Steve Rogers’ character **progression**
I keep seeing the argument that Steve returning to Peggy was character “regression” because of his line in Age of Ultron: “I don't know, family, stability. The guy who wanted all that went in the ice seventy-five years ago. I think someone else came out.”
Let’s put that line in the context of Steve’s overall arc, shall we?
An Arc That Begins With Sacrifice
In The First Avenger, Steve Rogers is nearly defined by sacrifice. He is the man who won’t give up trying to volunteer for the Army, jumps on a grenade, and his first act as Captain America is to go on a one man suicide mission behind enemy lines. The common thread is that Steve Rogers will always put others before himself, or even, his life.
Steve also delays acting on his feelings for Peggy Carter for nearly the entire film. The fact that Steve is in love with Peggy is rather obvious long before he calls her the love of his life in later films. If their longing looks weren’t sufficient evidence, the film depicts him as jealous of her connection to Howard Stark, desperate to convince her a kiss with another woman was unwanted, and deliberately showing her the compass via the propaganda films. When Peggy tacitly reciprocates his interest by recalling his “right partner” story, the two of them make a promise to dance with one another when the war is over. Duty first, personal happiness second. Only when Peggy reaches out to kiss him before he fatefully boards the Red Skull’s plane, does Steve act on his feelings.
Then moments later, Steve sacrifices his life. He does so while staring at her photograph and talking with Peggy of a dream of personal happiness; a dance with the woman that he loves. The film ends with Steve lamenting the loss of his chance at personal happiness to Nick Fury. “I had a date” is the very first thing he says upon learning that he’s been asleep for nearly seventy years.
As Steve finds his way in our world, the subsequent Captain America movies always tie Steve’s journey to Peggy personally and thematically. In The Avengers, deleted scenes depict Steve as a man out of time: he’s shown looking lost and morose while staring at Peggy Carter’s file and phone number.
And while he finds a new purpose with the Avengers and begins to acclimate to modern life, The Winter Soldier shows Steve retracing his past at the Smithsonian. He sees a video of a tearful Peggy discussing his legacy. Steve is visibly emotional as he stares at her picture in the compass. He hears that she married someone else. The film goes to great pains to show us that, despite the time that has gone by and his growing adjustment to the present, Steve still, literally, carries Peggy with him everywhere he goes.
Then the film takes the time to show us Steve visiting Peggy. She is elderly and has led a full life as the director of SHIELD and had children. It’s a reminder of the lost dream Steve had for a life with the woman he loved. It’s also clear that Peggy is still Steve’s confidant and moral compass, as she was in The First Avenger. Peggy tells him “The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes, the best that we can do, is to start over.”
While on the surface the words refer to the new world order and SHIELD’s role in it, they also have a deeply significant personal meaning. When she grows confused, Peggy is visibly distraught at seeing her lost love. Steve is equally emotional and refers to their dance. The unfulfilled promise of their love haunts them both. They quite literally can’t go back and the scene is portrayed with devastating emotion.
In Ultron, Steve repeatedly struggles with the idea of “home.” He begins the movie looking pensive when Sam Wilson says to him, “home is home”. Then Scarlett Witch preys on this inner conflict. Steve’s nightmare vision is funhouse mirror of a post war celebration at a dance hall. Peggy appears to him and says the war is over; “we” can go “home”. They then begin their long awaited dance. In Steve’s mind, the vision frames “home” as Peggy and the chance to finally dance with her. He looks entranced and joyful. And then, it’s all gone. Steve is left standing alone. The imagery is stark and painful.
Steve is pensive on the trip back home. He is then thrust into another man’s idyllic home life. Clint’s farmhouse represents all that Steve has lost: a loving partner, children, a home. When Steve steps into Clint’s home, he hears Peggy’s voice saying “we can go home.” The joyful domesticity of the Barton household is juxtaposed with Peggy’s voice saying something that cannot be true for Steve. He can’t go home to her.
Significantly, Steve is the only character who doesn’t talk about his visions with another Avenger. It’s deeply personal and painful. When Tony asks Steve about whether he escaped the visions unscathed and questions whether he has a dark side, Steve deflects the question. Interestingly, Tony then turns the topic to the idea of “home.” He says, “Isn't that WHY we fight? So we can end the fight and go home?” Steve abruptly tears the wood apart in anger. Then he again doesn’t respond directly and instead addresses the danger of preemptive strategies like Ultron. Unlike Tony or Clint, Steve doesn’t have a home other than the Avengers. SHIELD, as far as he knows, has been dismantled. The fight, the team, are all he has.
At the end of the movie, Tony revisits the idea of building a home:
“Well, it's time for me to tap out. Maybe I should take a page out of Barton's book and build Pepper a farm, hope nobody blows it up.”
“You'll get there one day.”
“I don't know, family, stability. The guy who wanted all that went in the ice seventy-five years ago. I think someone else came out.”
It’s significant that Steve comes to this conclusion in the same film that his lost love was shown as representing a home that he can’t get back to and after his visit with Peggy in The Winter Soldier. Clint can be with the woman he loves. So can Tony. Steve cannot. And so he will do what Peggy said: he will do his best to start anew. He has no other choice.
A Significant Turning Point in Steve Rogers’ Arc
Unfortunately, as we all know, the events of Civil War will tear that new home and family temporarily apart. But even in the midst of a significant fracture with his new found family, a single text about Peggy’s passing puts the dispute about the Sokovia Accords on hold. Steve is shown as overcome with emotion and he immediately leaves without explanation.
Indeed, the Civil War funeral scene is perhaps the most emotional that we see Steve Rogers in all of the films. Steve may be evolving, but his love for Peggy and grief over her death is palpable. He confides in Natasha about how lucky he was to have her back.
But beyond the personal, Peggy Carter’s legacy frames the major turning point in Steve’s character arc. During the funeral, Peggy’s niece Sharon recalls her aunt’s advice:
“And she said, compromise where you can. But where you can't, don't. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move . . . it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in they eye and say " No, you move."
Even after her death, Peggy Carter’s example guides Steve. The events of The Winter Soldier taught him to question authority. This story solidifies his decision to reject the accords. He will no longer just follow orders. Nor will Steve give up on family like Bucky even if he is, on some level, responsible for Howard Stark’s death. Steve Rogers is becoming a man who will draw lines for himself about what he will or will not personally sacrifice. It will sadly cost him his new home and, for some time, part of his found family.
In Infinity War, a bearded Steve Rogers has shed his Stars and Stripes uniform and his trademark shield. He is in hiding and hasn’t spoken to Tony since the events of Civil War. When he returns to the United States to discuss the Thanos threat, Steve tells Secretary Ross that he is “way past asking for forgiveness and not seeking permission.” The contrast to the Captain America of the First Avenger who turned himself in for discipline after rescuing the 107th could not be more stark. But despite fighting bravely, Steve suffers catastrophic failure and tragedy. Thanos destroys half of life in the universe and Steve loses Bucky and Sam Wilson — his brother from the past and his brother from the present.
The World Is In Our Hands
In Endgame, Steve’s first scene shows him shaving the beard of his banishment and surveying himself in the mirror. His subsequent argument with Tony picks at the old wounds of Civil War and Ultron. And yet Steve presses forward, refusing to give up hope. He is once again the leader of The Avengers. The compass that always guides him still contains Peggy’s photograph. He is shown again looking at it before crossing a new threshold to space.
After the time jump, the cost of losing to Thanos weighs heavily on Steve. Unlike other Avengers who wallow in self pity or withdraw from the world, Steve grapples with what living means in the wake of failure and tragedy. Interestingly, in group therapy, Steve ties his own struggle with finding purpose to Peggy:
“I went in the ice in '45 right after I met the love of my life. Woke up 70 years later. You gotta move on. Gotta to move on. The world is in our hands. It's left to us guys, and we got to do something with it. Otherwise... Thanos should have killed all of us.”
The performance and the script question whether Steve believes his own words. He obviously hasn’t moved on. But regardless, Steve is questioning what the point of life is if he doesn’t live for himself. It interestingly recalls Tony’s words from Ultron. Life has to be about more than the fight. Later, he and Natasha discuss that they need to “get a life” — that they have no purpose in life other than their broken team.
When Steve finds Tony after the time jump, Tony has finally done what he spoke of at the end of Ultron: he has built a home with Pepper and has a daughter. He refuses to give that “home” up even to save the world. While it may not be surprising that Tony Stark will demand a compromise that allows his daughter to be saved, this film does represent the crossing of Steve and Tony’s arcs. The selfish playboy is about to willingly give up his life for others and the self sacrificing man is about to claim a life for himself.
Significantly, Tony and Steve are paired to time travel back to 1970 and face ghosts from their pasts. Their interactions will prove to be key moments for the culmination of their arcs. Tony talks to his father about selfishness and fatherhood. It poignantly foreshadows Tony’s future sacrifice. Steve on the other hand comes face to face with Peggy Carter. The longing on Steve’s face is moving. The woman who he lost to time, and then death, is standing before him. But more importantly, they are in the same room again because of time travel. The unattainable life that Steve has always wanted is now possible.
Moreover, the photograph on Peggy’s desk is a powerful symbol that Peggy never forgot him either — the real him. The photograph is of Steve Rogers before the serum, not Captain America. From the beginning, and throughout her life, Peggy always valued the man that Steve was on the inside. Steve holds in his hands a photograph that represents his life before the endless fight as a superhero. It harkens back to Steve’s question at the beginning of the film: what do we do with our life when we hold it in our hands?
Of course, Steve’s inner qualities are precisely what enable him to wield Thor’s hammer, courageously face Thanos alone, and ultimately lead the Avengers to victory. However, after, nothing will ever be the same. Tony and Natasha are gone. Thor is leaving Earth once again. The found family of the original Avengers saved the universe but they can never be together again.
But another home is now possible for Steve. And so, after 15 years of selflessly fighting evil since WWII, Steve finally decides to choose “stability” and “a family” for himself. Time travel can give him the life with the woman he has always wanted. The closing scene of the 22 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a man and a woman dancing to “It’s Been A Long, Long Time” - a record Steve kept in his apartment since The Winter Soldier. It’s an elegant and beautiful moment that makes good on a promise and love from long ago, but never forgotten. Steve Rogers takes the world into his hands and builds a life for himself.
The Self Actualization of Steve Rogers
And so yes, someone new did come out of that water. Perhaps the Steve Rogers of The First Avenger never would’ve made such a choice for himself - indeed that Steve chose death over personal happiness when the world needed to be saved. And when he awoke, Steve did nothing but serve others through SHIELD and The Avengers. His life was the fight.
But the fight was, finally, over. The universe was saved. And this Steve Rogers — the man who loved and fought and lost and learned to draw lines for himself — had the means to attain his personal happiness. And so he, finally, seized it. In his own words, he tried some of that life Tony was talking about.
This arc is the opposite of character “regression.” Steve Rogers grows from being a young man who always put himself last at great personal cost to a self actualized older man who has the courage and self worth to carve out a life of personal happiness for himself when the fight was over and the means become available. Wanting a family (however defined) and stability isn’t “regression” — indeed, it’s valuing yourself enough to deem your personal happiness worthy of attaining; to allow your life to be something more than just the fight. Indeed, as Tony said in Ultron, it’s why the Avengers fought in the first place. And if anyone has earned that peace after 15 years of fighting, it is Steve Rogers.
A life of sacrifice and fighting on behalf of others is finally rewarded with personal happiness.
That is ultimately Steve Rogers’ story. And that’s beautiful.
