We last saw Chris Evans' Steve Rogers at the end of Avengers: Endgame. After returning from a timeline where he got his happy ending with Peggy Carter, Captain America returned to the present day as an old man and presented Sam Wilson with a new shield.
Since then, we've heard that Steve is "gone," though it's not been made clear whether the Avenger retired or died (the Statue of Liberty being turned into a tribute to him seems to suggest the latter is more likely).
Steve didn't show up in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier or Captain America: Brave New World, though some unused set designs for the latter appear to confirm that a cameo was at least considered.
Artist Daniel Jennings explains, "I moved onto Sam's family shrimp boat from Winter Warrior. Winter Warrior used an actual shrimp boat, but as this featured a poker game between three generations of Captain America, we needed more flexibility."
"Three generations of Captain America" must have been Isaiah Bradley, Steve Rogers, and Sam Wilson. However, we suppose it's possible that Eli Bradley was going to be the third man had Marvel Studios decided to take him down the Patriot route.
Jennings reflected on his work on Captain America: Brave New World and explained how little of his work made it to the screen:
"Captain America: Brave New World was probably one of the most beautiful movies of the Marvel franchise I have seen (I may be a bit biased here), but it was odd. I know. I start a lot of these blurbs with that sentence, and there is no such thing as a 'typical' movie. Each has its own quirks, and this goes double for Marvel Universe movies. But this Marvel movie was odd, even for a Marvel movie."
"Out of nine epic sets I did, only one made it to the screen. It’s not unusual for producers and directors to drop concepts they love mid-stream. Sometimes they see the price tag and balk; or they realize the scene, as written, could be 'better'. But in this movie, we had a lot more of that than normal. As a department, we designed three or four versions of the same movie, all told, and each one was incredible."
"What we wound up with was lovely, but the versions in the alternate universes were just as good, leading us as a department to speculate, one bibulous evening, on what the show would have been if our favorite sets (read: the sets we had personally worked on) had made the cut. So, direct from the Limbo of Lost Sets, I present Captain America as you have never seen it. The greatest show that never was..."
The artist saying, "We designed three or four versions of the same movie," is very telling and indicative of what Captain America: Brave New World went through courtesy of frequent script changes and reshoots.
You can see more of Jennings's work by following the link in the X post below.