What If... the Avengers Assembled in 1602?

 "We never get our happy ending..."

I read Neil Gaiman's limited series of 1602 a couple of decades ago, but I fear I remember little. I recall the throwback from the future being the same as here, but the 1602 of the limited series was much more rooted in real history, Old Queen Bess with her old rotting teeth and all that. This is a very different beast, but fun just the same.

We have rifts in time causing this universe to end. We have a very ungrateful King Thor- he's had Wanda Maximoff kidnap Peggy from her own reality (and her own Steve Rgers) to help save their universe... only to exile her when she initially fails, still exiled to a doomed world. Yet Peggy is truly a hero, refusing the Watcher's offer to take her "home."

Indeed, I love the metatextuality with Peggy being very much aware of the Watcher's presence and the two ofvthem interacting. But then, of course, this is an episode which opens with Tom Hiddleston playing Hamlet (a recent play by some lad from Warwickshire) and which is delightfully crammed with deliberately absurd olde worlde insults.

The character stuff is cool too, though. Once again, Happy Hogan becomes the Freak. Yet, at the core of things, behind all the fun, is the deep, tragic heartbreak of Peggy and Steve never getting to be together. Here's hoping that the finale puts a stop to that...