(This article contains major spoilers for Sharon Carter’s story in the finale of Marvel’s “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” on Disney+)
Well well well. I don’t know what we expected to happen with Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” but I’m willing to bet very few people predicted anything like this.
First, we learned that everyone she knew, including her love interest and former Captain America Steve Rogers, just kinda abandoned her after the Snap. Then, since she was a fugitive, she had to find a new way to live her life, and she apparently chose to be a crime boss and call herself the Power Broker and start making new super soldiers.
But like with most folks, Sharon wanted to go home. So when she ran into Sam (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) on “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” and Sam offered to try to hook her up with a pardon if she helped them take down the Flag Smashers, she agreed. Of course, she also wanted to take them down because they betrayed her, but still.
Cut to the finale. The Flag Smashers have been smashed. The credits have rolled — until we get to the mid-credits bonus scene. Sharon is back in Washington, D.C. receiving her pardon from that senator who’s been the only person in the government that we’ve met on this show. He tells her that “there may be an opening in your old division” in the CIA, which is where she landed after SHIELD broke up. She accepts, and is once again Agent Carter.
But if you thought she was gonna settle for being just Agent Carter, you were very wrong. Life as the Power Broker is too good to give up, and we know because immediately after her reinstatement, Sharon calls up one of her Power Broker employees and tells them to start lining up buyers for all the top secret U.S. government tech she’s about to have access to. So it looks like Sharon is about to become a double agent — but it’s hard to tell just yet if she’s gonna be a villain.
This will be one of the big question for a lot of folks coming out of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” Is Sharon Carter about to go full bad? Or will she exist in a more grey area like we’re expecting from John Walker’s US Agent?
There is actually a lot of precedent in the comics for Sharon going rogue. And because comic books make no damn sense, neither will this. But it’s still cool.
So briefly, in the comics Sharon is Cap’s long time girlfriend (she’s arguably a bigger deal than Peggy in Steve’s life) and a capable SHIELD agent who sometimes comes into conflict with Steve because he worries too much about her when she’s out risking her life.
So, in a 1979 “Captain America” storyline, Sharon is believed killed during a battle with a white supremacist group called the National Force. It later turns out that she faked her death so she could go on a deep, deep cover mission for Nick Fury, during which she was unfortunately killed for real.
Except, once again, she actually wasn’t killed. Instead, through some various bad events she ends up spending years working as a mercenary. She eventually comes in from the cold and rejoins SHIELD, but her years in exile have made her more cynical and ruthless, a cause of frequent disagreements with Steve. (And a reason they don’t resume their relationship).
That should sound familiar, because it’s very similar to how her story went on “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” But from here anything is possible, because the MCU never really follows comic book plotlines — it just uses them as inspiration.
So from here, our best guess is that we’ll see her again in the Disney+ “Armor Wars” series. That series, which has yet to be scheduled, will focus on Don Cheadle’s War Machine and should take place within the circles that Sharon Carter is once again about to run in. Plus, in the comics it’s a story about somebody stealing Tony Stark’s armor designs and selling them — sounds like something Sharon would be into these days.
Will she be a bad guy if she shows up there? It’s too soon to tell.
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