Haley Atwell Finally Confirms: She Will Not be Returning in Captain America: The Winter Soldier

At long last, and with some lingering sadness, though at this point it seemed inevitable, Hayley Atwell, the actress behind Peggy Carter in Captain America: The First Avenger, has confirmed that she won’t be returning for Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

“But Susana,” you say, “Winter Soldier is set in the present, where Peggy is like at least eighty. Did we really expect Hayley Atwell to play her?” Well, aside from the possibility of flashbacks or age makeup, there’s another wrinkle in the issue, that has everything to do with Peggy’s canonical descendant, Sharon Carter.

The identity of the female lead character and romantic interest for Steve Rogers has yet to be announced or revealed, although we know Marvel Studios is looking for one, but the first name on everyone’s list is Sharon Carter, a long time love of Steve Rogers from the comics. Carter is the niece of Peggy Carter, inspired to become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent by her parents stories of Peggy fighting for the French Resistance during World War II. In the wartime France of the comics, Steve and Peggy met without him ever finding out her real name. In the present, while Steve does notice Sharon’s uncanny resemblance to Peggy, they don’t actually put two and two together until after they fall in love.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that Marvel would easily be within their rights to hire Hayley Atwell to play Sharon Carter as well as Peggy, and were Hayley Atwell admit to being involved in the production of Winter Soldier it could be seen as an indication that Sharon Carter will be the female lead of Winter Soldier. With Atwell out, as she confirmed in an interview with TimeOut, we know she’ll definitely not be playing Sharon, and we’ll not get any WWII era flashbacks with Peggy either. As to whether Sharon actually appears in the movie, well, we’re back to square one: waiting for Marvel to actually announce something.

(via MTV Splashpage.)