Super Soldiers After Captain America What Happened After Steve Rogers Disappeared

Super Soldiers After Captain America: What Happened After Steve Rogers Disappeared

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When Captain America disappeared, efforts were already underway by both allies and enemies to recreate the Super Soldier Serum and process.

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With The Falcon and the Winter Soldier revealing new details about the propagation of super-soldiers in the MCU, it may be helpful to look at the successors to Project Rebirth, and the timeline of super-soldiers after Captain America disappeared into the ice. With the original Erskine formulation destroyed, Erskine himself dead, and wartime resources limited, it was impossible to recreate the super-soldier serum during WWII. However, as early as The Incredible Hulk, evidence from the films shows that the project of creating enhanced individuals were continued both within the United States and abroad.

The idea of what exactly constitutes a “super-soldier” is a broad one; while the Erskine formulation was able to use Vita Rays to augment the serum, and thus create Captain America, Bruce Banner attempted to use Gamma Rays. Howard Stark created something like the Erskine serum, and Iron Man 3 offered AIM’s “Extremis” as a form of super-soldier as well. Outside of the United States, Hydra worked with the Soviet Union to create Winter Soldiers, the most successful of whom was Bucky Barnes, whose augmentations also included a cybernetic limb that made for a powerful weapon. All of these different efforts created beings that could reasonably be called super-soldiers because they were directly augmented humans, rather than regular humans using specialized equipment.

Not all of the iterations of the Super Soldier projects have been shown in the MCU so far; while attempts at recreation were going on as late as the early 2000s, there was at least a somewhat successful version used on Isaiah Bradley as early as the 1950s. Bradley’s treatment made him able to handle himself in the fight with the Winter Soldier, but the fact that neither Bradley nor Barnes’ treatments were used more broadly suggests a high mortality rate. Bradley, the first Black Captain America, was then imprisoned for three decades, during which blood samples were forcibly taken and experiments may have been conducted on him to refine the super-soldier program.

The Winter Soldier Program Creates Super-Assassins

The Winter Soldier program, run by Hydra-infiltrated Soviet research teams, used a combination of physical and mental conditioning to create enhanced assassins. While Bucky Barnes is referred to as the Winter Soldier, and seems to be the only successful agent to use that title, this project was intended to create an entire generation of ruthless and powerful killers. As a former POW experimented on during WWII, Barnes may have been more physically able to survive the experimental process; he already had enhanced endurance, allowing him to survive his apparent death. This accounts for the failure of the program, as the Winter Soldier remained a sole agent – combined with cryonics, it’s also why Bucky aged differently than Captain America.

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Since Barnes’ treatment began in a Hydra POW camp and was likely based on Erskine’s early and unfinished work that empowered the Red Skull, it seems likely that the Winter Soldier was the first new super-soldier iteration after Captain America vanished. Although U.S. researchers had samples of Steve Roger’s blood, the majority of the research that Erskine had done was destroyed when he was killed. Consequently, the Winter Soldier program was further along than the U.S. research program seeking to follow up on Project Rebirth.

Test Versions Of The Formula Achieve Partial Success

Not a lot has yet been shown about the process by which Isaiah Bradley, the first Black super-soldier in the MCU, was empowered. He may have received the benefits of an early attempt to recreate the Erskine formulation, or he may have been given an earlier version of the serum that had not yet been perfected. Fighting the Winter Soldier, Isaiah Bradley was clearly enhanced in some manner similar to Steve Rogers, but since the U.S. did not have an entire generation of super-soldiers, it’s fair to assume that whatever treatment Bradley was given had negative side-effects. As a Black veteran in the 1950s, Bradley’s incarceration may have been an excuse to keep him close at hand to try to reproduce the results of his treatment.

In the comics, Isaiah Bradley was the only survivor of 300 Black volunteer test subjects in the effort to recreate the Super Soldier Serum. If that is mirrored in the MCU, it would also contribute to the character’s bitterness, and explain why he was so closely monitored. A variation of the serum, used in 2008 on Emil Blonsky, may have been a successor to this formulation; although it empowered him, it warped his spine and caused extreme pain. Blonsky, the Abomination, was almost an Avengers recruit; his erratic behavior and obsession with power and violence left him considered unsuitable for the task.

Howard Stark Recreates The Super-Soldier Formula

In Captain America: Civil War, Howard Stark’s assassination by the Winter Soldier is revealed to have been an effort to seize control of a successfully recreated Super Soldier Serum. The briefcase removed from Stark’s car contained his research notes and formulas. While these may not have been the only copies, their loss could still have been a tremendous setback for the recreation program. Stark, a colleague and collaborator to Erskine during the war and the engineer behind the Vita-Ray chamber, would have had more access to Erskine’s original research than most. However, since Blonsky was given an imperfect replication of the serum in The Incredible Hulk, it is fair to assume the recreation the U.S. had following this was imprecise.

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Non-U.S. super-soldiers could have stolen serum flowing through their veins; the Flag-Smashers’ received their enhancements from an unknown source. While it’s possible that another individual or nation’s program was able to recreate or replicate the effects of the original serum, it is equally likely that Stark’s formula was used to enhance them. Whether Vita Ray radiation was part of this new course of treatment is unclear; Blonsky was not exposed to Vita-Ray radiation when he received his treatment, and while it is possible that he was not administered his dosage correctly, it’s also possible that this step was removed for some reason.

Modern Versions Seem To Be More Successful

The Flag-Smashers have been called super-soldiers by Falcon and the Winter Soldier, two experts on the subject. Threatening text messages sent to the Smashers suggest that they may have stolen their enhancement somehow. It is hard to say whether the Flag-Smashers’ augmentation is a result of a variation on the Hydra or Erskine formulas, as none of the Flag-Smashers appear to have undergone the same kind of physical transformation that Steve Rogers did. They have a variety of body types, as opposed to Rogers’ broad-shouldered, athletic build following his course of treatment.

If the Flag-Smashers were empowered using a serum or similar treatment that does not require the same kind of muscle growth and physical transformation, this would explain their apparently higher survival rate. The risks of the various attempts at serums seem to come from the rigors of growth associated with the treatment, evidenced in Bradley, Blonsky, and possibly the Hulk. An early version of the serum transformed the Red Skull viscerally, as well, although long-term health implications from this were never able to be explored. This suggests that the newest super-soldier treatment course may be very different from Erskine’s formulation.

More information may yet be forthcoming about the super-soldiers of the MCU, likely focusing on North America and Europe. The heart-shaped herb that empowered Wakandan leaders may have a similar or entirely different mechanism, but the Black Panther doesn’t fit as easily into the timeline as there is no apparent connection between the herb and the serum. It will be interesting to see what further revelations are yet to come in forthcoming episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/mcu-project-rebirth-timeline-after-captain-america-super-soldiers/

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