The Falcon and the Winter Soldier followed up on the promise of Old Map Steve Rogers passing his shield onto Sam Wilson in Avengers: Endgame, with the Disney Plus series exploring Anthony Mackie’s hero becoming ready to take on the mantle of Captain America. One thing it didn’t follow up on, though, was the mystery of what happened to Steve after that last Endgame scene. Memorably, the show revealed that rumors say he moved to the moon.
Fans have often attempt to analyze the importance of that rumor and theorize what it could mean. However, it turns out it was just a joke conceived by the writing room because they also have no idea what happened to Steve. While speaking with Inverse, showrunner Malcolm Spellman admitted that Marvel didn’t tell him anything so the moon rumor was as “good a guess as anything.”
“I’ve got to tell you the truth, my friend,” Spellman said. “Marvel won’t tell me what happened to Steve, so we were able to write whatever we wanted because we don’t know. We’re wondering if Steve’s on the moon too, you know what I’m saying? That’s as good a guess as anything because they won’t tell me.”
It’s a pretty big deal that even Spellman doesn’t know where Steve is as he’s co-writing the script for Captain America 4 alongside fellow Falcon scribe Dalan Musson. The pair boarded the project over the summer so you’d think that they would have started work on it to some degree by now. By the sounds of it, then, the Sam-fronted Cap movie won’t be addressing where Old Man Steve went after Endgame either.
To some extent, that makes sense because Cap 4 is Sam’s film so bringing Steve back up is in some ways superfluous. At the same time, some references to Captain Rogers are to be expected and also welcomed by fans, so there may be some disappointment if it avoids resolving his fate entirely. Although maybe that’s for the best given all the debate over which timeline he’s really from.
Captain America 4 is yet to find itself a director or be given a release date.
