In Black Widow, Red Guardian boasts having fought Captain America – now the MCU is going to have to show what really happened. The film introduces Alexei Shostakov (David Harbor) as a Russian super-soldier who never required all the mind control of the Winter Soldier program. Now Marvel will have to address one of the bolder claims that the character makes.
During Black Widow’s scene in the Seventh Circle Prison, Red Guardian punctuates his arm-wrestling bouts with stories of his glory days. He elates in telling a story elaborating on how he defeated Captain America in the 1980s. This story is called into question when Ursa Major (Olivier Richters) arrives and points out that Steve Rogers’ Captain America would still have been frozen in ice at that time. Alexei seems genuinely upset at doubt being cast on his story and breaks Ursa’s arm in return. When he is reunited with Natasha Romanoff, he is keen to ask about her time working with Captain America and whether Rogers ever mentioned him.
The MCU have put themselves in an interesting position here as Red Guardian’s earnest questioning of Natasha about Captain America makes it clear that he believes his own story. If they bring Red Guardian back in a superteam (which seems likely as several characters from the Winter Guard have made small appearances so far), they will have to find a way to show what really happened for him to tell this story in Black Widow. This is difficult as Ursa Major is right that Steve Rogers can’t have fought Alexei as Rogers was frozen well into the time that he was in prison. After the events of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, it might seem possible that Red Guardian fought Isiah Bradly, but Isiah himself was in prison in the 1980s.
As the character has already been set up to be a comic foil to figures like Yelena Belova, it’s possible that the eventual payoff could be irreverent with Red Guardian having misunderstood a situation. It is possible that he fought a random vigilante with a shield and simply assumed it was Captain America. The merchandise that he receives from fans suggests that Red Guardian was truly Russia’s answer to the original concept of Captain America within the MCU, where Rogers was trotted out for photoshoots. A part of this could have included Red Guardian performing a fight against a stand-in Captain America, just as Rogers did with Hitler, and was lied to by the Soviets about what was really happening.
It is also possible that the figure that Red Guardian fought was an American who was intentionally attempting to pass for Captain America. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier confirmed the existence of other super soldier programs within the US and through John Walker’s Captain America showed that the US government would try and put the mantle on another soldier for the purposes of propaganda. This comedic story in Black Widow could in fact be setting up a history of covert attempts by the US while Rogers was on ice to bring back the image of Captain America, and the 1980s when the Soviets were still clinging to power would have been the perfect time to experiment with it.
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