THIS. THIS IS WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY STUCKY IS CANNON. TY BISH FOR PUTTING IT INTO WORDS. screeeches

THIS. THIS IS WHAT I MEAN WHEN I SAY STUCKY IS CANNON. TY BISH FOR PUTTING IT INTO WORDS. *screeeches*

I don't know what you expected but I am still not done talking about the infamous fifth episode of the What If...? show.

Spoiler warnings ahead.

Throughout the episode, while trying to pull Steve out of the mind control, Peggy keeps repeating "Steve, this isn't you, wake up" an abnormal amount of times. It's actually sickening how lacking the scriptwriting is, at least for her character.

Bucky interacts with Steve for barely a minute and even then, his efforts to get Steve back display a wider vocabulary than Peggy's throughout the whole episode.

Furthermore, I'd like to break down and compare Steve's words to Bucky and CATWS, and Peggy's words to Steve in What If...?

Steve: "I'm not gonna fight you," and here he drops the shield into the river below, "you're my friend."

Moments later, as Bucky nearly punches him to death, saying "YOU'RE! MY! MISSION!", Steve's calm, collected response is "then finish it, cause I'm with you till the end of the line."

Yes, tear-jerking, we know. Let's move on.

Peggy, having gone up against Steve in a huge (around the same size as the armour Tony built in the cave) metal suit, made of plutonium or something, and still standing straight up, says:

"I don't want to fight you, I can't fight you anymore. I'm done fighting, I've been fighting for so long, to end the war, to forget what I lost...I'm tired. Steve, I want to be with you. I want you, even if this is the end."

Keeping aside the frustrating repetition of the word "fight" in just a few lines of Peggy's speech, let's look at the motivation behind both the dialogues.

Peggy talks about herself. About how she is tired of the war and of losing people, how she tries to forget how Steve isn't in her life anymore, about how she wants to be with him. Her entire purpose is not to save him, but to save him for herself. Her actions come from a selfish point of view, and by the time she says this, she is far from being as battered and bruised as MCU Steve. In fact, she gets away with just a couple of bruises at the most.

On the other hand, Steve's intention was to free Bucky from Hydra's torture, to protect his childhood best friend and lover. He had been shot multiple times, stabbed at least once, had his skin split open in several areas when he dropped the final bombshell. Steve was nearly dying while he was saying all that; yes he would've loved a second chance at life with Bucky by his side, but it was never his primary focus.

His primary focus was making sure Bucky had a second chance at life, even if he himself died trying. It was as if to say "I may die right here right now, but I love you too much to hurt you any further than I already have. You've always been more dear to me than life itself, so if your mission is truly to kill me, you know I'll support you in it even as you're taking my last breath out of me. All I ask for is your safety and well-being."

And it shows in the consequences too - in CATWS, Bucky not only regains just enough of his memories to stop, but also pulls Steve out of the Potomac before he can drown to death and places him somewhere he knows Sam and Nat and the others will easily spot him.

On the contrary, Hydra Stomper Steve barely shows any affection, shock or remorse towards the woman in front of him, but instead, he flies up to the Red Room and destroys it. It is unclear whether he survives the crash himself.

Like I said before, despite Marvel trying their absolute hardest to push StevePeggy as the superior pairing, they still end up portraying Steve and Bucky's (I say romantic, because Steggy mirroring Stucky proves the latter to be a romance) bond to be far stronger than that of Steve with a woman he only knew for a couple of years at most during a world war.

They dug their own grave and cannot crawl their way out of it. Stucky prevails.

@buckymilf @mainly-marvel @oneofstarkskids @jjmaybanksgun @averageambivert