Marvel productions aren’t immune to rumors. In fact, informed speculation has become quite a valuable commodity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, leading to wild guesses about Reed Richards appearing in WandaVision or all three Spider-Men somehow appearing in the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home. Well, a weird one has come out of the latest Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and it involves the previous Captain America, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), and his current whereabouts. Listen to Winter Soldier director Kari Skogland as she addresses it above.
The running joke about the current whereabouts of Steve Rogers is that the one-time Captain America is retired on the moon. It was thrown out there by Torres (Danny Ramirez) in the premiere episode of this first season (and possible only season). And then the joke recycled in the season finale. So when The Falcon and the Winter Soldier director Kari Skogland joined CinemaBlend’s podcast, ReelBlend, we asked her to clarify Steve’s location, and she coyly replied:
Oh, you mean he's not on the moon? No? Oh. I don't know, that's what I heard.
And with that, Skogland joins a long line of MCU directors who clam up when asked to give any specific details about the possibility of a future for a main character.
Let’s go over what we DO know about Steve Rogers. In this current time, he’s an old man, as witnessed in the end of Avengers: Endgame. Having returned all of the Infinity Stones to their original locations, Steve decided not to immediately return to his previous location, and instead to stay in the past, where he lived out his days with the love of his life, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell).
But even though Steve Rogers effectively turned his shield over to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the old man still has to be somewhere. Practically, you can’t bring Evans back every time you need Cap. The actor “retired” from the MCU -- as if you ever are really allowed to do that -- and the mantle of Captain America now belongs to Wilson. But there were moments during the story run of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier where you’d imagine Rogers would want to speak up about his legacy, notably when John Walker (Wyatt Russell) used that famous shield to kill a man in broad daylight. At the same time, it’s believed that the public story being told about Captain America is that he “died” in the battle against Thanos, which would allow Rogers to live out the rest of his days in peace.
On the moon.
Kari Skogland had the power to squash this rumor like a bug. She could have laughed it off, or drove a stake through the heart of the speculation. But her words basically encourage the rumor to swirl, so here’s where we are. What kind of speculation could spring from Loki, the next show coming from Marvel to the Disney+ streaming service? We shall find out when that show starts to air on June 11.
