Hayley Atwell on Peggy Carter’s Death in Doctor Strange: ‘She Gets Frisbeed to Death’

Some on-screen deaths stick with fans long after the credits roll, and there’s one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that the actor herself still isn’t over. Hayley Atwell has once again spoken openly about her disappointment with how Peggy Carter — the character she’s played for more than a decade — was written out of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Her blunt description of the scene has reignited the whole debate about how Marvel treated one of its most beloved supporting characters.

What Hayley Atwell actually said

Speaking at the For the Love of Fantasy & Sci-Fi convention in London, Atwell told attendees she was frustrated by Captain Carter’s storyline in the 2022 Sam Raimi film. Carter — an MCU fixture since she debuted in 2011 — appeared in the movie as a variant of Captain America from another universe. Her fate in that cameo was swift and brutal: she was killed by Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, using her own shield.

“If I’m really, like, brutally honest, I was so disappointed with how they positioned her and what happened to her in that scene,” Atwell said. “It’s so small, and she gets frisbeed to death.”

She continued: “I felt that was like a bum steer and a complete disservice to the character.”

It’s not the first time she’s voiced the concern. Back in 2023, she told the Happy Sad Confused podcast how much the moment bothered her, especially the way it undercut Peggy’s signature defiance. “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.’ … That doesn’t really serve Peggy very well.”

Why this character matters so much

Peggy Carter isn’t just any supporting player. She’s the woman who essentially shaped Captain America himself. In Captain America: The First Avenger, she was the brilliant, no-nonsense agent who kept Steve Rogers grounded, and their almost-romance — sealed by a dance that never quite happened — became one of the MCU’s most emotional threads. It was powerful enough to eventually get Agent Carter, her own two-season series, which remains a fan favorite for giving a female MCU character real agency and a smart, stylish espionage tone.

Part of what made the character resonate is that she wasn’t defined by a man. Her series leaned into her competence — the secret agent carving out a place in a post-war world that kept trying to sideline her, fighting her own agency as much as she fought enemies. That’s why the “I know my value” line, which Atwell carries into her own Marvel negotiations, lands so hard: it isn’t a cool quip, it’s the thesis of the whole character. Fans recognized a woman who spent her whole arc insisting on her own worth, which is precisely why seeing that same character dispatched in a handful of seconds in the Doctor Strange sequel felt so off-key.

That history is exactly why so many fans felt the Doctor Strange cameo undercut her. After building Peggy up as someone who never backed down — who literally stared down a Hydra-created portal in her first scene — Marvel brought her back in a multiversal variant only to have her killed off in seconds with her own shield in her hand being turned against her. To a lot of viewers, it read less like a tribute and more like a wasted opportunity.

The “I know my value” angle

The most revealing part of the new interview might not be the criticism at all, but what Atwell said about how she uses Peggy’s strength in her own career. She revealed that she brings one of Carter’s most famous lines — “I know my value” — into her actual contract negotiations with Marvel.

“If I’m able to say these lines with conviction, I’ve got to embody them myself,” Atwell said.

It’s a lovely meta-turn: the fictional character who always knew her worth has given the actor playing her a real-world negotiating mantra. That the character — built up through the Agent Carter series and her MCU appearances — can both inspire Atwell and be disposed of so casually in another movie only sharpens the contradiction Atwell is calling out.

The multiverse problem Marvel still has

Atwell’s frustration points to a bigger creative issue the MCU has wrestled with across its multiverse saga. When death and consequence bend, characters can appear anywhere at any time, and some of the storytelling shortcuts have inevitably felt cheap. The Peggy Carter scene is a textbook example: a beloved character returns as a variant, delivers a signature line, then gets disposed of quickly because the real story is about Stephen Strange and Wanda.

It’s worth remembering the context. By the time Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hit theaters, Wanda’s arc had been evolving in WandaVision toward something darker, and the film made her the central antagonist. Sam Raimi leaned into that horror energy — this is, not coincidentally, one of the most explicitly violent entrances in the MCU’s Phase Four, with the Scarlet Witch cutting through a team of hero variants in the film’s opening stretch, the Peggy included. In that story, the heroes of other universes become collateral. Peggy was part of that collateral — and for fans who’d watched her grow across a decade, it stung all the more because her death happened so early, before Raimi’s film had earned the brutality with context.

There’s also a fairness argument worth making in Marvel’s defense. A cameo in a crowded crossover film rarely gets the space a standalone project does, and the entire point of multiverse stories is that variants can come and go quickly. Kill a different version of a character, and in theory the “real” one is untouched — which is exactly how Marvel can pull the character out of the box again whenever it wants. Peggy dying as a variant doesn’t erase the version who shared that dance with Steve Rogers. But that technicality doesn’t make it feel better in the moment, especially when the character gets a signature line and then a violent exit in the same breath.

Where Peggy Carter goes from here

The good news is that Marvel hasn’t exactly tucked her away for good. The character has been rumored and discussed in connection with Avengers: Doomsday, the next big two-part crossover, and the multiverse machinery means almost any variant of Peggy could resurface at any moment. Atwell, for her part, has consistently said she loves the character and would happily return if the story does Peggy justice.

Fans of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will know exactly which scene she’s talking about — the kind of blink-and-miss-it moment that a decade of character building arguably deserved better than. Whether Marvel listens to the criticism and finds a way to bring Peggy back on her own terms remains to be seen. But if there’s one thing Atwell and the audience agree on, it’s this: Peggy Carter’s story shouldn’t end with her getting “frisbeed to death.”

What to watch next

If you’re catching up on Peggy Carter’s full arc, the essentials are the First Avenger movie, the Agent Carter series, and the WandaVision cameo that set up her multiversal return. It’s a surprisingly emotional through-line across the entire MCU — a reminder that even brief deaths can leave a lasting mark when the character earned her weight. And as Marvel barrels toward Doomsday, keeping an eye on whether Peggy gets a proper send-off is a storyline worth tracking.