Hayley Atwell is still not over how Captain Carter went out.
Speaking at the For the Love of Fantasy & Sci-Fi convention in London over the weekend, Atwell said Peggy Carter’s live-action turn as Captain Carter in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was “a complete disservice to the character,” per video from the panel now making the rounds on Instagram.
“If I’m really like brutally honest, I was so disappointed with how they positioned her and what happened to her in that scene,” Atwell said. “It’s so small, and she gets frisbeed to death.”
‘Sure, But No’
The 2022 cameo put Captain Carter on the Illuminati alongside Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and John Krasinski’s Reed Richards, then had Wanda cut her in half with her own shield seconds after she got out “I can do this all day.”
Atwell said she saw the problem while they were shooting it. “I tried on set to kind of go, ‘Can I just add? Can I just suggest?’ And they were like, ‘Sure, but no.'”
“I felt that was like a bum steer and a complete disservice to the character,” she said.
Our reporting at the time pointed the same direction. A Sam Raimi cut exists with 40 minutes of footage missing from the theatrical release, and the Illuminati sequence was reworked heavily on the way to theaters, including a scrapped storyline built around Magneto and a lobotomized Wanda.
She’s raised this before.
On the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2023, Atwell pointed out the joke lands on Peggy: she says she could do this all day and immediately gets cut in half, which, in her words, “doesn’t really serve Peggy very well.”
The strange part is Marvel knew exactly what it had.
Captain Carter was the lead of What If…? across all three seasons on Disney+, with Atwell voicing her from the 2021 premiere through the series finale. The animated version got to carry a show.
The live-action version got a couple of minutes and a shield through the midsection.
Doomsday Is Marvel’s Chance To Make It Right
The timing matters because Peggy is back for Doomsday.
Atwell took the stage at Marvel’s Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con last month, where Marvel confirmed her return as Peggy Carter, then joined Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. on stage at D23 to introduce the new Doomsday Special Look.
Atwell called playing Captain Carter “fun” and wants another crack at it. “I hope maybe one day in the future they’ll give her more in that capacity,” she said.
A multiverse movie built on three colliding universes is the obvious place to do it, and Marvel already has Steve Rogers back and an Avengers: Endgame re-release hitting theaters September 25 in the same stretch.
Atwell also said she uses Peggy’s “I know my value” line in her contract negotiations with Marvel.
“If I’m able to say these lines with conviction, I’ve got to embody them myself,” she said.
After the last one, she’s earned the leverage.
Avengers: Doomsday opens December 18. For everything we know, head over to our Doomsday hub.
