Captain America 2: Hayley Atwell Confirms Why A Significant Peggy Carter Moment Got Cut

The identity of Peggy Carter's (Hayley Atwell) husband in the increasingly complex Marvel Cinematic Universe's timeline was a topic of debate for years as the Infinity Saga worked its way to a fevered pitch. The debate was finally (more or less) put to rest when Captain America (Chris Evans) time-traveled back to live his long-awaited life with Peggy. However, in a recent interview with Atwell, the actor said that the identity of Peggy's husband was almost revealed at an earlier date — and it wasn't going to be Steve Rogers.

In an interview with Collider, Atwell explained that during the scene where Rogers visits an aging Carter in the hospital in "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," Marvel nearly revealed her husband in a photo by the bedside. "I remember when I was filming it," Atwell said, "the prop master had put a framed photograph on Peggy's bedside, of Peggy with her husband and her children, and Louis de Esposito ran over just before we started rolling, going 'take that out. We don't know yet. We don't want to limit ourselves by kind of suggesting this is who she's married.' And so that was taken out. And I thought, 'OK, that's really interesting.'"

This was just one of several near-reveals on the subject of Carter's husband. The "Agent Carter" series flirted with the mystery man's identity, but the show was canceled before it could reach any kind of closure. It wasn't until "Avengers: Endgame" that fans were gifted a satisfactory arc for her and Steve's romance. Interestingly, this came about partly because the writers behind "The Winter Soldier" and "Endgame" were the same two people, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2019, "The Winter Soldier" and "Endgame" writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely revealed that it had always been the plan to have Rogers be the mysterious man who marries Carter and fathers her children. "Markus and McFeely accept that different people will have different viewpoints on this topic," the outlet reported. "But, in their minds, Steve was Peggy's husband all along." McFeely even went so far as to state, "It was always our intention that he was the father of those two children. But again, there are time travel loopholes for that."

Despite the sticky time travel elements, the Steve Rogers solution is by far the cleanest and most satisfactory option. In the same hospital scene in "The Winter Soldier," Carter says, "I have lived a life. My only regret is that you didn't get to live yours." She adds a moment later, "The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best we can do is to start over."

In the context of the moment, this call to restart seems to apply to Rogers' need to get his 21st century life going. However, he eventually interprets it as literally heading back to the '40s, where he does start over, getting his final dance and happily ever after. It's a great ending, and it's wild to think it was almost ruined by a bedside prop. Thank goodness executive producer Louis de Esposito was on set and had the forethought to remove it.