With just hours to go until the series premiere of What If... ?, we were recently able to sit down with director Bryan Andrews and writer A.C. Bradley to get some much-needed intel on arguably the most inventive and wholly original Marvel Studios production yet.
As revealed in the trailer, the first episode retells the story of Captain America: The First Avenger with one key alteration, as The Watcher (Jeffrey Wright) asks the question, what if Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) was the one injected with the super soldier serum, not Steve Rogers (Josh Keaton)?
Bradley broke down the first episode for us and explained why the premiere stays more true to the source material, especially in comparison the later episodes which take much grander leaps to twist the MCU timeline into unforeseen directions. She emphatically notes that Steve and Peggy's romance was crucial to the story she wanted to tell, and explains why not even the multiverse could split up the two soulmates.
"For the first episode, we knew we wanted to stick a little bit closer to one of the movies than we do in other episodes, kind of introduce the audience to the world and to the show and get their feet wet, and when it comes to the love story of Peggy and Steve - Sorry Bucky, we can’t split them up, come on, and we knew we wanted to keep Steve Rogers around cause that’s Peggy’s heart, that’s the love of her life, and I don’t want to do dark, angry, sad Peggy, not in my first episode.
So, the challenge with that one was trying to figure out how would Peggy get the super soldier serum and then I went right back to the source material, and then there’s that great moment in Project Rebirth where Erskine asks her to wait in the booth and it’s not a mean sentence, it’s kind of just a throwaway line by Stanley Tucci, but it gave me an opportunity to actually say something not just about Peggy Carter, but about the world in general, which is, if you want to change the world, you have got to let the woman in the room, the woman stays in the room, the impossible can happen.
And, what’s great about Peggy Carter is that she was a woman who always knew her worth, knew what she was capable of, and this Captain Carter episode is kind of showcasing, given the opportunity, she can handle that shield as great as any man."