been there with the Howlies, and it was the film-makers intention to imply that, she would be in the footage with the Howlies, not sitting in a cinema in London watching footage of a mere photo of herself in the newsreels. Whatever your headcanon, you cannot retcon/change what canon is; the canon is that she wasn’t there in person. 

By February 1945 she still isn’t on first-name terms with Bucky, Steve’s second in command. That would be odd, if she was there in person.

As mentioned earlier, in her own show Dum-dum Dugan is disquieted by Peggy’s presence and reacts to her being in the field with the men as if it’s a fresh, disorientating experience for him, and he doesn’t know how to act. If she had actually been in the field with the Howlies in WWII, this could not be the case. He couldn’t be disorientated by something he was already used to. 

Steve’s time in London in WWII was so minimal that when he goes drinking to grieve Bucky, he goes drinking in the Whip & Fiddle even though it’s in ruins. That pub is chosen for its emotionally significant connection to Bucky... but if Bucky (Steve & the Howlies) had been in London a lot, they could’ve gone to other places, too, and there would be no reason to attach any particular significance to that one pub. But Steve does. And no other footage of the Howlies in London is shown. Ergo, the Howlies were in London for such a short period that the pool of places Steve could be is so small there’s only one (1) option. The alternative is that they were in London for ages and drinking in loads of places (and they never showed it for some reason) and that Peggy had to go around loads of pubs until she found the one Steve was in. But that would be daft. 

We are never shown the Howlies returning to that pub or London at all until after Steve is also ‘dead’ (ie. no proof of them going there multiple times. They easily could have shown that, in montage, if the Howlies had been back in London. But they didn’t.) They treat it as a special, 'one-off Solemn Event’ type of place. Not a regular haunt. 

And Steve is still surprised to see Peggy there, meaning he doesn’t think she knows him well enough to guess where he would go / that he didn’t tell her he was going there (possibly one of the Howlies did). So the reason she finds him can’t be because they interacted prior. 

She still has to ask Steve whether he respected “your friend” Bucky (when even Col. Phillips knows to refer to Bucky as Steve’s oldest friend, by this point). 

Steve tells her he can’t get drunk and has to ask whether she knows that already or not. This is yet another example of something a close confidante or correspondent of 15+ months would know, and that Steve wouldn’t ask because he would know/assume she already knew, if they had been in continuing contact.  (It’s unlikely that Steve himself didn’t know, before this moment. Soldiers who founded their unit in a pub? haven’t done any drinking for 15 months and 15 days? Not likely!) 

CEvans’s acting lends an air of despair and futility to the scene, too -- Steve trying to drink away his sorrows, even though he knows it won’t work. Had his tone been different, it would’ve connoted something else, eg. ‘hey, I’ve just found this new thing about my metabolism, did you know?’

Not being able to get drunk is canonically the very kind of thing Steve would complain about to her (and canonically also the very kind of thing she would tell him more about). If Steve was in contact with Peggy then he would’ve complained about it before, eg. via letter, too. But he didn’t, because he doesn’t know whether or not she knows. So they weren’t in contact.

The Howlies are only shown being in Phillips’s War Rooms / in the bunker in London once.  But Peggy is shown being there through the war.  If the Howlies (including Steve) were there on a regular basis, the film makers could’ve shown that in the montage. Instead the Howlies were shown on the Continent. viz. they never went back to London, and Peggy never went out to the Continent, until the very last mission.

.

It is shown that the updated intelligence of what Steve and the Howlies are accomplishing in Europe during 1944 is being relayed back to HQ in London, because Peggy and other personnel are shown taking Hydra base flags off their maps, as Steve and the Howlies take them out. 

(As a consequence of Steve et al taking them out, it’s implied.)

However... it is not shown that Steve directly relayed that information to Peggy or that it’s Peggy’s job to gather that intell from them directly.

Peggy herself says that Phillips is in charge of devising strategy, not herself, and Steve soon disregards any strategy suggestions she makes anyway -- in fact, he gives her orders, not the other way around.

So if Steve was telling anyone what the Howlies are up to in Europe, it would be his superior officer Phillips. 

Not an agent like Peggy, of no military rank. 

(This is supported by the scene where Steve, having returned from rescuing the 107, goes straight to Phillips to report his successful mission. Not to Peggy, who is right there.) 

Plus, the Howlie shown handling communications isn’t Steve... 

...it’s Morita. 👆 (And guess who interrupts him and shoves him out of his seat?) 

So while the Howlies were in contact during the 15 months & 15 days of Howling Commando Hydra weapons-factory raids:

it would’ve been very difficult / limited / all shop talk. 

it must’ve been so insignificant that we don’t hear what was said, or see who said it, in the film.

(Given that they insist on showing us every possible plot-irrelevant* sexy lamp heterosexual interaction, the fact that they don’t show Steve talking to Peggy on the radio all year is the biggest proof that it didn’t happen. IMO we would’ve seen it.)

so either it’s considered grunt work and would’ve been done by eg. Morita(?) to a similarly lower-ranked person at HQ (maybe even Lorraine!), who at best would’ve relayed it to Peggy who then relayed it to Phillips. But that’s still no contact between Steve and Peggy.

or it’s so important that only someone as important as Steve would report it directly to someone as important (viz. Phillips) as Steve does when coming back from rescuing the 107 (still wasn’t significant enough to be seen in the film.)

While I can see Peggy kicking a lower-ranked person off their chair, to butt in on the call, if Steve was on the line -- as she later does to Morita -- the fact that we didn’t see that happen. Again, basic writing rules apply: if it isn’t shown it didn’t happen. 

there were only six prospective Hydra weapons factories mentioned as targets for Steve and the Howlies, so only six more occasions when they even might’ve officially interacted from the Continent: 

Roughly: 

And while there are more Hydra bases indicated as existing on the maps/via flags removed from the maps... 

...None of these 👆 are explicitly linked to Steve and the Howlies, there’s no indication that the existence of these was discovered or relayed (or that they specifically were destroyed) by Steve and Co. 

And it’s made out to be a Big Deal that they find out where the Seventh base is, (the base Bucky told Steve they were shipping weapons parts to). Because that’s where Red Skull is. 

In total the Howlies would’ve had 9 missions during this time:

6 Hydra factories

1 mission to capture Zola

1 mission in winter to save 1000 men  (if the Smithsonian footage is true)

1 mission on D-Day (if the Smithsonian footage is true)

the Valkyrie mission would be the 10th mission.

.

T I M E L I N E :

1943

JUNE: Mon 14th, Bucky gets his orders, Steve gets a 4F, visits the Stark Expo, meets Erskine, enlists and gets a 1A. Tues 15th, Bucky ships out, Steve arrives at Camp Lehigh. Mon 21st, Steve is chosen for serum. He and Erskine discuss it in the evening. Tues 22nd, Steve receives serum, Erskine is killed, Steve stops the Hydra saboteur, and is photographed by a NYE journalist. Wed 23rd morning, Phillips speaks to the President and the SSR is immediately re-tasked,  Steve appears on the front page of The New York Examiner, the Hydra sub is moved to dry dock. afternoon, Steve has his blood drawn, Stark examines the Hydra sub, Phillips relays the President’s orders, Brandt recruits Steve into the USO when he objects to Phillips's orders. night, Phillips, Stark, and Peggy, fly out to London.

.

JULY-OCT: Steve in the USO, travelling across America.

OCT/NOV: Bucky and the Howlies are captured by Hydra at Azzano.

.

NOVEMBER: 3rd, afternoon, Steve does USO show in Italy, 5 miles behind enemy lines. evening, Steve rescues 107.

10th, Steve returns to base with 400 soldiers of the 107, having safely travelled 35 miles including 30 miles of mountainous heavily fortified enemy terrain, with wounded in tow.

? 11th-14th, Steve's rescue is reported in Stars and Stripes, Senator Brandt decides to give him a medal for valour, news gets back to UK and appears in The Daily Mail. Brandt expects Steve to come back to the US to receive his medal in person. Steve declines. 

? 14th, London, HQ, Steve relays Hydra intell to Phillips and Peggy, night, Steve recruits Bucky & the Howlies, takes Bucky's input on the suit.

? 15th, London, HQ, 8am, Steve gets sexually assaulted, Steve gets physically assaulted (Peggy shoots at him), Steve picks the shield, Steve relays Cap uniform ideas to Stark. .

1944

Howlies deployed in Europe for 15 months and 15 days, taking out 6 Hydra weapons factories shown in Italy, Greece, France, Czechslovakia. and Poland. 

(The original CATFA script also mentions factories in Belgium and Russia, but these aren’t referenced in the canon movie. 

Avengers 1 deleted scene shows Steve taking part in the planning of D-Day, which would’ve put him and the Howlies in France, from 6 June 1944 - August. Probably means they would’ve had to be back in England in the run up to D-Day, to take part in rehearsals. 

If the Smithsonian mention of a winter blockade-breaking mission also happened, that might be part of the Battle of the Bulge, so that would be Dec-Jan ‘44-45. In total it would be 9 missions, and the Valkyrie mission makes 10.)

.

1945

FEBRUARY: (possible) Sun 25th, Bucky ‘KIA.’  (possible) Mon 26th, Howlies & Zola travelling back to London.

(possible) Tues 27th, London am, Steve writes/delivers a report about Bucky. Phillips (reads Steve’s report? knows about Bucky) sends a misleading telegram about Zola, back-dated February 3rd, to Washington via SHAEF. pm, Phillips interrogates Zola and finds out 1st March is Valkyrie Day. Steve goes drinking to grieve Bucky.

Wed 28th, London, HQ, Valkyrie Mission briefing.

MARCH:  Thurs 1st, Atlantic. Steve and Red Skull 'KIA.' Last contact with Peggy. Fri 2nd, Moria and Dum-dum capture Werner Reinhardt. Mon 5th, Steve reported "disappeared" in newspaper. Fri 23rd, KGB opens file on Bucky.

APRIL: Surviving Howlies are mopping up remaining Hydra personnel in Europe? MAY. Tues 8th, V-E Day. London. The Howlies reunite at the Whip & Fiddle, for the first time since they were founded there, to drink a toast in remembrance of Steve.

AUGUST: Tues 14th, Stark, Phillips and Carter have founded SHIELD and recruited Zola and more, which is reported on front page news.

.

the number of individual occasions he spoke to her would be: 13

pre serum (22nd June, 1943)

post serum (23rd June, 1943)

pre rescue (day; 3rd November, 1943)

during rescue (night; 3rd November, 1943) 

post rescue (10th November, 1943) 

at HQ (day; 14th? November 1943)

in the pub (night; 14th? November 1943) 

at HQ (morning; 15th? November 1943)

at HQ (morning; 15th? November 1943)

in the pub (night; 27th? February, 1945)

pre Valkyrie (1st March, 1945)

pre Valkyrie (1st March, 1945)

during Valkyrie (1st March, 1945).

.

TL;DR: They knew of each other for 626 days total, (from 15th June 1943 - 1st March 1945), aka: 20 months 14 days; 19 months & 15 days of which they weren’t in the same place, and only spoke on 13 occasions over 8 separate days.

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[amarriageoftrueminds]

Do you see Tony stark as a male version of Peggy Carter? A rich high class brat that won't hesitate to do anything and side with anyone to shine and then act like everyones protective god mother? Or do you think he is at least a bit redeemable because he might have learned bit from his mistakes.

There are certain similarities. Peggy definitely has more in common with the Starks than anyone.

In her show, all her 'friends' are not from the same SEC as her, as with the Starks. In fact, her friends are... employees. Butlers, waitresses, housekeepers... they're almost literally being paid to be friends with her. You see that with Tony, too. His 'friends' are: an air force colonel (when Tony has extremely lucrative military contacts with the air force), his PA (who gets made his CEO and... immediately dumps him), his bodyguard, his robot butler, his other robot servants... and women who benefit financially from sex with him (Christine Everhart and Maya Hansen). In Peggy's case, she's that woman to Howard Stark. 😬 (And Steve).

In AC, the only time you see a person from the same socioeconomic class as Peggy, they're a villain. Similar thing with Tony's villains in IM (Obadiah Stane, Anton Vanko, Justin Hammer, Aldrich Killian...) they're just Other Tonys.

(So you can tell that TPTB have some kind of... English fetish going on and think upper classness is definitely part of her Specialness?)

While Tony has the same 'avoidance of all consequences for his actions' wealthy white privilege that Peggy has, there are certain important differences.

Generally speaking, they share one over-arching trait, which is: if you consider whether or not the world / people around them would be better off if they didn't exist, the answer is yes.

Without Tony, there'd be no Anton Vanko, no Aldrich Killian, no Quentin Beck (which means no Spider-Mans dimensional incursion), no Ultron (which, in another universe, endangered the entire multiverse), no dead Pietro, no dead Sokovians generally (meaning probably no Scarlet Witch, no Vision, no Westview Hex, all the knock-on effects of that?), no Snap. And Hulk or Thor could have put the nuke through the wormhole in A1 (except he wouldn't because it wouldn't have been written into the story at all since Hemsworth doesn't have short man syndrome.)

With no Peggy, Steve's story in CATFA isn't altered (because she didn't matter to the plot or his life at all). But there would be no Winter Soldier programme (since she wouldn't be around to give the man who started it a job at SHIELDra), ergo no Black Widows being mind-controlled either (since that was based on Winter Soldier tech), no continued Hydra (WhatIf confirms all this by showing that a SHIELD founded by everyone else who was there originally, except her, has no Nazis in it.) Ergo no Project Insight. No Winter Soldier means no assassination of Howard Stark, so no Civil War bust up of the Avengers, if Tony still exists (unless Zemo found some other way to effect it). C.1940s her male colleagues in SSR would have handled everything she interfered with in AC, Edwin Jarvis's wife wouldn't have been sterilised by gsw in the uterus, and Daniel Sousa would have settled down with a nice girl (nurse Violet, possibly Skye) and wouldn't have been assassinated by Hydra for whistleblowing in 1955, because there wouldn't be any Hydra.

.

Now the differences:

First, Tony is actually above-average at some of the things he thinks he's good at, so his arrogance based on that is at least partially warranted (which Peggy's conviction of her own competence, moral integrity, etc. isn't).

His estimate of his own ability is debatable, though, since his genius (in the MCU) stems from the Grand American Capitalist Tradition of stealing other peoples' work, doing a minimal amount to hone it, and then claiming all the credit / reaping all the financial reward.

(See: Iron Man suits, AI, E.D.I.T.H., B.A.R.F., Extremis serum, time-travel, etc. Tony's only original creations I can think of in the MCU are his robot-servants and the improvised booby-traps from Iron Man 3.)

Second, Tony may have got into MIT as a legacy admission (nepotism), but he does actually have at least some of the expertise in a STEM field to warrant a place, which Peggy lacks.

(She gets an honorary degree from IIRC Oxford: ie. rewarded for doing no work. And while she claims competence in mathematics (as part of the AC retcon of her war record), outside of one code-breaking scene her alleged mathematical ability is never shown. And in fact there is a scene where a character has to explain to Peggy how many sides a cube has. No, I am not exaggerating. This literally happened.

And Bletchley Park's happy concession to her leaving mid-war suggests she wasn't a crucial employee. It's like the opposite of all those 'screenshots of my boss begging me to come back after I quit' stories.)

Third, while Tony may have inherited his company without earning it, he does have the necessary brains and thieving habits to create and maintain such a company if he wanted to. He was CEO for decades (since the age of 21) without the company imploding.

Although Obadiah Stane was dirty dealing under his nose without his knowledge so- er wow okay looks like he and Peggy are neck and neck? Except that Peggy did know she had bastards working for her and kept them on anyway (see: Zola, Mitchell Carson).

Tony has some appropriate skills; which cannot be said of Peggy in any of her unearned spying jobs.

Peggy is a nepotism baby who couldn't stomach any of the jobs she was handed on a silver platter, one after another, that she kept idiotically choosing to ask for despite her unsuitability for them (which she also cannot recognise).

And then she flaked out on these jobs from 'boredom,' even in the middle of a crisis like a world war (failure is never her fault, always the job's, always the mens').

Essentially she keeps asking for desk jobs she doesn't deserve, being given them because of glass ceiling nepotism, and then whining when she… is expected to do them? And is not respected when she doesn't?

She believes she is a brilliant, underappreciated spy, surrounded by inferiors, but cannot spot a single spy when they infiltrate her organisation or home (any one of many, many occasions: during the war and after).

She's a spy who craves attention.

Whose disguises fail in seconds, and are so inept that she cannot avoid detection by someone who barely knows her, even when photographed from the back!

(Contrast that with actual-spy Natasha, whose disguises are so good not even we realise it's her until she reveals herself! Or Coulson, who is not disguised but is so unassuming that he has no need!)

Peggy is a woman who thinks she is a sort of hero to other women... but is fine shunting the work which she considers beneath her off onto them... (but she reacts with outrage when men do that exact same thing to her) ...or fine with letting her rich male friends get away with chauvinism.

Who interferes to prevent male feminist colleagues from taking steps that would make life better for the Other Girls (whom she is Not Like and who Cannot Therefore be allowed to Become Like her.)

(Because as long as White Feminist knows Her value, she's the only person that matters!)

It takes a certain level of competence to correctly gage the extent of your own competence, or relative incompetence. It's the basis of true self-awareness.

She lacks that.

(Whether Tony also lacks it is... not clear. Maybe he does, too).

Peggy's continued bloody-minded belief that she is, eg. a competent spy and a feminist, directly contrary to the evidence... (because the writers aren't capable of recognising when they've written the exact opposite of what they vaguely intended) ...is the proof that she lacks the qualities necessary to actually be either of those things.

And to realise that she is just not physically or temperamentally suited to spying or heroism, at all.

She does share Tony's habit of blaming anything but herself for her problems, though. 🤔

When Peggy shows up hours late for work, eats like a slob at her desk while all the men are doing their paperwork, refuses to do said paperwork (even though that's the job she's been hired for and accepted) as if it's an insult to even ask her, shunts it off onto female underlings (can't expect Her Majesty to do it, but those working class sluts upstairs?), and then does nothing except sabotage her colleagues' work for months, then unilaterally hires someone (Johann Fennhoff) who cannot be trusted and so kills 40+ people...

She acts as if her male colleagues' lack of respect for her ability is due to ONLY sexism, and not to her being -- for example -- lazy, treacherous, bad-tempered, entitled, disastrously incompetent, and a self-outing nepotism hire, who is ALSO a woman.

(The fact that she is also sloppy/unprofessional at work is moot, since at least one of the male agents is too, and in this field her capacity for violence is a feature, not a bug.)

When Tony calls himself a "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist" he is at least getting 1/4 of those right... ish?

(Is it genius to commit industrial espionage and rip off the designs of other men including employees, do 12% of the work and then patent them as your own?

When it's JARVIS and FRIDAY who do everything for him, actually?

Is inheriting generational wealth a flex?

Does exchanging sex for favours make you a womaniser or a creepy Weinstein-esque loser?

Does making money off cleaning up the very mess you caused, for Rich-White-Guy tax write-offs, count as actual philanthropy?

Would an actual philanthropist list philanthropy last, of all those things on the list?)

He does appear to learn from his mistakes for a brief period...

(His Act 1 Fuck Up is usually revealed as a Plot!Coupon necessary for his Act 3 Success; the icing over of the Iron Man suit, the double-reverb attack gained from firing at Rhodey in IM2, etc.)

...But that is over-ruled at the beginning of each new Iron Man movie, when the lessons of the last one are ignored to set his personality back at 0. 🙄

In the case of the Avengers movies, though, he doesn't learn at all. Ultron tries to murder everyone (WhatIf reveals he would have eventually destroyed the entire multiverse.)

Hydra tries to enact Project Insight A.I. to kill millions...

And yet years later Tony is still claiming those two as morally correct successes, flawed only because they were made to fail (not because they were horrible fascist ideas to begin with), and redoing Insight as EDITH only giving it to a disaster teenage boy. 🤦‍♀️

Peggy, however, is pathologically incapable of learning from mistakes, because that first requires you to acknowledge that you are capable of making mistakes, which is inconceivable to her.

She has herself up on a high pedestal, as the pinnacle of womanhood around which the world and all other women surely revolve, and cannot be knocked off her axis.

The closest she has ever come to an accurate self-assessment was when Edwin Jarvis called her arrogant and ignorant and she flippantly pretended to agree. (Inadvertently proving him right).

Tony is possibly redeemable because he at least has sensible people around him, telling him he's a fucking idiot.

He does occasionally make the obeisance of saying 'my bad,' even if he doesn't fully comprehend it.

Peggy on the other hand isn't redeemable because she doesn't think she's ever done anything wrong in her life, ever.

She thinks she is practically perfect in any way. Atwell thinks she's a good enough sort of woman to fix any man! Like a lot of TERFs and white feminists, she would see the mere suggestion of any wrongdoing on her part as preposterous.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

One of the biggest gripes I have with the MCU is that half of the heroes are (unintentionally) written as bad guys (EG Steve, Tony, Clint, Peggy...) and the other half is still friends with them and/or never call them out in any meaningful way (Bucky, Sam, Rhodey, Nat....).

Tbf I haven't watched new Marvel content since 2021 so this might not be true for all the new characters. But the characters I liked from the first 3 phases? In my eyes, none of their canon versions are good people anymore.

The MCU really is a superhero universe without any moral compass.

Agreed Anon, you're right.

(I likewise haven't been able to watch since EG, outside of that one Spidey movie where Tony remade Insight yet again and gave control of it to a teenage boy. 🤦‍♀️ MCU's Spidey is just his mini-me; completely missing the point of that character. I mean look at Sony's Spider-verse by comparison!)

I've used this term before, but the MCU has a problem of protagonist-centered morality, whereby villain-defining deeds are put in the hands of 'good' (as in: decent person) characters, and/or good characters are tarnished by their unforgivable inaction, when inaction is the very definition of un-heroism in that universe:

ie. "when you can do the things that I can, but you don't, and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you.” "If I see a situation pointed south, I can't ignore it." etc.

Taking Steve as a textbook example:

Even though Steve behaves accordingly in that scene (by calling Tony out for double-dealing re: the Accords) by the time Steve comes to say that 👆 he has already betrayed it in other ways.

Like: he never calls out Peggy for her mistreatment of him (in CATFA) and borderline rudeness to Bucky. It's like they wanted Steve to almost gloat about becoming superior to Bucky (who, mirroring that, they frame as dragging Steve on double dates he doesn't want to go on and not noticing he's being mistreated during them.)

In CATWS Steve never calls out Peggy (or Howard, or Phillips) for hiring Nazis and making one immortal (this is why they kept her 'visit' safely out of the way in Act 1).

Even though he does call out Fury and Nat for doing substantially less-heinous shit (as far as he knows at the time) and they are made to make it up to him before he will trust them again.

He never calls out Sam for being rude to Bucky in front of him, even though he will tell him off for being rude to a stranger (T'Challa).

(Again: a friend who will stop somebody actually killing you, but won't bother to stop somebody being rude to you? or bullying you? = Not much of a friend. Not much of a way to repay all the years Bucky did that for pre-serum Steve, is it writers? 🤷‍♀️)

Since they never bother to show how/when Steve finds out Bucky is a mind-controlled innocent, nobody therefore ever calls out Sam and Nat for being wrong about him either / for trying to dissuade Steve from helping him. And Sam continues to dehumanize him like a ticking timebomb, even after mind-control / his innocence has been established.

(Contrast: Clint, who tries to kill all of the Avengers while mind-controlled, and Nick Fury and Maria Hill, but is nevertheless welcomed into their ranks with open arms on the very same day. This without question, on the basis of nothing more than a Silent Nod of Approval from Natasha. And they're going to fight... the villain who still has the magic mind-control method, mind you. 🤪

Similarly stupid: to take Bucky to fight the same guy who just established that he can mind-control Bucky at the end of CACW? 🤦‍♀️ Bad enough to pick up the idiot ball, but then you don't even do anything with it? But I digress...)

Back to Steve: he never calls out Sharon for staying in SHIELDra while they were hunting him, Nat and Sam.

(Condoning both her and Peggy in a weirdly inccestuous way, since these idiots writers are so desperate for him to be demonstrably heterosexual, no matter how irrelevant to the plot. The corpse of Compulsory Female Love Interest No.1 hadn't even cooled before she pounced.)

Post-CW Steve never calls out Tony for tying to kill him and Bucky, for refusing to call when Thanos came, for refusing to help them undo the Snap initially, or for monologuing Hydra's rhetoric at him yet again. Just stood there like a plank while Tony hurled RDJ's improved abuse (was CEvans even allowed to improv? I bet it would've been cut if he had.)

And then, when he actually does get to do a thing that is unequivocally good (passing the shield onto Sam) ...they retcon that it was a bad, selfish thing, spread the blame off Steve onto (guess who?) Bucky (of course!) and then make him apologise (of course!)

...But don't hold Steve accountable for ditching Bucky to face the music on his own! (The apparently bad-now music.)

Wtaf, huh?

And that's not how accountability works! Holding white men responsible for specific actions, in-universe, doesn't mean anything if you haven't got the right white guy! Doesn't mean 'pick a random white guy.' Doesn't mean 'pick the only 'non' villain white guy in the cast.'

White character apologising to a black character for what white people generally do to black people = Fine. White guy apologising to a black guy for a specific trespass he did not commit against him? = Nonsense. Cheapens the whole point. If Steve has committed a microaggression it's his job to apologise for it, not Bucky's.

Picture Happy Hogan apologising to Rhodey for Tony gifting him the War Machine suit.

Perfectly valid for Tony to apologise: if gifting the suit had always been framed as a poison chalice for Rhodey (foreshadowing, folks. Basic writing skill.) But not if they had always been like 'hey isn't this War Machine suit great for Rhodey what a heartwarming gift wait no it isn't you bastard, Happy, shame on you for Tony doing that!' 🤔

Of course What If/post-EG skrull Steve has been nothing more than a cringe mirkin for Saint Peggy Sue. Back to being written like a poorly-written female character. 🙄

And all this is presaged by Steve waking up in the future, immediately being lied to by SHIELD, and... coming to work for them anyway? Even though he hates liars?

But he keeps working for them, even after they have lied to him again, and he has discovered it, in A1?

Steve's CATWS line about thinking he could throw himself back in and be happy, serving in SHIELD, makes no damn sense when you consider that he has known SHIELD ain't shit almost since the very moment he awoke in the future.

So actually, seems like canon Steve can ignore plenty! 😬

Much as I nevertheless like MCU Steve -- CEvans' casting and acting choices, his chemistry with his co-stars, his acting correctly (viz against the stupid script), etc. -- when you look at the Cap movie characters and realise just how much they've axed, warped, or insidiously inverted from the source material... it's hard not to see the MCU versions as a real hack job. 😥

[amarriageoftrueminds]

nice things Bucky could’ve done if he’d been rescued earlier in the 20th Century: 

been the one weird ‘young’ friend of all the old howling commandos who people think is one of their grandsons, looking like the Lone Carer looking after all these wild old fogies for the day

seen his folks and sisters again and had tearful family reunions

been ‘Uncle Bucky’ to two generations of their and the howlies’ kids and grandkids

been at Stonewall

hunted Nazis in righteous Jewish style with Magneto and/or Wolverine

accidentally met a bunch of famous people and wound up in the background of candid photos throughout history, looking confused 

planted trees/a big-ass garden and seen it fully grown

early invested in things that later became huge 

early invested in things that famously tanked

picked his haircut in the 1970s and stuck with it

become an accidental Hipster God with retro or vintage everything; (clothes bikes furniture music style) because that’s just what was in the shops when he bought it

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Do you think Nick fury knew about the winter soldier/bucky?

‘Cause we know that p*ggy and h*ward knew about him/heard rumours it was him (what if) and since they were higher ups in shield and Nick was the director from I think 1990’s until shield fell maybe he would have heard the rumours that the others heard.

Well that's really two questions, isn't?

Do you mean, does he know of The Winter Soldier, or did he know that that was Bucky?

Natasha knew about The Winter Soldier, but she didn't know about Bucky, whereas Stark & Carter knew about both (knew that TWS was Bucky) and didn't do anything about it cuz they ain't shit.

Professionally speaking, it is plausible for Nick to know of TWS (just as in the ghost story.)

However, I personally I think he didn't know that TWS was Bucky.

Reasoning:

1) While Fury lies by omission all the time, he's pretty bald faced about coming clean once he has been caught. (It's that honesty about dishonesty which, ironically, makes Steve trust him again... regardless of past sins of omission.) So I think once Steve already knew about Bucky, Fury wouldn't bother to hide the fact that he had known, even if it pissed Steve off. That is consistent with his prior characterisation. He says he didn't know about Bucky (and looks guilty that he didn't find out about Hydra sooner). And I believed him. However... .

2) He very specifically says 'I didn't know about Barnes.' ...Which doesn't mean he didn't know about the Winter Soldier. It's possible he did know of TWS, and knew he was some kind of enhanced zombie-type individual, but didn't know it was Bucky and didn't do anything about helping him. However...

. 3) Fury immediately does something about it when he discovers rotten eggs in SHIELD. To me, that suggests if he had known about Bucky/TWS, he would've done something about it. Plus, Fury's whole shtick is that he is willing to recruit very dangerous and/or enhanced people with shady pasts (such as Natasha) and give them a second chance. Morality aside, if he had known about TWS... I reckon it would be consistent with his prior characterisation to recruit him or imprison him, rather than ignore him.

(If Fury initially believed TWS was an urban legend, that illusion would've been shattered the first time TWS shot Natasha. Possibly Fury himself sent Nat to hunt TWS down, and that's why she was able to tell Steve she had already tried to do so, once, and found it pointless. Maybe she was doing that under Fury's auspices...?)

. 4) While Fury is engaged in taking down Hydra and wants Steve on his side to help, it's actually in his interest to tell Steve that Hydra have his friend captive, if he knows. Despite what Steve accuses Fury of (which really isn't fair, it's Peggy he should be levelling that accusation at) if Fury had known IMO he would have told Steve about Bucky, because it would serve his purposes to do so. (Steve would be DTF Hydra anyway, so they don't need an added incentive to get him on board... but if they did, telling him Hydra have Bucky...?) . 5) (There is a point in the movie, before Nick has discovered the cover-up, possibly isn't suspicious / doesn't want Steve to interfere in Insight yet, at which it would've been in his interest to keep any knowledge of Bucky a secret. But that is not the case by the time Steve accuses him of knowing already. By that time, it would've been in Fury's interest to share that knowledge, if he had it.)

. 6) Fury can know of TWS but he can't know about TWS being Bucky without knowing about the rest of Hydra already. But his discovery of Hydra in CATWS seemed genuine. (We see him reacting negatively to it when he is on his own, not performing a role for someone else.) And he makes Steve aware of classified SHIELDra intel, almost like he's using Steve as a moral litmus test to see whether things really are on the up-and-up or not. Like he already suspected something was fishy. Suspicion requires ignorance and uncertainty; lack of concrete knowledge. Ergo: he didn't know about Hydra / them having Bucky . 7) (This idea, that Stark & Carter knew about TWS, and knew about Bucky being TWS, but not about Hydra? while they were knowingly employing the very Hydra agents responsible for creating TWS, and mind-control, and continuing to develop Hydra tech? Is bullshit. The writers are transparently trying to backpedal, by separating out knowledge of Bucky and TWS from knowledge of the whole, to (ineptly) whitewash their precious Blorbos' part in founding SHIELDra. It's insulting to our intelligence to think we wouldn't catch it.) . 8) Although Fury clearly planned ahead for the possibility of A future assassination attempt, he doesn't appear to have any preparations made to combat an enhanced assassin. I don't think it's consistent with his Machiavellian personality not to plan for an enhanced assassin, if he knew there was one about. If he had had prior warning that the bad guys who were after him had TWS on call, I'm pretty sure Fury could've come up with a vanishing act that didn't require being genuinely shot. (Unlike Stark, Fury being shot by Hydra is actually a huge sign of his trustworthiness on this one issue, LOL.) . 9) And if he had known that the enhanced assassin who just tried to kill him in broad daylight was also Bucky Barnes? Then Steve's apartment is the last place he would go! Unless he went there specifically to tell Steve about Bucky (which he didn't), then that's almost the worst place on earth he could possibly have picked! IMO it's a strong proof that he really truly didn't know TWS was Bucky.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

What do you think about the personality (character) of Howard Stark (young)? At what point did he become a serious prude?

I can't think of any evidence to suggest he has ever become a serious prude anon so idk where you're getting that from.

Are you perhaps getting him mixed up with another character?? 🤷‍♀️

I have big meta on him I did recently:

HERE

And you can find other meta about him round about this tag.

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Cliff notes:

a creep (took indecent photos of women without consent)

a serial liar (too many to list!)

a greedy ruthless thief (AC, IM2).

friends with Hydra/Nazis and similar (IM1, AOU, EG, AM1).

'invents' horrific weapons and stockpiles them (AC)

knew about Bucky and didn't help him, both in main timeline and other universes (CACW, WI.)

also a bad father by the way Jr describes him (IM2).

Tries to paint his relationship to Steve in a better light than it really had in CATFA.

(IDK why this guy looked sad in the boat at the end; he's the guy sneering that a transponder is more trustworthy than Steve, questioning whether they should believe what Steve says about tesseract energy (in front of Steve's boss), sneering about Steve to his assistants / behind his back, etc. Didn't show up for the Valkyrie mission when everyone else was going (suspicious). He and Steve only spoke directly on 2 days total (not counting the 3 occasions he addressed a group Steve was part of), 3 if you include the deleted scene. And most of it was talking shit about him, even to his face. He was not nice to Steve. He was barely civil. Explains why Steve wasn't enthusiastic about Jr. tho... 🤔)

Apparently made shit up about Steve and Peggy (to make it sound as if they were both more important to the Great Captain America??) and passed it into his Butler. (What he describes of their relationship not only isn't true but isn't physically possible given the timeframe and the plot of CATFA wouldn't function if it were true. Meta on that here.)

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TL;DR: What do I think of him? As I said in the other ask: not much.

[amarriageoftrueminds]

What do you think about Howard Stark? Describe his character please. This character seems multi-faceted. Sometimes in the series Agent Carter he was shown as “stupid”, but if he really was like that, how would he have achieved all this...

Short Answer:

L o n g Answer:

The basis of the assertion that Howard Stark is smart is this idea of him as a genius inventor, right? Well, I can't speak to the comics, but the MCU's versions of the Starks aren't, actually, inventors. They're thieves. They are your standard billionaire tycoons who hire the actually-inventive people, of lower SEC, take the intellectual and intellectual property credit for whatever they invent, (do 12% of the work?), and then rake in the cash and acclaim. (And if said invention doesn't work, or proves disastrously dangerous in an unanticipated way, well, that's other peoples' fault). Basically, the problem is: Because we know Howard is a liar and a thief [see below], and rich enough to have scientists working under him and to be able to cover up his crimes, any time Howard claims to have invented something we have to take that with a massive pinch of salt. Which means (if we're engaging in good faith critical thinking, here) that we should also approach any claims of genius with a similar level of skepticism.

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CATFA:

So, from the beginning, what do we have in CATFA that "shows" Howard being a genius?

Prototype Hovercar / gravitic reversion technology, that immediately fails. (No proof that that was Howard's invention and not an SEI -- a Stark-Employee's Invention. Either way, Howard would be taking credit for it. If it was Howards invention... then he's inept, because it immediately fails. And Howard is doing what Tony does; putting on a big show to the public to show off how great he is. That's a grifter's move, not a scientist's. He could be just another Elon Musk; bought someone else's design for a car, and then fucked it up.)

The vitaray tube (which Stark is in charge of, and flipping the switches on... but he is also surrounded by technicians and other scientists, including Erskine. Who's to say it wasn't one of them who invented it, and Stark is just taking credit -- because that's his go-to move? Him being a wealthy industrialist provides an instant explanation for him being involved, even if he never personally lifted a finger. (Again: Musk.) Stark inventing it may be what M&M intended to Tell... but it's not what they've actually Shown. The Army's "number one weapons contractor" has no reason to be there as an inventor, because nothing they're working on is a weapon?? In fact, since Erskine has created a version of the serum which requires vitaradiation, isn't it most likely it was Erskine who designed the vitaray tube, without which this version of serum would be much less effective? Just because Stark is in the room with the vitaray tube, and in charge of operating it, that doesn't prove he invented it -- any more than Rhodey invented the War Machine suit.)

Stark saying "speaking modestly, I'm the best mechanical engineer in this country..." (Which is still a Tell not a Show, but I think we can take him being a mechanical engineer as true because if it was false the other (scientist) characters would know... However, it is still not impossible that this is Musk-esque, 'delulu billionaire calling himself X because he can pay people not to contradict him' syndrome. Calling himself the best is typical Stark hubris, and we have seen nothing yet to support it.)

"...but I don't know what's inside this thing or how it works." (Which would seem to undermine any claims to genius. However, if being flummoxed is because Zola has the tesseract to study whereas Stark doesn't, then this rare moment of admitted ignorance doesn't actually contradict the idea that Stark is a smart guy!!)

Possibly a transponder, which also immediately fails because it's not bullet proof. (When Steve queries it, ignoring Peggy, Howard merely says "it's been tested more than you, pal." Which doesn't prove that it has been / that he's telling the truth, but if he is then that only proves that he know that particular design has been tested, not that he invented it, and/or he is touchy about skepticism because he sees it as his -- whether it is or not. Oof this is confusing. 😵)

Howard diving for cover when Peggy, throwing a tantrum, fires a gun at Steve while he's holding a vibranium shield (Despite what Tony tries to claim, that shield is not Howard's discovery, that's Wakanda's. How did Howard get hold of that vibranium, legally? why doesn't he want Steve picking up that shield? is it basic greed? why is he ducking for cover? is it because he doesn't know the vibranium will protect them, or because he doesn't trust Peggy's aim, or both? if the former, why does the man taking credit for the vibranium shield, who was just talking about its properties, not act as if he knows its properties??)

a cut to Steve having a new suit design after talking to Howard about it (but Steve himself says those were his ideas -- perhaps they were even Bucky's ideas, since he was the one urging Steve to keep "the outfit." And Howard is surrounded by other scientists. We have no way to say which one of them came up with Steve's suit, including Howard. It would be more accurate to say Stark has the resources to have a suit made for Steve, than that he is the originator of said suit.)

A magnetic anti-tank bomb used by Jacques Dernier (again, we don't know who came up with that; could've been Dernier himself. Nothing in the movie actually shows or tells us it's SSR tech. So we could assume it's SSR / Stark tech, but we don't actually know. And even if it was, that doesn't make it Therefore Stark's invention. Even if he said it is. Which he doesn't. 🤦‍♀️)

Steve's booby-trapped harley davidsons (Again: we don't know for sure those are Stark tech. Hydra are shown on motorcycles so it could be another stolen design / We do know Stark would take credit either way. Tony having his own fancy samurai chopper in his garage in the present-day also doesn't prove it, either. He could just like harleys?? To me the biggest piece of 'evidence' that these might be Stark originals is how flashy they are? 🤔 And/or the way Steve tosses them aside like trash LOLOL. 😂)

Howard finding the dropped tesseract / having technology which could detect the tesseract (This is coming straight after the Valkyrie raid and/or Zola's capture, so it could be that Zola and Red Skull, himself a scientist, had invented something to detect that gamma radiation, and Howard just purloined it. It's not impossible that Howard invented something to do this job... but that's just not what's shown. You could also see this scene as evidence of navigational talent by the guys actually piloting the ship, not a sign of Howard's competence, for example. Even if they found the tesseract because of re-tracing the Valkyrie's flight path exactly, that could've been accomplished because of Hydra records from the base, not because of Howard's genius. We just don't know. 🤷‍♀️ Howard being present while something clever may (or may not) be happening isn't proof he's responsible for it.)

TL;DR: CATFA writers are BAD at showing genius instead of telling.

sidenote: all of CATFA + deleted scenes included, Stark was actually a dick to Steve. Repeatedly sneered at him -- to his face, behind his back, and in front of his boss -- and questioned his intelligence and competence, despite being baffled by the same things as him. This idea of him and Steve as friends is a retcon from AC, to try and bolster the Stark mythos, just as with Peggy's whole career leapfrogging off being 'Cap's Girl' in her own mythology / stealing Bucky's valour, etc. Steve and Stark in CATFA were barely civil. (You can see they started this retcon post Avengers 1, because in that movie Steve has a bitch-face on the second he hears the name 'Stark' from Fury, criticises Howard's actions with the Tesseract, and dislikes his son Tony on sight -- which is mutual.)

. So are there any inventions we can definitely say are Howard's?

Agent Carter:

Has been declared non-canon (most of it can't be, if you consider the timeline is impossible). And tbh Anon, to do a deep dive on Howard I'd have to re-watch the Agent Carter show, and (to borrow an earthy phrase of my father's) I'd rather put my dick in a vice. 😬 But for argument's sake / from memory we have:

1) Howard claiming Steve as one of his accomplishments (not, for example, Steve's own? or Abraham Erskine's? Which is funny, cuz in CATFA Howard was being nice-ish to Steve's face, but then talking shit about him behind his back. Before handing over Steve's shield / discussing suit designs with him, Stark was busy sneering to one of his lackeys that he bets Steve didn't notice a certain property of the tesseract tech… the tech which Steve himself had captured for them, without getting blown up like Howard does, even despite being shot at. So how's about you show some gratitude, Howard? Or some basic professional courtesy? Ah, but that would mean giving other people credit...)

2) Finished Hovercar (Still breaks down. Stark is shown working on it when it breaks down, though? An improved version using a '62 Chevy Corvette appears in AOS… but who knows who was responsible for those improvements. It's credited to Stark, by Stark, but what does that prove??)

3) Midnight Oil. (Not proven as Stark's invention, merely taken from Stark's lab, and from the vault underneath his mansion. Could've been one of his underling's inventions and he'd still say it was his. In fact, when asked "you invented a poison gas?" he says "No! Well, not intentionally." But, interestingly, then goes off on a tangent without confirming that it was he, himself, that discovered it. I'm reading a book about Operation Paperclip currently, and this reminds me of the way Nazis talked about their discoveries... if it was something bad, it was never them personally who did it. IMO, this is nevertheless the closest to painting Stark as a plausible 'inventor' we ever come. Not the genius who thinks of things, but the wealthy opportunist who accidentally blunders across things while researching unrelated things in his lab... things which may or may not have been invented by someone else. We have Howard claiming he severed ties with the US Army after this. But he's fine for the psychochemical gas to be handed over to a US alphabet agency... co-founded by a US Army Colonel. How is this severing ties??)

4) Stark Heat Vest (made of an alloy, insert [who in the Stark Labs really invented it? we don't know!! disclaimer] Which transforms into a suicide vest when you lock it. Another example of one of "Howard's" inventions being dangerous ill-conceived.)

5) Constrictor (a back massager which causes involuntary muscle contraction to the point of breaking bones. Another fuck up. Again, it's stored in Howard's property -- his yacht, The Heartbreak -- and credited to him, but is it really his tho? And if it is, that's not an accomplishment.)

6) Blitzkrieg Button (not actually an invention, but a container for the last vial of Steve's blood. So: a. Stark will canonically LIE and claim to have invented a thing, b. that doesn't even exist, c. to cover up the fact that he's a thief, meaning: d. Stark is genuinely talented at creating 'fake' inventions?? e. Stark wants Steve's blood to make money. (They tried to frame this as Peggy being tired of compromising her principles for him. LOLOL 😭 What principles?? She doesn't take Steve's blood off Stark, she lets him take it!)

7) Electroshocker (Ohhhh, this from the guy who knew what was being done to Bucky -- ie. being electroshocked?? And no one can work out what the purpose of this device is?? Do I have to draw a diagram of why this is suspicious??)

8) Camera pen (Hardly unique to Stark, but once again: just because he owns the rights, doesn't make it his invention, even if he says it is. And he uses it to take indecent pictures of women without their knowledge or consent. JFC...)

9) Photonic Amplifier (usual insert [who in the Stark Labs really invented it? we don't know!! disclaimer] problem. The sheer number of things he's crediting himself with inventing, by the way, is actually more of an indication that he's probably just taking credit from someone else. If they'd only said he invented one or two things...)

10) Gamma Cannon (insert [who in the Stark Labs really invented it? we don't know!! disclaimer] problem; Howard sends the specs code for it for it via telegram, but that doesn't prove he invented it. Oyvey. He does take time out to try and come up with a name for the rift-generator tho... which he stole.)

11) Jitterbug (insert [who in the Stark Labs really invented it? we don't know!! disclaimer] problem, Stark's Butler knowing the codes to use it still doesn't prove Stark invented it.)

12) Nitramene (Quote from the show: "Howard is working on a formula for molecular nitramene [...] Supposedly, it has its roots in his work with vita radiation." a. What do you mean "supposedly?" (Word doing a lot of heavy lifting there). b. What do you mean "with" vitaradiation? Not on? c. What work? Genuinely. Erskine is the one who invented serum that requires vitaradiation, not Stark. Nothing in CATFA credits Stark with coming up with that idea, not even Stark himself, and there is no pre-Steve vitaradiation-related invention mentioned to account for why Stark would know about/be working on it already. (Could the hovercar perhaps be vitaradiation related somehow? But even then, that doesn't prove it's Stark's expertise.) The person actually most-likely to know about radiation other than Erskine would be Zola, the tesseract guy, whom they conveniently do not mention. d. So this is a second-hand account?

13) And when you say "Howard" is working on it, do you mean Howard, or Howard's employees?

14) "My formula for molecular nitramene. Technically, we're not even sure it works, but, well, let's face it… I invented it, so it works" Notice the pronouns? Unless Howard has suddenly started using the Royal We, mid-sentence, notice the switcheroo there? One second it's Howard's formula, but as soon as doubt is introduced it's "we" who aren't sure about it. Who's this mysterious we, Howard? I thought you just said it was your formula?? How could the guy who invented it not know if it works? Notice how it's only his alone if he's taking credit for something that works / is successful, rather than blame, and how he's hedging -- giving himself a get-out-of-jail-free excuse, in advance -- in case it doesn't work? (If it fails well 'we' weren't sure about it; if it works 'I' alone invented it.) And it's Edwin Jarvis, a Butler, who knows how to neutralise it, "render it inert with a solution of sodium hydrogen carbonate and acetate." Does that 'prove' Edwin Jarvis is a genius inventor? No, of course not. It's just supposed to prove that he merely... works for... a genius inventor. AND GUESS WHO SHOWS UP in connection with Nitramene? 👇

15) Anton Vanko, the man Howard stole the arc reactor design from, as revealed in Iron Man 2, and whom Howard had deported and reduced to penury so he could do that! That's The invention that basically made Stark Industries!

16) And Anton Vanko is also, coincidentally, linked to this other huge invention Howard is crediting as his own? And it's Vanko who knows that Nitramene emits vitaradiation? If Howard is the so-called vitaradiation expert... why isn't it him telling Peggy that?)

Even if they had showed a hundred inventions of Howard's in AC, the fact that they also establish him as a greedy, unscrupulous liar and a thief of other peoples' work makes any other "true" claims suspect. TL;DR: AC writers are BAD at showing genius instead of telling.

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Sidenote: I've commented before how AC is basically inept writers furiously trying to retcon the inept writing of Peggy in CATFA and make out like they wrote a good female character when they didn't (largely by stealing all Bucky's traits and giving them to her. As if that's what the issue was.)

But there's also a disquieting disparity between Howard Stark in CATFA and AC that I never noticed before.

In CATFA, he's referred to as a "weapons contractor."

And yet none of the technology he's connected to in CATFA is actually a weapon.

(With the possible exception of the flamethrowers on the Harley WLAs. Putting magnets on a pre-existing tank bomb doesn't count, IMO).

But by the time of AC, only a year later, we're hearing about these hideous inventions Stark claims he created (and claims to regret) which were used in the war.

There's a direct throughline from his fascination with the tesseract to the Hydra-guns and iron-man like suits Steve was so appalled to find in SHIELD's arsenal in Avengers 1, just like what killed Bucky, and which he the Howlies were forced to make in Zola's POW camp (violating the Geneva Conventions, fyi).

And yet, during the war, Steve somehow saw none of these devices of Stark's?

And there was no hint of Stark's thievery back then, either?

...Now isn't that odd.

Was the guy who sneered at Steve behind his back, perhaps, also hiding other things from him as well?

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Iron Man 2:

First: stealing from Anton Vanko.

Outrageously, they try and frame Howard (of all people!) as objecting to making money off the arc reactor design...

When he then stole from Vanko, had him deported for wanting to make money off it, and then... made money off it himself.

Second: we have Howard building into the design of the Stark Expo the secret to an unknown element (I think Tony tried to get it named Badassium) he claims he discovered. (Seriously, guys, pick a fucking lane, is Howard a weapons contractor industrialist, a mechanical engineer, a geneticist, or a chemist, which is it?) Hypothetically, if Nitramene was actually Anton Vanko's discovery (or some unnamed other Stark lackey), and he also invented the arc reactor... isn't there a much greater likelihood that it was he who discovered the arc-reactor-saving unknown element? (And the reason Vanko's son doesn't know would even be the same reason why Howard's son doesn't know: because the technology to synthesise that element hadn't been created yet. And/or because Vanko has become a sad alcoholic, in no condition to think clearly.) Once again, we only have Howard The Lying Thief's word for it that Badassium was his discovery, in the movie where we find out he steals other peoples' ideas and takes the credit.

Yeah. I'll take that with a huge pinch of salt, thanks.

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Elsewhere:

There's a serial pattern with Iron Man villains where they're basically just Tony but with protagonist-centered-morality declaring whatever Tony does only bad if it's bad guys doing it. And Tony and Howard are cut from the same cloth. So Obadiah Stane? That's Howard. (How much more powerful that story would've been if they went there!) Anton Vanko? That's Howard's demon. Justin Hammer? Doing exactly what Howard did -- ripping off someone else's work, including his own employee's, and selling it to the US military. (We even have the like-for-like moment where Justin Hammer tries to do a showy demonstration of "his" invention, and it goes disastrously wrong... because he doesn't actually understand what it is he's trying to pass off as his own. So he has to hire someone who does -- ie. Anton Vanko.)

Shout out to Quentin Beck, Aldrich Killian, Adrian Toomes, Tinkerer.

Why are we supposed to see all these people as villains and dilettantes, not geniuses, but not Howard Stark for doing the same thing? It's just protagonist-centered morality. Even Wernher von Braun, who is alluded to in IM3. They try to paint him as a "starry-eyed" scientist who just wanted to do space travel uwu 🥺 (Definitely not because of Walt Disney making movies with him at all honestly!!) In fact, von Braun was a high-ranking Nazi in the SS. He was nominated for SS membership by Heinrich Himmler. He was decorated by Hitler himself (you can see in photos of him wearing a golden badge on his tie... that's from Hitler). He was in charge of his own concentration camp (Mittelwerk Nordhausen-Dora) full of slaves supplied by the SS, at a rent of 3 marks per day, and created to build V-2 rockets, in an underground bunker just like Camp Lehigh had. (Krausberg and the Valkyrie base in CATFA could've been lifted straight from his story!) 20,000+ people died in Nordhausen-Dora. And von Braun went personally to Buchenwald concentration camp (after penning a cheery letter about it), which was only 50 miles away, to hand-pick skilled slaves to build a lab for himself. And then, despite all this, he was sent to the US under Operation Paperclip. And the guys that worked with him on rockets?

That's what Howard did with Zola.

Zola is the von Braun to Howard's Walt Disney.

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Ant Man

And then there is the twin example of Hank Pym and Mitchell Carson. In What If...? when Hank Pym and Howard Stark are co-founding SHIELD (but not Peggy), there are no Nazis in it (this is also a consequence of Steve and Bucky still being around to nip that in the bud. They did their professed job, unlike Peggy.) But in Ant Man, Hank Pym is shown confronting his colleagues about unethical behaviour (that being: a Hydra agent stealing his inventions), and leaving SHIELDra in protest...

But Howard Stark (surprise surprise!) is happy to stay.

And, obviously, has no problem with stealing other peoples' ideas.

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Endgame

Flashforward, and Stark is wandering round a "quasi-fascistic" (his own son's words!) black site, looking for his buddy "Arnie" (Arnim Zola, the Nazi rocket scientist who also tortured American POWS and utilised them as slave labour till they could be worked to death and replaced: "...use up what strength they have left, Doctor. There are always more workers.") And letting this random Tony Potts guy wander off with the suitcase containing the tesseract.

And he is shown doing this, right next to the computer that will be housing Zola's brain, in the future:

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What If...?

The mecha ('Hydra stomper') suits shown as Howard's in What If...? were actually Zola's creation in CATFA, not Howards.

Even the writers will steal other peoples' ideas to give them to Howard! (Even A.I. is first shown in connection with Zola, not Tony). In regards to his general character, here's a meta about how Howard definitely knew about what was being done to Bucky in the main timeline / CACW. (Mr Professional Thief has WS serum in his trunk, which he apparently got after "a quick stop ... at the Pentagon." And AC proves he would steal even from his own 'side' to try and make money off serum. That to me makes it obvious why Hydra killed him: because he's a greedy thief, not because he's anti-Hydra. He was fleeing with his loot to the Bahamas, at Christmas...) Here's a meta about how What If...? s2 confirmed that he knew. And here's meta on how What If...? s2 SHOWED that Howard would have no problems using Bucky exactly the same way Hydra did (while dehumanizing him. As long as it's convenient.)

.

Conclusion

So, Anon... you say Stark is multifaceted. I'd say, sure he is. He is, after all, a bastard on many levels. (Absolutely valid writing decision. Simultaneously claiming he isn't, though? That's a nonsense writing choice.) You say he couldn't achieve what he achieved if he wasn't smart. I'd say: sure he's smart! Canonically, he has a talent for lying and charming and stealing, (not only lying but lying convincingly to professional liars, whose job it is to detect liars), abusing/exploiting women, kinda slut-shaming women too (how many names has he dropped? what was the purpose of his fondue comment?), abusing his position of power to destroy his victims, and to cover up his crimes, taking credit for other peoples' work, ignoring human suffering when it suits him, and collaborating with Nazis. And of course, the most important thing: putting on a show! But none of those things takes a genius... 😕

.

tl;dr: I know it was the writers intention to depict Howard as a genius inventor who got along with Steve, but they are inept at actually doing that because they give him traits and patterns of behaviour which call this into question (thievery, lying, treachery, greed, arrogance, self-aggrandizement, talking shit about Steve both to his face and behind his back, etc.)

[amarriageoftrueminds]

Besides Abraham Erskine's unexpected death, I know that Howard Stark is an unextremely unlikable character, but even I think Peggy had something to do with his and Maria's deaths. AND the people who are most suspicious about Hydra are also assassinated or almost assassinated (Daniel Sousa, Nick Fury). Meanwhile, Peggy gets away scott free. Ummm... Peggy is DEFINITELY meant to be Madame Hydra. If we only got the Serpent Society movie instead of Civil War 😐 She really killed a lot of people just to accomplish her goals..

My headcanon about Howard and Maria is that Hydra was undergoing an internal power-struggle surrounding the dissolution of the Soviet Union (as if it was previously one org with two separate branches about to become one big global org). And Stark had successfully replicated superserum and put Zola's mind on tape (the real brain of the outfit) ...perhaps meaning he had outlived his own usefulness to Hydra.

So someone ordered the Starks got rid of to open up room at the top in 1991 -- either Peggy or SHIELD's Head of Defense, Mitchell Carson (shown alongside her and Stark in 1989, in Ant Man, when Howard clearly disliked him... so she must have hired him!) .

(Side headcanon: Maria Stark was a chemist who actually replicated the serum for SHIELDra, but in typical Stark style Howard took all the credit.)

By this time, they said in AOS that Pierce was Undersecretary of the World Security Council and doing SHIELDra things (transparently as a way to try and make Peggy sound non-culpable.)

But instead AOS showed Peggy was definitely leading SHIELDra the same year SS Officer and torturer Werner Reinhardt got released, and apparently did nothing to stop that. 🤦‍♀️

(So Stark's dead by 1992.

Peggy gets to retire in suspicious peace. Which is funny cuz her own show said "a boring life is a privilege." 🤔

By 1995 there was a SHIELDra "cognitive research facility" called the North Institute in Ohio, with Winter Soldier mind-control tech research there.

Which we know cuz Nat's "family" stole it for use mind-controlling Black Widows.

And meanwhile, Nick Fury was still a lowly SHIELD agent under new SHIELD Director Keller, bumping into Skrulls and such).

But yeah Peggy's soo Margaret Thatcher coded and Atwell has aaall the arrogance to pull off a villain. It would've been perfect!

[amarriageoftrueminds]

I'm convinced that miss Brexit herself knew about Bucky being TWS and probably saw him in that chair, looked him in the eye, and said nothing. And knowing what I know about her, she probably had a sick thrill seeing the person Steve wanted more than her beaten down and brutalised. It makes me furious.

*EDIT*

What If...? season 2 confirmed she did know, and would have no problem using Bucky as Hydra did.

.

Original answer:

She may be stupid and oblivious...

(see, eg: not being able to spot a real spy outside a secret lab, not being able to spot that a real spy is living next door until they're kissing her on the mouth, needing to have how many sides a cube has explained to her, needing Jarvis to explain that she shouldn't throw a large heavy object out of a window while she's handcuffed to it, not understanding how interrogation / lying works in her short film, etc. etc.)

...But she's far too nosy not to find out for decades!

Especially not when Howard already knows (meta here and here), and Zola's working in the same place as her, under her employ (which she insisted nobody else but she had control over, in her Ant Man cameo... where she's working with another Hydra agent, Mitchell Carson).

And when she is personally, singularly responsible for hiring not just Zola but the other Hydra scientist personally responsible for the WS mind-control program (Johann Fennhoff).

Unlike her irrelevance to Steve's story, (that 'failing the sexy lamp test' I've banged on about before), she is absolutely instrumental in bringing about Bucky's WS arc. In fact, if you deleted the character entirely, Steve's arc would be no different at all but Bucky's would be immeasurably improved!

(And her being instrumental in the WS program creation means, as a knock on consequence, that if you delete her you'd also free a lot of the Black Widows, and possibly also Taskmaster, since Dreykov was only able to keep them enslaved with research stolen from the WS program. Yikes. And she's known about the Red Room child victims already since the 1940s.)

Her What If episode has Peggy casually hinting at having tortured Zola... whom she happily works with in her next What If episode. And that Ant Man cameo has her telling SS Officer Werner Reinhardt/Daniel Whitehall that she considers his work "valuable" and worth hiring him for (in the exact circumstances she worked with Zola in What If). And Reinhardt later goes on to torture people (though no doubt he had tortured people already during the war). So canon strongly suggests she's got no problems with torture.

And if Howard was there with his buddy 'Arnie', torturing Bucky, (pretty likely, since he's the one with WS in the 90s) the way Peggy lets Howard get away with doing bad things without criticism in CATFA, (which they ineptly tried to retcon in her show), suggests she'd just do the same over.

To play devil's advocate for a moment, though:

Due to the strong vein of misogyny that runs through the writing of this character (AKA, men writing what they think are strong female characters), there is a certain amount of evidence to support a reading where Peggy really is just an oblivious posh twerp?

A white feminist nepobaby glass ceiling hire, brought in under the auspices of Daddy / Daddy's Friend the Senator / Fiancee in Home Office / Brother in Old Boys Network / Millionaire Sugar Daddy / dining out off Alleged Ex Flame's Fame, etc. Basically just there to catch the heat for the men who don't listen to her (the real movers and shakers), because she's conveniently stupid and well connected, and too arrogant to believe that anybody else could possibly be in charge while she's around.

But her serial incompetence is more an accident of the writing than what they were actually aiming for. What they were aiming for, and think they've achieved, is 'Peggy is the boss of Everyone and can do everything the men can do, backwards in high heels!!' Where 'everything' means 'decades of Nazi collaboration and condoning torture.' 😬

Her own show demonstrates that she's happy to free villains and work with them, multiple times (or perhaps, that she's stupid enough to fall for it when villains transparently goad her into freeing them? 🤔). Because she cares most about her own pride; about showing off and looking good ('I, however, am not afraid of you') so as not to be thought inferior to the men whose respect she can't admit she desperately craves. Far more important than something boring like keeping people safe, or doing her actual job. 🥱 Beneath her dignity!

(Try to picture consummate spy Natasha doing any of this! Or Coulson! 😂)

So, if you did believe in an an 'oblivious bullying posh idiot / scapegoat hire' reading, I can easily see a scenario where Peggy finds out that Bucky is alive, and is being tortured, and simply has no problem with it just because some SHIELDra employee tells her he's a Bad Man.

She never knew Steve or Steve's friends well enough to see the nonsense in that, after all. And according to her show, the only reason Steve himself had any moral sense, she believes, is because she was there to provide him 'courage, strategy, and moral guidance.'

(The fact that Steve always did the exact bleedin' diametric opposite of whatever she said, if he listened at all... doesn't seem to have occurred to her?? 🤔)

So can't you just picture a scene where she, Saint Margaret, sanctimoniously lectures poor Bucky on being a terrible person, while he's strapped into the electric chair, not understanding who she is or what he's done wrong? 😥 (No doubt followed by her flouncing off dramatically, thinking she's done the Men's Job for them.)

Canonically, as per CATFA, she lacks the requisite humility and common sense to realise that someone (anyone!) could matter more to Steve than her (which, after all, isn't hard; they never even went on a date.) But there's something about the sinister way they have her stepping into Bucky's shoes, even taking over his war record, without ever mentioning him (other than to sneer at a radio show character with his story but her name).

A Watsonian explanation of this is that, subconsciously, Peggy does recognise Bucky's greater importance to Steve, and wishes he had never existed. Probably the Rat writers projecting onto her! 🙄

[amarriageoftrueminds]

You mentioned in a recent post the theory that Howard stark knew the winter soldiers identity. I’ve thought about that possibility before as well. I wondered if you have further “evidence” for this besides how easily he recognized Bucky during the car crash? I feel like there’s more that I can’t think of

(👉post ref'd here👈)

I've never done any meta on that (maybe there is more evidence but I'm not really au fais w/ HS's canon appearances so I can't say. Maybe someone who's thought about this more deeply could jump in in the notes?)

A couple of points on this:

1)

Someone did point out the other day that Stark and Peggy had access to Zola's mind (his brain/computer) from the 1970s.

And he knew Bucky's identity, making it possible and even likely for them to know as of then, at least, if they didn't already.

It's hard to believe either would do anything about it if they did know, before.

As per AC show, Peggy knew about similar things happening to little girls, from the 1940s on, and didn't do anything about it (the Red Room). Instead she hired the scientist they found at the Red Room. 🤦‍♀️ (Bad Spying 101.)

So why would she and Stark go out of their way to help the man whose very existence is such a threat to the myth that they have built around themselves and continue to dine out off? (ie. that they are Good Noble Antifa people who knew Captain America, personally. 😌)

The Soldier's treatment on their watch (the proof of Hydra's continued existence; their complicity and incompetence) and Bucky's personal history with Steve would put the lie to their claims, and torpedo what they really value; their image.

They wouldn't help Bucky if they did know.

UPDATE: I was right! D+ What If...? season 2 confirmed that Peggy and Howard knew Bucky was The Winter Soldier for years and never did anything about it / anything to help him. (Funny how I only have to ask 'hmm... what would a complete bastard do?' to accurately predict future plot developments for these two.)

2)

The last of Steve's blood was destroyed in the AC show, so how else did Howard get new samples? (In order to recreate the serum himself and/or work with someone else who already did that, viz his buddy 'Arnie' Zola) unless they were provided to him by buddy 'Arnie' Zola?

Where did Howard think this (fresh blood, many decades later) came from?

(Bucky and Isaiah are the only possible living sources for samples. So he had to know at least one person was being tortured by Hydra.)

3)

But: Hydra sent the Winter Soldier to kill Howard... without his face-obscuring muzzle on.

Why?

Why would they stop hiding his identity, suddenly, and never do that on any other occasion, unless they already knew it was a moot point? (i.e. because Howard already knew who he was, so there was no point concealing it?)

I mean, they had him muzzled to go kill Fury and complete strangers, who wouldn't even have recognised his face, so why unmask for Howard?

4)

Why did Howard not sound surprised to see 'Sergeant Barnes' (whom he easily identified when even Steve himself couldn't) but merely... resigned?

Why would Howard be unsurprised (viz. expecting) that Sergeant Barnes specifically would be coming to kill him, after he had acquired Winter Soldier serum samples from... Somebody?

5)

How did Howard recognise the Winter Soldier as Bucky, in the dark, while disorientated from a head wound, with blood in his eyes, and Bucky's long hair in his face, and him looking drastically different from how he used to look, more than fifty years after Bucky is supposed to be dead...

and when Howard is never actually shown meeting Bucky?

6)

Bucky's arm is made by Hydra out of vibranium.

(We know it is, because in CACW T'Challa reacts with shock and horror when he sees it up close; he is visibly taken aback.)

How did Hydra get that vibranium?

Are we supposed to believe that zealously-isolationist Wakanda would willingly hand over its most precious commodity to an American intelligence agency?

(What If...? tried to claim this. Utter Imperialist OOC nonsense.)

Isn't the unlikelihood of this like a major plot point in both Black Panther (and rumoured to be relevant to future MCU film plots?)

The only person outside Wakanda shown having access to vibranium, during the period when Bucky's arm was created, is Howard Stark. (And post Howard Stark, the only people with vibranium outside Wakanda are outright villains.)

It's the most valuable metal on the planet. Is Howard, who has some, likely to let someone else take that much vibranium off him without even being shown what it's going to be used for?

Also, the only person shown making mecha designs during that period, is not a Stark -- it's Arnim Zola.

But then What If had (guess who?) Howard Stark doing mecha designs during WW2. Which would make him even more likely to be the original designer of Bucky's arm. 🤦‍♀️