Lloyd Hanson, Johnny Storm, Casey Jones, Buzz Lightyear; these are just a few of the aliases that pop culture juggernaut Chris Evans has picked up over the course of his career. There is but one that towers far above the rest, however.
That honor, of course, goes to the Marvel Cinematic Universe‘s Captain America, a character whose critical, commercial, and fandom-centric acclaim has launched him into the highest echelons of superhero royalty.
The last time we well and truly encountered Cap was in the closing scenes of Avengers: Endgame, when Steve used the Infinity Stones to travel back in time and return them to their rightful time periods, electing to remain in his own rightful time period, the 1940s, so he could live the life with Peggy Carter that he never got to have.
But, if severely unfounded rumors are to be believed, we haven’t seen the last of Evans’ Steve Rogers just yet.
Now, of all the ways that Chris Evans could be brought back into the MCU fold, a limited series following Captain America returning the Infinity Stones is probably the least insulting. It would keep him firmly in the Infinity Saga era and therefore wouldn’t toy too much with his sturdy character arc, and also probably wouldn’t delve too much into vapid, flashy comic book shenanigans as a result of what sounds like a low-stakes adventure.
Considering all of that, the hypothetical series would have a lot of room to play with storytelling beats that aren’t all that beholden to the Marvel machine, and if this rumor does turn out to have weight to it, it would be no great surprise if Evans himself served as a producer of sorts.
After all, Evans has said in the past that the only way he would happily return to that red, white, and blue uniform is if the right project came along; a project that didn’t spoil the dignity of the character just for the sake of fan service. As far as such possibilities go, this one has the most respectable foundation, and could genuinely be molded into something truly great if Evans were directly involved in the storytelling process.
Nevertheless, it would still, at the end of the day, be a case of messing with something that doesn’t need messing with, with a massive margin for failure to boot. Thankfully, a rumor is a rumor is a rumor, and there’s a good to fair chance that Cap’s Shield will continue to hang safely in Marvel’s treasure room, away from the hands of Chris Evans, as he no doubt probably prefers at this point.