What If…? Season 3 Episode 4, “What If The Red Guardian Stopped The Winter Soldier,” is the MCU series at its finest.
The hook of the series is: what if Marvel dropped established MCU characters into wildly disparate universes and storylines they normally wouldn’t find themselves in? We’ve seen so many fantastical tales, but it has to be said – it’s not the gimmick of the “what if” that makes the series good; it’s the characters.
In the fourth chapter of this final season, we find Alexi Shostakov, a.k.a. The Red Guardian, (David Harbour, Stranger Things) unhappy with an assignment given to him by General Drakov. Drakov, who is in no mood for the bellyaching of Russia’s Super Soldier, activates The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan, Captain America: The Winter Soldier). The mission is to steal a secret cache from the trunk of Howard Stark…and make sure there are no witnesses. Yes, this is the night The Winter Soldier killed Tony Stark’s parents.
As you can predict from the title of the episode, Red Guardian intervenes and stops The Winter Soldier from killing The Starks. This sets off a national manhunt for Alexi and Nucky headed up by S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Bill Foster, a.k.a. Goliath (Laurence Fishburne, The Matrix), and a dogged park ranger, Ranger Morales (America Ferrera, Barbie). In true ’80s buddy cop action movie style, Alexi and Bucky are the bickering odd couple who eventually become best pals and team up to take on all comers.
The chemistry between Harbour and Stan is what sells the episode (a good omen for their upcoming big screen team-up in Thunderbolts* in 2025). Harbour’s Red Guardian is played initially as a big, fumbling lummox; a parody of Captain America essentially. It’s played for laughs initially, but then they allow Harbour to play his trump card – he puts his character’s heart on their sleeve. Alexi truly is the Russian version of Captain America and Steve Rogers. He’s averse to killing, he’s a patriot through and through, and he, like Steve in Winter Soldier, believes that no amount of programming can truly replace the man that lives inside The Winter Soldier.
Meanwhile, Sebastian Stan is able to continue to mine The Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes character for even more emotional wealth. The character is still a steely, shoot first character, but he has a bit more of a warm emotional center. He takes to Alexi much easier than any other character we’ve seen him work with in the MCU. This allows for the big third act twist to really hit hard.
The episode itself is a big, fun, chase movie condensed into a 30 minute-ish animated romp. It’s big on action, has some solid laughs (mostly thanks to Fishburne and Harbour), and has some solid plot twists worthy of the best of What If…? has offered in its three seasons.
“What If…The Red Guardian Stopped The Winter Soldier” is not only a great episode of television, it’s also probably one of the best episodes to introduce newcomers to. It’s so accessible, but really crystallizes what the series is about. A+ work, Marvel.
