What’s behind the Hayley Atwell backlash? Marvel fan drama and messy internet rumors

At a 2016 appearance at the Dallas Comic Con Fan Expo, Hayley Atwell didn’t hedge when asked about Steve Rogers’ romance with Peggy Carter’s niece, Sharon, in the MCU. She framed it from Peggy’s point of view — protective, recently deceased in the timeline — and drew a hard line.

"I just feel that, you know - I wouldn't want to date my great aunt's guy. It just feels like it crosses an incestuous boundary. And Peggy just died. That's even more disrespectful, right? It's like, 'don't touch that.' 'You can't tap that!'"

The comment lit up Marvel shipping debates all over again, with some fans reading it as a slight toward Sharon Carter (played by Emily VanCamp). For the record, there’s never been any verified conflict between Atwell and VanCamp — the back-and-forth lived squarely in fandom, not between the actors.

That’s largely the pattern with Atwell online: the noise tends to come from creative takes on her Peggy Carter era and where the character’s story should have gone, not from off-screen drama.

Captain Carter, briefly

The cycle repeated when Atwell showed up as Captain Carter in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Fans were thrilled to see a live‑action version, then frustrated when the cameo was short and brutally cut off. Atwell later said the moment undercut Peggy more than it celebrated her.

"When she was like, 'I could do this all day' and then followed by she's immediately cut in half by a frisbee. And the audience being like, 'She can't do it all day. Apparently you can't, so, egg on your face.' That doesn't really serve Peggy very well,"

she said on Happy Sad Confused in 2023. Many viewers agreed, arguing there was more to mine with that variant than a quick shock gag.

Atwell has continued exploring the character on the animated series What If...? — voicing Peggy/Captain Carter in stories with room to breathe — which streams on Disney+ .