By Published May 15, 2026, 5:37 PM EDT Nicolas Ayala is a Senior Writer for the Comics team at ScreenRant, with over five years of experience writing about Superhero media, action movies, and TV shows. Summary Generate a summary of this story follow Follow followed Followed Like Like Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap
Steve Rogers' story gets significantly overhauled as 's modern history is rewritten. Captain America's arc is unique in that it can be divided very clearly into two parts. The first half is his Golden Age, his period of wartime heroism where he fights Hydra and the Nazis alongside Bucky Barnes and the Invaders as a living symbol of allied resistance in World War II. The second half is his reemergence in the modern Heroic Age, when he wakes up from the ice to find himself a man out of time, forced to lead the Avengers in a high-tech world of gods, aliens, and complex global politics.
Captain America's two-part history provides Marvel with an elegant, built-in solution to the challenges of its sliding timeline. For most heroes, Marvel constantly needs to update their origins to match the real world. remain entirely immune to this continuous retconning, as their foundational roots are permanently tied to World War II. To keep the character relevant to the modern day, Marvel never needs to alter the war Steve Rogers fought in, but simply extend the decades he spends asleep in the Arctic ice.
Steve Rogers' return from the ice also presents many exciting scenarios where Captain America wakes up in a world that's completely foreign not only to him, but to the readers as well.
Captain America Wakes Up In The Year 2099
What If...? Captain America #1; Written By Marc Guggenheim; Art By Sumit Kumar
Marvel has announced a new wave of What If...? comics for 2026, including What If...? Uncanny X-Men, which wonders what would happen if Cassandra Nova killed Professor X; and What If...? Runaways, which wonders what would have happened if the titular team had never run away. Most notably, What If...? Captain America presents an alternate timeline where Steve Rogers wakes up in the futuristic year of 2099 instead of the modern day, pitting the Star-Spangled Avenger against a world that not even the regular Avengers could fully understand.
Marvel's 2099 reality isn't a single timeline. All stories set in or around the year 2099 are a sprawling collection of distinct futuristic universes that have evolved significantly since the imprint's inception in 1992. While the most famous iteration is , Marvel has introduced various other versions, such as the Marvel Knights 2099 or Earth-2992, the Time Storm reality or Earth-96099, and even an Amalgam 2099 or Earth-12772. These realities are often rewoven or replace. For instance, the 2019 2099 Alpha event established a unified Earth-2099, which Uatu the Watcher described as a combination of previous iterations.
What If...? Captain America Is One Of The Few What If...? Stories That May Actually Become Canon
Steve Rogers Waking Up In 2099 Is Bound To Happen Some Day
Unlike stories set in medieval times or distant galaxies, and the real world are steadily approaching. As decades pass in our reality, the present day of Marvel's Earth-616 must eventually catch up to the cyberpunk era of the late 21st century. Inevitably, Marvel's main Captain America will actually wake up in the year 2099, and Tony Stark, Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, and the Fantastic Four will become superheroes around that time. Curiously, What If...? Captain America is a legitimate preview of where Marvel's primary canon is headed in approximately 73 years.
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In current 616 canon, Steve Rogers' awakening in the present day has already slid from the 1960s to the 2020s. Likewise, instead of the Gulf War and originally the Vietnam War. The Fantastic Four originally get their powers during a mission at the height of the real-world Space Race, and currently, their origin story takes place around 2010. Eventually, most the Heroic Age will take place around 2100, and Steve Rogers may wake up to see a world that only Miguel O'Hara and his fellow 2099 heroes and villains used to inhabit.
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How do you think the year 2099 will affect Captain America's story?
What If...? Captain America #1 is available from Marvel Comics August 5, 2026.
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