What If…? Finale Mid-Credits Scene Explained

Marvel’s What If…? concluded its first season today with an epic Avengers-style crossover episode. The finale saw the Watcher assemble the Guardians of the Multiverse to defeat Infinity Ultron and save all reality. You’d be forgiven for wondering how the heck season 2 can top this one, but Marvel’s going to try, as another batch of episodes is on the way. And the finale’s mid-credits scene set up one of them.

Yes, this is a Marvel show’s finale, so we should all know to stick around through the credits for an additional sequence. At the end of What If…? episode 9, the heroes are all returned to their own universes, including Captain Carter, who is overjoyed to reunite with her BFF Black Widow in the post-credits scene. But Natasha tells Peggy to get her head in the game because she has something big to show her. The Lemurian Star, the ship Batroc and his pirates were ransacking, has a HYDRA Stomper on board. And there’s someone inside it…

Back in episode 1, the powerless Steve Rogers used Howard Stark’s HYDRA Stomper armor to aid Peggy in battle, so obviously, this indicates that Steve is somehow still alive. Which is great news, right? Well, maybe. But remember that Captain Carter is currently living through her version of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. So just as Steve discovered Bucky had been brainwashed and operating as a HYDRA assassin for years, what if Peggy’s about to find that the same thing’s happened to Steve in her universe?

We’ve already been promised another Captain Carter episode in season 2, so it looks like we can expect a riff on Winter Soldier just as season 1 gave us Peggy’s First Avenger retelling. If What If…? gets enough seasons, then, does that mean we could follow Peggy’s adventures right up until her version of Infinity War and Endgame?

That’s probably thinking too far ahead, though. But, by the looks of things, we could be about to get a corrupted Steve Rogers in What If…? season 2. Hail HYDRA!