Marvel Cinematic Universe continues its expansion now that the Infinity Saga is over, and the highly-anticipated Phase 4 is covering both TV shows and movies. Phase 4 kicked off with three TV shows exclusive to Disney+, and on the movie side of the MCU, it kicked off with Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff’s (Scarlett Johansson) final adventure on the big screen.
Set between the events of Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), and Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), each with different skills and abilities that played an important plan in the defeat of Dreykov. One character who quickly won the audience over was Red Guardian, who claimed to have fought and defeated none other than Captain America.
At one point, Shostakov became the sole recipient of the Soviet version of the Super Soldier Serum, taking the identity of “Red Guardian” and becoming the Soviet counterpart to Captain America. Following the end of the mission that had him, Melina, Natasha, and Yelena acting as an American family, he was imprisoned in Russia. Black Widow showed Red Guardian arm-wrestling fellow prisoners and telling a story of how he defeated Captain America in the 1980s, with fellow prisoner Ursa Major pointing out that Steve Rogers was still frozen in ice at that time. Shostakov’s tale, then, is considered to be a lie, but what if he’s actually right and he did fight and defeat a version of Captain America, not exactly Steve Rogers?
A theory, posted on Red Guardian is so sure he fought against Captain America (he even asked Natasha if he ever mentioned him) and defeated him, as the Winter Soldier’s skills and those of the other soldiers are inferior to those of Steve Rogers.
Although it’s not an impossible idea, it seems unlikely that HYDRA would have gone as far as to disguise its best weapon or one of its soldiers as Captain America only to bring the Red Room down (surely, if HYDRA wanted to do so, they would have used other methods). Whether there will be an explanation to Red Guardian’s Captain America story or not in future MCU movies or TV shows is unknown, so for now, viewers will make their own interpretations out of it, and will decide if he was lying or just got a bit confused.
