Why the dark secret revealed in Captain America: Steve Rogers #1 is a good thing

Marvel’s debut issue of Captain America: Steve Rogers came out today, and an awesome piece of Steve’s history has been revealed.

Maybe you’re like me and you sat through Captain America: Civil War and tried not to scream at Steve Rogers for blindly following after Bucky Barnes and being too jaded by the government to join his teammates in signing the Sokovia Accords. Orr maybe you’re altogether nonplussed by Captain America’s story arcs in the comics (they should just call him Captain Bland). Either way, today’s debut issue of Captain America: Steve Rogers #1 rocked your world.

And probably for the better.

If you’re here, you either want to know or you already know, but I’m obligated to say SPOILERS AHEAD!

Today — hold your shields — it has been officially confirmed that Captain America is a member of Hydra.

Hydra.

Hy. Dra.

That’s the terrorist group that he’s been fighting for, like, ever.

After battling Baron Zemo (who just successfully tore the Avengers apart in Civil War), Steve utters two words that jarred comic book readers around the world today: “Hail Hydra.” Not only does this reveal that Captain America is currently an undercover agent, but writer Nick Spencer and Marvel’s head-editor, Tom Brevoort, have confirmed that he’s always been.

Prior to this series, Steve Rogers had been de-powered and was a regular, old man while his friend, Sam Wilson (the Falcon) took up the shield and became Captain America. Once Steve got his power back and a new shield, he returned to action and got a “new” backstory. It’s more of a revelation, but new information to readers, who probably weren’t expecting goody two-shoes Rogers to have that kind of skeleton in his closet.

Spencer explained the conception of the idea to EW:

"Rick Remender, who was the previous writer on Captain America, had been building towards this story of Hydra having infiltrated various institutions of government and various super teams. I thought that sounded like too big of a story. I drilled it down and thought, what if there’s just one very valuable Hydra plant? What if they’re looking for 100 people, but there’s just one? So I started asking, who’s the worst person it could possibly be? It was really obvious straight away that there’s nobody who could do more damage and nobody that could be a more valuable Hydra plant than Steve Rogers. That was really the genesis. It sprang pretty organically from story ideas that were already on the table."

Over 75 years of Captain America boils down to this, folks. The poster boy for justice has a dark side, and he’s a flawed human being with facets that are more interesting than the fact that he’s super old or played by a good-looking actor like Chris Evans.

While I don’t know if I liken it to “Hitchcock tradition,” at least Steve Rogers has something more interesting to talk about than the olden days with Bucky or Peggy.

Moving forward, Spencer also shares on Cap’s relationship with Hydra, “It’s a big part of our story, what Steve’s beliefs are about what Hydra should be, where it should go, what it should focus on. To me, I always get really fascinated by this kind of thing. Any World War II history buff can talk your ear off about the internal power struggles of the Nazi Party. There were some fun parallels to play with here.”

That does sound fun. Marvel took the most squeaky-clean character they had in their arsenal and did away with everything that he previously stood for so he could grapple with an uncertain future in which he’s the head of Hydra.

And as for the movies?

Captain America veered off into left field and became a suspiciously dark character in his latest film, but I don’t think that was a coincidence. And if it was, don’t be surprised if this revelation appears later down the road in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

As Brevoort says, “By definition, we operate at a different pace—they produce one Captain America story every two years at maximum, whereas we’ll release a number of different stories involving Cap every single month. So we look at what we do as being the trailblazers. This gives the studio’s team a big swath of raw material to cherry-pick from when working out what next to do with the characters in their medium. Our stories of today are potentially the inspiration for the movies of tomorrow.”

Boom. Phase four: Steve Rogers and his boyfriend, Bucky, rebuild Hydra from the ashes and become legitimately interesting characters. It’s a win-win for everybody.

And if you’re in denial, here’s the page straight from the issue:

Hail Hydra? More like “Hail any story line to make Captain America relevant again.”

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