After years of waiting to become a superhero herself, Peggy Carter’s untimely demise in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was a “complete disservice to the character,” Marvel actress Hayley Atwell has said.
Speaking at the For the Love of Fantasy & Sci-Fi convention in London this weekend, Atwell said that she had tried to pitch alternate versions of her character’s fight to the death against Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, only for her suggestions to be ignored.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness features an alternate version of Peggy Carter who has become Captain Carter, and wields a version of Captain America’s shield that sports a Union Jack logo. Sadly, alongside the rest of her Illuminati (Illumi-what-y?) team, she is quickly wiped out by Wanda.
“I loved the idea that she’d be in the suit and have the shield,” Atwell began. “And if I’m really brutally honest, I was so disappointed with how they positioned her and what happened to her in that scene. It’s so small, and she gets frisbeed to death.”
Of course, the point of her character’s presence in the movie is to demonstrate Wanda’s power and to show how far the former Avenger has fallen as she wipes out a team of heroes, including Carter, John Krasinski’s Mr. Fantastic, and Patrick Stewart’s Professor X.
But it’s also true that Atwell gets just a handful of lines before Wanda appears and kills them all within seconds. There’s a fun moment where Carter gets to quote Steve Rogers’ classic “I could do this all day” line, but, seconds later, Wanda sends Captain Carter’s shield bouncing back into the heroine’s gut, with the suggestion she has been bisected completely.
Atwell says it was the quoting of Steve Rogers’ dialogue that particularly irked her, as the obvious response was then “no you couldn’t [do this all day],” prompting the feeling that actually she was just “lame.”
“I felt that was like a bum steer and a complete disservice to the character,” Atwell added. “I tried on set to kind of go, ‘Can I just add? Can I just suggest?’ And they were like, ‘Sure, but no.'”
Atwell will next return to the franchise in Avengers: Doomsday, and it’ll be interested to see where the character goes next. Will there be a chance for Carter to suit up again, or will she be left at home holding the baby? (Even if it is the latter, this is probably preferable to Doctor Doom holding it instead.) Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters on December 18, and Marvel has put together a list of MCU movies and TV shows you should watch before it arrives.
Image credit: Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
