Just looking at the team roster of the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe film, The Thunderbolts, and you will see that the MCU is now riddled with Super Soldiers. They’re all over the place, you can’t get rid of them. Last year's Falcon and the Winter Soldier introduced an entire team of Super Soldiers. Even in the finale of She-Hulk (don’t worry this isn’t a spoiler) Jen Walters (Tatiana Maslany) cracks a couple jokes about the MCU being over-reliant on Super Soldier Serum plotlines. The truth of the matter is, Jen is right, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad thing. Super Soldier Serum has been a major plot device in the MCU as early as its second entry, 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. So, if you’re losing track of who qualifies as a Super Soldier here is a straightforward guide on these enhanced individuals.
While there is only one Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), many others have attempted to follow in his footsteps on both sides of good and evil. This list will only be about the characters that have shown up (or are slated to show up) in the MCU. There’s a lot more in the comics, but these are the ones important to future films and TV shows.
Original Recipe Super Soldier Serum
The original Super Soldier Serum was created by Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) while he was still living in Germany before escaping to America to get away from the Nazi party. Of course, we’ve all seen the movie, we know he went on to perfect his formula and give it to Steve Rogers. But before that, he was creating it under the iron fist of Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving in the first movie), better known as The Red Skull (Ross Marquand in all future appearances). Because the Serum wasn’t ready yet, it ended up ripping parts of his body to shreds and giving him his iconic red skull. Everyone after Red Skull and Captain America were simply trying to recreate Erskine’s work, resulting in a wide variety of different powers.
Soviet Experiments
In the MCU, following the reveal of Captain America, the Soviet Union was desperate to create their own. This resulted in The Winter Soldier program, with a knock off Serum that was first tested on Steve’s best buddy Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan). While Bucky was the most successful of the Winter Soldier program, there were some other unnamed subjects that were also put on ice to be deployed when needed for missions. In Captain America: Civil War, Zemo (Daniel Brühl) finds where they are being held and kills them while they’re still on ice.
A few decades later, during the Cold War, there was a separate attempt of a Russian Super Soldier who was positioned to be more of a symbol like Captain America is, instead of a sleeper agent like the Winter Soldier. The test subject was Alexei Shostakov, better known as The Red Guardian (David Harbour). More than just a Russian symbol, Alexei would also serve as an undercover agent in America during the 80s and 90s, when he was posed as Natasha Romanoff’s (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova’s (Florence Pugh) surrogate father. Unlike Rogers, Shostakov is more blinded to his governments wishes and doesn’t think for himself. He’s also a bit naïve. He did love his surrogate daughters, but wasn’t exactly equipped to be a father, leading Natasha to resent him for a number of years. In Black Widow, he is imprisoned and still a bit delusional on his adventures as a faux Captain Russia. After being broken out in that film, he has yet to show up in the MCU again. But he will be appearing in The Thunderbolts in 2024.
Weapon I through Weapon V
The United States government never gave up on creating Super Soldiers after Steve sacrificed himself at the end of Captain America: The First Avengers. But, with Erskine dead they needed to recreate the serum themselves. This is what created the Weapon Plus Program, with Steve being considered “Weapon I”. But after him, over a period of decades, several attempts were made creating different heroes and villains.
At first there were experiments trying to recreate Weapon I was by forcing black prisoners to be their human test subjects. This resulted in most of them dying, but one of the surviving members was Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly). These horrifying experiments were not made public until the end of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, when Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) set up an exhibit in The Smithsonian honoring Isaiah. This didn’t just make it so Isaiah will be remembered and honored, but it exposes the racist and evil experiments that were forced upon him while being wrongfully imprisoned by the United States.
The next weapon of note is Weapon IV, known as Man-Thing (Carey Jones). Man-Thing is a giant swamp creature who was formerly a human named Ted Sallis. Ted was a scientist trying to recreate the serum in the Florida Everglades. But he crashed his car into a vaguely magical part of the swamp that turned him into the lovable creature we see in Werewolf by Night. It’s a lot to explain, his comic origins are absolutely bonkers, you can read more about the specifics here.
Weapon V is also known as Project Rebirth 2.0, which is when they were testing creating Super Soldiers with alien symbiotes. The results of this created Agent Venom, a version of Venom that attaches to Flash Thompson (Tony Revolori). It seems improbably that Agent Venom will show up in the MCU, but with Flash being in all 3 MCU Spider-Man movies, and the Venom symbiote being left on Earth at the end of No Way Home, it’s not impossible.
Weapons VI through X
The next notable weapon test subject is Weapon VI, better known as Luke Cage (Mike Colter). Cage was also subject to an experiment while imprisoned, but he did so voluntarily. Unfortunately, the test was sabotaged by a racist warden who hated Cage. He intended to kill Luke in the experiment, but it just gave him to power to become the super strong and bulletproof Power Man. Somewhat related to this, the real-world actor Nicolas Cage picked “Cage” as his pseudonym because he was such a big fan of the character. This has nothing to do with the MCU, but it is a fun fact worthy of being shared.
After Luke, the next MCU relevant Weapon Plus subjects were part of a specific subdivision called Weapon X. If that at all sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because you remember it from X2: X-Men United and the first Deadpool movie. That’s right, while Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) were already mutants, some of their superpowers were given to them through this torturous program. In the Fox continuity, Weapon X was not related to Super Soldiers since they didn’t have the rights to use that name. But with Deadpool 3 being in the MCU and Hugh Jackman returning to be Wolverine, who knows what fun comic book goodness will be retconned into the MCU. After all, The Multiverse Saga seems to be making every Marvel project throughout time all part of the same multiverse. Everything is connected.
The Flag Smashers
Falcon and the Winter Soldier introduced us to the villain Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) and her group of Flag Smashers. This group was formed by people displeased with how the government mistreated and abandoned those who’s lives were upended when the Blip removed half of the population, and then again when Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) snapped everyone back 5 years later. Their movement and politics helped Sam Wilson discover the type of Captain America he wants to be, because he understood the point of the movement and didn’t like that they were so quickly labeled “terrorists”. But with (spoilers) Karli’s death at the end of that show, it seems like the entire Flag Smasher group are either dead or disbanded.
Karli’s Flag Smashers were also Super Soldiers, having stolen some of the remaining Serum from Wilfred Nagel (Olli Haaskivi). Nagel was able to successfully recreate Erskine’s formula, but he was unable to make any more after being killed by Zemo. The last person to get a dose of Nagel’s formula before Zemo destroyed the remaining vials, was the government appointed Captain America, John Walker (Wyatt Russell).
While John appears to be a well-meaning guy, he does harbor some internal prejudices and will blindly follow orders. He’s also violent, and the Serum only made that issue worse. After beheading a Flag Smasher with Cap’s shield, the title of Captain America was taken away from him. After he was reprimanded, he was recruited by Val (Julia Louis-Dryfus) to join her Thunderbolts under the new moniker of U.S Agent.
The Gamma Bomb
The last group of Super Soldiers stems from a different group of experiments. Being led by General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt), this experiment aimed to recreate the Serum through Gamma radiation. The test subject was Dr. Bruce Banner, and the result of the test turned him into the Hulk.
A few years later, Ross would give a refined Serum to Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) to create a force to stop the Hulk that was also under his control. This turned Blonsky into a temporary villain named The Abomination, who lost to the Hulk in his first battle and then imprisoned for over ten years.
There are three other characters who also gained superpowers from this experiment, albeit indirectly. Both She-Hulk and The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson) gained their superpowers through being infected with Bruce’s blood. She-Hulk became… well, She-Hulk, who has pretty much the same power set as the Hulk but without the anger management issues. Meanwhile, The Leader gained intelligence instead of strength, and in the comics, he is one of the smartest men alive. But we will not see how these powers affected him until he returns as a villain in Captain America: New World Order.
The third character indirectly effected by this experiment is General Ross himself, who is given the powers of Red Hulk. However, we have yet to see how this relates to the MCU or if they even want to approach taking the character in this direction in upcoming films. After all, it is kind of derivative at this point to have yet another Hulk after they just introduced two more in She-Hulk. So, even though the character was just recast as Harrison Ford, any potential Red Hulk connection is purely speculation at this point.
And… that’s it! This is every hero and villain in the MCU that has a connection to the Super Soldier Serum. One of the best things about having a shared universe is seeing how characters connect to each other, even if they have never met before. It’s the little things like this that has made fans so invested in the Marvel Lore over the past 14 years. ‘Nuff said!