Agents of SHIELD season 7 has revealed the origin of the MCU’s super soldier serum. The super soldier serum was created by Professor Abraham Erskine, a German-born scientist who sought a way to enhance the natural abilities of any man or woman. Until Agents of SHIELD season 7, its origin has been lost in the mists of time.
The super soldier serum enhances what is already within. When it was used on Hydra leader Johann Schmidt, it transformed him into the Red Skull, boosting his intellect but stripping him of all humanity. In contrast, it turned the idealistic Steve Rogers into Captain America, the so-called Sentinel of Liberty. Rogers was already a good man, willing to jump on what he believed to be a live grenade for the sake of the people who bullied him, and he became a hero who would selflessly sacrifice himself time and again.
Agents of SHIELD season 7 has seen the team caught up in something of a Time War against a race known as the Chronicoms. The Chronicoms aim to rewrite history and create a new timeline in which SHIELD was never formed, and they’ve headed back to 1942 in an attempt to prevent the creation of the super soldier serum. As Jemma Simmons notes in Agents of SHIELD season 7, episode 2, Erskine began developing his serum in Germany in 1930. It’s now clear Hydra was monitoring him from the start, because in this episode they obtained a crucial element of the formula and attempted to ship it to Germany from the United States. The Chronicoms planned to disrupt this handover, thereby ensuring Erskine failed in his experiments. Schmidt would never have become the Red Skull, Captain America would never have been created, and the ripple effects would have been almost impossible to imagine.
As detailed in tie-in comics for Captain America: The First Avenger, by 1935 Erskine realized the Nazi Government was a dangerous force in the world. He and his family attempted to flee Germany, but Hydra intercepted the train and took them captive. Schmidt – evil before he ever became the Red Skull – sent Erskine’s family to a nascent concentration camp, and used them as leverage to force the scientist to continue work on the super soldier serum. He neglected to tell Erskine when his family died in the camp.
Fortunately, Agent Peggy Carter successfully infiltrated Hydra and extracted Erskine. She took him to the SSR, and Erskine was able to duplicate his super soldier serum and create Captain America. He was executed by a Hydra spy before he could create any other super soldiers, and the secret of his formula died with him. Simmons, however, is clearly aware of at least some of the ingredients – including the one she analyzed in Agents of SHIELD season 7, episode 2, which she identified as key. If the ingredients are known, it’s surely reasonable to assume some attempts to replicate the super soldier serum came close to success – and Simmons must have read some of those studies.
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