In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2019, “The Winter Soldier” and “Endgame” writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely revealed that it had always been the plan to have Rogers be the mysterious man who marries Carter and fathers her children. “Markus and McFeely accept that different people will have different viewpoints on this topic,” the outlet reported. “But, in their minds, Steve was Peggy’s husband all along.” McFeely even went so far as to state, “It was always our intention that he was the father of those two children. But again, there are time travel loopholes for that.”
Despite the sticky time travel elements, the Steve Rogers solution is by far the cleanest and most satisfactory option. In the same hospital scene in “The Winter Soldier,” Carter says, “I have lived a life. My only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours.” She adds a moment later, “The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best we can do is to start over.”
In the context of the moment, this call to restart seems to apply to Rogers’ need to get his 21st century life going. However, he eventually interprets it as literally heading back to the ’40s, where he does start over, getting his final dance and happily ever after. It’s a great ending, and it’s wild to think it was almost ruined by a bedside prop. Thank goodness executive producer Louis de Esposito was on set and had the forethought to remove it.
