Before Avengers: Doomsday, an MCU star tears into their character’s ending

Once Marvel blew open the doors to the Multiverse Saga, it was always bound to be chaos – and not only the fun, cross-dimensional kind. Phase 4’s introduction of alternate realities basically guaranteed that Marvel would start flinging a whole lot of heroes and villains at the wall to see what stuck, and the result has been a lot of new faces… plus plenty of abrupt exits. Sometimes you wait years to see a beloved comic crew hit the screen, and then they’re unceremoniously wiped out in a five-minute bloodbath. The Illuminati in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness learned that one the hard way.

If you blinked, you might’ve missed them: a table full of multiversal all-stars – Captain Peggy Carter, Black Bolt, Monica Rambeau, Professor X, and Mr. Fantastic – brought together largely to be obliterated in one go by a rampaging Wanda Maximoff. The whole thing lands more as a shock gag than a proper showdown, and nobody seemed more unimpressed by it than Hayley Atwell, who played Captain Carter.

During a recent fan panel in London, Atwell didn’t exactly mince words about what it was like to see her alt-Captain get frisbeed to death (yes, literally – by her own shield) in the Illuminati massacre.

In her own words to the audience present:

If I'm really like brutally honest, I was so disappointed with how they positioned her and what happened to her in that scene. It's so small, and she gets frisbeed to death.

‘A Complete Disservice’

Let’s be clear – the Illuminati, in the comics at least, are a near-unstoppable collection of brainiacs and powerhouses. You wouldn’t expect them to collapse like a tower of biscuits. But in the film, Wanda turns up, and within minutes, she’s sliced through Black Bolt, Reed Richards, Rambeau, and Peggy Carter herself – the lot dispatched with barely a moment to actually fight back. Atwell apparently tried to lobby for some change to her exit, or at least an ounce more dignity.

But, as she put it at the panel, her suggestions to tweak the scene didn’t get far:

I tried on set to kind of go, 'Can I just add? Can I just suggest?' And they were like, 'Sure, but no.'

Screenwriter Michael Waldron has previously been pretty upfront about the fact that this massacre was never meant to be a real fight. In 2022, he told the LA Times that knocking off the Illuminati this brutally was baked into the earliest versions of the script – all about rattling the audience and making Wanda look properly dangerous. The way he saw it, the moment was “rewarding” solely for the crowd’s stunned reaction on opening night, not for giving the heroes their due.

The Catchphrase Problem

If you were watching and thought the scene felt a bit like a rug-pull gag, you’re not alone, and Atwell’s been saying as much to anyone who’ll listen. Just to twist the knife, Captain Carter’s demise arrives immediately after she delivers the very same “I can do this all day” line made famous by Steve Rogers – so her getting cloven in half a few seconds later lands less as a gutting tragedy and more as a slightly cruel punchline.

The silver lining, if you can call it that, is Atwell says she’s open to picking up the shield again – but she’s done letting the character get wasted. She’s been pretty clear with Marvel that she’ll only return if Captain Carter gets more than a walk-on role. Atwell’s now adopted Peggy’s own mantra “I know my value” at the negotiation table. Next up for her: a confirmed appearance in Avengers: Doomsday – although what part she’ll actually play is being kept tightly under wraps for now.

Avengers: Doomsday will mark Atwell’s return to the MCU after the divisive Multiverse of Madness cameo.