Marvel’s Phase II looks mighty, an adjective that has served the comic-book behemoth well over its lifetime. But the Phase II movie I’m most eagerly anticipating easily has to be Captain America: The Winter Soldier because there are so many juicy questions surrounding its existence that still need to be answered. Tony Stark for example, always has Pepper Potts and his Malibu mansion to fall back on (for the time being, at least), and Thor’s able to return to Asgard and find peace. Cap, however, is a hero out of time, and I’m dying to see how the writers of Winter Soldier resolve their fractured timeline.
Over the weekend, original Cap co-star Toby Jones leaked a little bit of information that makes the solution to the sequel’s problems a little more clear … and a little more muddy. He tells HeyYouGuys that he is coming back for the sequel. You can hear him say it at the end of this clip. We’ll discuss why that’s a huge problem after the interview:
Part of me wonders how Winter Soldier will bridge Steve Rogers’ war-time adventures with his current isolation on our contemporary time. Now, no one says you even have to. Captain America became a contemporary hero in the Marvel books, and Joss Whedon’s The Avengers did a remarkable job of introducing Rogers to a modern civilization. By the end of that movie, Cap was a hero for our time.
Yet even though Hayley Atwell has confirmed that Peggy Carter won’t be back for the sequel, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who perished in the first film, has to find some way to come back. And maybe Jones’ evil Nazi scientist Arnim Zola will be the one who unearths Barnes and reprograms him to hate Rogers. There are so many interesting turns Winter Soldier can take as it develops. The movie plans to open on April 4, 2014.
