Classic Grouch/Goofball combo. But in a fancy communist package.
Last time on What If…?
Agatha Harkness tried to make it Hollywood. Somehow, she’d discovered Tiamat,
the developing Celestial inside the Earth’s core, and attempted to drain its
power for herself. This proved difficult as magic has a Qui Pro Quo system to
it, so sucking up the power of a minor god requires an equally big ritual. She’d
attempted to make the ritual via a huge song and dance movie financed and directed
by Howard Stark but it wasn’t working. She decided she’d need help to pull this
off and got Howard to hire Bollywood’s biggest star Kingo to play opposite her.
The secret Eternal Kingo, in this dimension the Supreme Eternal, came in and
tried to stop her, learning that she’d taken out the other Eternals and stolen
their powers. She says they’re fine and will put them back in working order if
he’ll help her drain Tiamat. He initially says no but bends when Agatha
promises a three-picture deal with Howard. His Master, Arishem the Judge,
sensed this betrayal and announced he was coming to earth to exact retribution.
Agatha, Kingo, Howard and Jarvis were able complete a ritual, allowing Agatha
to ascend to godhood just before Arishem arrived. They did battle, Agatha
defeating the Celestial and draining his lifeforce as well. She was about to start
doing dark god type things, but Kingo reached out to her and convinced her that
she doesn’t really want to be a despotic evil goddess but something better…
a movie star! She agrees to tone it down, their movie premiers and everything looks
like it’s coming up roses. But it’s heavily implied other Celestials are on
their way and are pissed. What fun for them. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
Ep 21: What If… The Red Guardian Stopped the Winter Soldier?
We open on video footage of a fight
beside a crashed car on December 16, 1991. Three days before my first birthday,
neat! Anyway, you know this crash if you’ve seen Captain America: Civil War.
Winter Soldier, under the command of HYDRA operatives, hunted down and executed
Howard and Maria Stark in cold blood. Uatu muses about how this oh so pivotal
moment in the History of the MCU, an event that’s ramifications would be felt
for decades, could go so differently. And in the footage, we see Red Guardian
arriving and getting in the way of the assassination. Neat.
We join Aleksi Shostakov aka the
Red Guardian as he’s getting his mission from his handler to serve as a data analyst…
sorry, senior data analyst in Ohio. Ya know, the one he did with three Black
Widows as his wife and two daughters. He’s obviously insulted by this job and
Dreykov tries to talk him into it. He says that he’s heard rumors of new
intelligence from the Rook, a deep cover agent in the US and wants in on
whatever that job is. Dreykov gets a call and tries to nonchalantly tell the
man on the other end that they’ll need to activate the Winter Soldier for this mission,
which upsets Aleksi further. James Buchannan Barnes isn’t even Russian! When Dreykov
won’t give him the mission, Aleksi says that maybe it’s time for him to spread
his wings. Dreykov rolls his eyes and asks what the plan even would be, to put
in an application at SHIELD? Aleksi says he’ll just have to prove himself again
and palms the Rook file when Dreykov isn’t looking.
We’re shown Winter Soldier being
activated and sent out onto his mission to kill the Starks. At the same time, we
see Aleksi playing Tetris on a Gameboy, taking a flight with a crying baby and
then arriving in the US. Two very different travel experiences. He interrupts the
attack, Winter Soldier punching him off his ride as he swerves in. They have an
argument, Winter Solider insisting that they leave no witness as per his
orders, while Red Guardian insists that they do leave witnesses, because
killing is beneath them and for Stark to spread the word to fear Mother Russia.
They start fighting, Aleksi doing way better than you’d assume. He might be a
bit dumb, but he is a super soldier. He holds Winter Soldier off long enough
for the cops to arrive and the two of them run away. Winter Soldier calls in to
their handler on a TX-10 (Alexsi’s insulted he only had TX-8) and informs them
that they got one of the items the Starks were carry and that both Starks were
alive. Winter Soldier is told that he failed the mission and he’s on his own to
get extracted. He clearly takes this info hard.
Back at the crash, Howard and Maria
are put into an ambulance and carted away just as Bill Foster, head of SHIELD’s
science division and the lead investigator on this incident arrives. He speaks
with Ranger Morales about what happened, who informs him that the Starks are alive
and they saw a little of what happened to them. Howard saw a brief scuffle but
that’s about it. Evidence would suggest a carjacking gone wrong… except for the
trail of blue slime that our Russian agents left as they fled. Bill knows that
they’re dealing with super soldiers, and orders borders closed from New York to
Ohio to keep them from getting away. He gives Winter Soldier and Red Guardian a
fair amount of buildup on how dangerous and skilled they are, before we cut to
Aleksi having a ‘Sir this is a Wendy’s’ moment when a worker asked him if he
wanted fries with his meal. Having had enough of this, Winter Soldier shoves him
aside and completes their order. As they eat, Aleksi suggests that they head
out to Las Vegas where the dossier he stole says the Rook is. He also
accidentally sprayed Winter Soldier in the face with ketchup, so this is going
to go smoothly, I can feel it. They decide they need a car, and a jerk pulls
his muscle car into a handicap spot, giving them a sweet ride.
They head across country but are
stopped at a checkpoint that Bill Foster himself is overseeing. Bill asks them
a few routine questions, which they fail miserably, and he spies the Red
Guardian’s shield in the back. He asks them to get out of the car, Winter Soldier
pulls a pistol on them, but Aleksi speeds away, saving Bill’s life in the
process. A chase begins, with cops trying to cut them off while Bill and Morales
chase after them. Winter Soldier pulls a rifle on them, but Aleksi’s driving
keeps him from killing anyone. Bill and Morales almost cut them off, but Winter
Soldier rips through the car door into their car to make them swerve and crash.
More cops arrive and Bill busts out his Goliath suit to chase them down. Aleksi
keeps making communist flavored comments, with Winter Soldier finally getting
sick of it and saying Aleksi’s more brainwashed than him. Bill almost catches
them but Aleksi grabs his shield and hurls it at him, following and leaping off
Goliath’s face to knock him down. The Russian agents speed their way to a
canyon and try to leap across it, Morales saying they’re either brave or dumb
to try it, and Bill saying they’re enhanced and dumb.
Some hours later Bill and Morales
find the crashed car. Inside they find a map book with a page torn out, tipping
Bill off that they’re headed to Vegas. Aleksi and Winter Soldier break into a
vet hospital for medical supplies. As Aleksi admires a bruise on his forehead,
saying he’ll get a commendation for it, Winter Soldier picks a bullet out of
his right human arm. Aleksi comes over to help him, asking how Winter Soldier
got it. Winter Soldier asks where Aleksi comes from, and he says he’s from the
middle of nowhere, his family are good but unimportant people, so when he got
the chance to be something more, he took it. Winter Soldier admits that he
doesn’t know anything about himself, even his name. Red Guardian tells him to
close his eyes and think back. He does so reluctantly and sees Coney Island. Red
Guardian is happy that he found something and then heads out to steal them a new
ride. Once alone, Winter Soldier gets a call from Dreykov, telling him that he’s
now got orders to execute Aleksi. Aleksi has been deemed a liability and Winter
Soldier is to kill him and get back home.
They make their way to Vegas,
Aleksi making more communist angry comments, and Winter Soldier suggesting they
hit up a craps table, ya know, to blend in. Aleksi is up for it, but says no
buffets, as Winter Soldier will put them out of business with his appetite. They
head up to the Rook’s room, where we learn that the Rook is in fact Obediah
Stane. Aleksi, who was super excited to meet the agent that will help end the filthy
capitalist hellscape that is America to it’s knees, is more than a little
bummed out to learn that Stane is a capitalist pig. And that he only traded the
info to Russia so they’d kill Stark, so he’s equally pissed he’s not giving the
Eulogy at Howard’s funeral right now. Aleksi has a small existential crisis upon
learning that the Red Room worked with Stane and by extension he worked for a
capitalist. Stane angrily says that Capitalism is the only system that works
and that anyone who has a problem with it is obviously poor. He asks if their
bosses actually give a damn about them, and when they say no, he pulls a gun on
them. Winter Soldier saves Aleksi and then knocks Stane out the window,
probably killing him in the fountain below. He apologizes for that, but Aleksi
doesn’t mind. A Red Room hit squad comes in to kill them, but they fight them
off and jump out the window to escape.
On the ground floor, they run into
Bill and Morales, who are wondering why they spared the Starks but killed
Stane. The chase resumes as Red Guardian and Winte Soldier land. They chase the
Russians through a casino, Winter Soldier shooting the slot machines to make
them go off and cause a small riot as people grab the cash. Bill supersizes and
chase after them, but the two team up and knocks him to the ground. They get
chased into an abandoned building. Bill calls in copters.
They get cornered by more Red Room
Agents. Winter Soldier tells Aleksi that Dreykov put a hit out on him and warns
that if they use the book on him, he won’t remember anything of the last few days
and will be forced to kill him. He gives Aleksi the experimental super soldier
goo they stole, telling him to run, but Aleksi says if Russia betrays him, he’ll
betray them, and crushes the baggie. One of the agents’ stars reading Winter Soldier’s
activation phrase and Winter Soldier winces in pain. He tells Aleksi to run,
saying anyone can make it in America, that much he remembers because of Aleksi.
The agent completes the phrase but Winter Soldier fights through it and doesn’t
turn. Red Guardian and Winte Soldier burst out as Foster and his group burst
in.
We don’t see how the fight goes,
but we see Winter Soldier captured and strapped back into his brainwashing
chair to be reprogramed. Dreykov demands to know what happened to Aleksi. Winter
Soldier says that he died a Russian hero and that’s all he’ll say on the
matter. He gets subjected to mind erasure again. We cut to Aleksi, now under
the alias of Bob Toledo working as a gym coach. He’s met by Bill Foster who
gives him back his shield. He asks if Bill is here to arrest him, but Bill says
that he’s actually here to see if Aleksi would be willing to help out. Aleksi says
that he could be persuaded to fill out an application. We then get that big
scene from the original Avengers, where they all gather together in a circle,
and they do a panning shot around them. With Aleksi jumping in and forcing into
a spot between Captain America and Black Widow. I’d like to think after this
mission he pushed hard to recover Bucky.
I had fun with this one. David
Harbour is just delightfully obnoxious with his communist rhetoric and total
inability to take a hint without getting into truly irritating territory. I
like that he seems to be just a genuinely good dude that is… unreasonably
optimistic at how into communism the higher ups in the party are. I like that
he just sort of worms his way under Bucky’s skin and helps him recover himself,
if only for a little bit and a little while. It was also nice to see Bill
Foster again as portrayed by Lawrence Fishburn. I honestly think it’s a shame
that he only had one film MCU appearance as he’s one of the better actors they’ve
gotten. The man just has the swagger I’d expect from a dude who can hit a
button and become a giant. I like that ultimately, he was the one to recruit
Aleksi to keep doing hero work, but for SHIELD now. And I need to give props to
Sebastian Stan. While he is a fabulous screen actor, when I heard him in the
first season of What If…? he was consistently the weakest voice actor in
whatever story he was in. His delivery was always just a little too wooden, a
little too stiff. He’s either gotten used to the VA format or gotten some tips
from the more veteran voice actors to improve this much. He and Aleksi have a
very believable grump and goofball friendship, and it’s clear that Aleksi is
having fun for most of this road trip. It’s funny to think that he’s actually a
very serious spy and covert ops agent when he apparently slips into screaming
the communist manifesto with basically zero prompting. So yeah, fun little road
trip with our Russian assets. Next time, more Howard the Duck and Darcy… don’t
know how to feel about this one, as I do like Seth Green, but I HATE Howard the
Duck. We’ll have to see where it goes. Have a good night.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/118808746/
Bluesky: @basicssuperhero.bsky.social
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