I just felt like finishing this up real quick. I can’t promise I’ll keep progressing with this stuff again, but at least I can do this much.
You can read the previous full chapters here:
Liberty Legion Episodes 1 and 2: Lovely Bones’ Earth-206 Miniseries
Main Cast: Captain America / Steve Rogers – Oscar Isaac, Bucky Barnes – Enver Gjokaj, Namor – Pedro Pascal, Peggy Carter – Kerry Washington, Col. Nick Fury – Ron Perlman, Iron Man / Howard Stark – Dominic Cooper, Clint Barton – Keanu Reeves, Hawkeye / Kate Bishop – Aubrey Plaza, Black Widow / Natasha Romanova – Annet Mahendru, Nightcrawler / Constance Wagner – Zazie Beetz.
Recurring Black Panther 1 / King T’Chaka – Djimon Hounsou, Black Panther 2 / Prince T’Challa – Sinqua Walls, Hank Pym – Raul Esparza, Janet Van Dyne – Taraji P Henson, Dr. Robert Bruce Banner – Nathan Stewart-Jarret, Brigadier Timothy Dugan / Colossus – Damien Lewis. Casting for certain figures will be kept under wraps for now.
Chapters 1 and 2. A Date Which Shall Live in Infamy: In 1942, despite tensions with Howard Stark and military brass alike, Steve Rogers and his boyfriend Bucky are recruited by Nick Fury and Peggy Carter into the Liberty Legion, joining Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow, Atlantean king Namor, Kate Bishop, and her mentor Clint Barton. Their first mission involves Steve negotiating with Wakanda’s king T’Chaka for alliance and a vibranium shield.
Chapter 3. Demons in the Black Forest: The most restless members of our team bond in the nighttime before their next deployment. Arriving in territory claimed by the Allies, the Liberty Legion searches the German countryside for people in need of evacuation, and intervenes with a conflict where an angry mob is attacking a young woman with a blue skinned, tailed appearance, believing that she has slain their children. After being talked down by Clint, the woman, Connie Wagner, proclaims her innocence, and the Legion proceeds to investigate. Ultimately she, now codenamed Nightcrawler, is escorted from the village under the protection of the Legion and joins them, in the meantime meeting someone else born with a strange condition, Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan turning out to have skin made of metal.
Chapter 4. Carrying a Torch: The Legion finally launches their first combat mission on European soil, successfully destroying a Nazi base through their highly coordinated teamwork. Despite their success in the field, behind closed door, tensions between Steve and Howard reach their boiling point, leading to Howard proclaiming that half the reason he’s in the Legion in the first place is that he wants to be more like Steve. This forces Steve to reconsider his behavior. Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of Hydra’s lair, Arnim Zola and Baron Heinrich Zemo finally accept after this latest loss that they must fight superhuman fire with superhuman fire. They launch the Weapon Plus program, experimenting on three prisoners of war (one a feral Canadian named Wade Logan Wilson) and one volunteer soldier, to begin preparing their counter offensive for the Liberty Legion.
Chapter 5. Unfamiliar Territories: The year is now 1943. Steve continues to struggle with the feeling that the Legion is still not doing enough (as well as how this contradicts his previous hopes to keep Bucky off the battlefield), and his regrets over his treatment of Howard Stark. His performance in their next several missions begins to slip, forcing the Legion to temporarily halt operations and hold private meetings to finally get all their baggage out in the open and resolve their emotional states, bringing Steve and Howard to an uneasy peace but igniting other conflicts, such as the concern that Namor and Natasha’s affair could result in some Soviet-Atlantean alliance. The Legion finally returns to the field to aid Allied forces in Italy, where they are faced with a surprise attack by Hydra’s four-man Weapon Plus squad: the Canadian, Wolverine, the Brit, Toad, the Australian, Pyro, and the loyal German, Black Swan. This encounter ends in rough stalemate that leaves both parties embittered.
Chapter 6. Blinding Us With Science: The Legion arrives at Stark’s R&D facility in England, meeting three brilliant scientists key to their ongoing operations who hope to help with the counteroffensive against the newly discovered Weapon Plus agents: the physicist Robert Bruce Banner, and a pair of engaged to be married biochemists, Henry Pym and Janet Van Dyne. The couple demonstrate their early in development experimental technology that would allow for shrinking human agents for espionage activity.
Chapter 7. The Long Winter: In late 1943, the Legion is faced with a brutal, drawn out battle under the snow of the Swiss Alps, as they are confronted for the second time with the superpowered adversity of Hydra’s Weapon Plus agents, under the leadership of Baron Wolfgang von Strucker alongside a massive German army. The fighting goes on for weeks as heavy losses occur for both factions and resources rapidly begin to dwindle with ice and combat alike keeping out reinforcements. Several members of the Liberty Legion begin operating covert supply runs, but they are finally ambushed one night. A soldier gets dangerously close to hurting Steve, leading to Bucky jumping in as always to protect him. Steve is traumatized when Bucky’s knife is unexpectedly driven into his own neck while grappling with the soldier, right before the soldier is shot by reinforcements finally arriving. Stunned, Steve holds Bucky’s body in his arms as the Allies mount a renewed assault around him. The Legion is successfully recalled back to HQ for their protection, but in the chaos of that initial fighting, Bucky’s body was lost.
Chapter 8. Rest in the Kingdom: After debriefing at HQ, the Legion is temporarily removed from active duty and sent to a facility in England for some R&R as the war rages on elsewhere. Brigadier Dugan, codenamed Colossus, joins the Legion full time to occupy Bucky’s role in forthcoming combat missions, though he certainly can’t replace Bucky in Steve’s heart. During their time off, the team encounters a soldier who has been administered super serum without Peggy’s awareness, under direct orders from Churchill, known as Sid Ridley, or Captain Midlands. Peggy departs to navigate British leadership and get answers on this undermining of her authority, while the Legion deals with Ridley’s animosity towards them for their multicultural, multiracial, and thoroughly not British makeup. Despite their desire to simply continue resting, the Legion is forced to respond to Captain Midlands’ ongoing behavior, and ultimately uncovers that he was recruited by Hydra due to his sympathies to their ideology, leading to a larger interrogation of the state of the British military and government that rattles Colossus significantly.
Chapter 9. Operation Overlord: During the fighting in Normandy in June 1944, the Liberty Legion is deployed to aid in both press coverage matters and the combat surge past the beaches and further into the countryside, during which they successfully uncover the Red Skull’s current hiding place, eventually forcing his soldiers into surrender after a long firefight, while the Hydra leader commits suicide, leaving his agency in chaos and his officers like Zemo and Strucker to begin attempting to flee Europe.
Chapter 10. Coming in From the Cold: In early 1945, following the victories in Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, the Legion struggles being faced with the uncertainty of what will happen to all of them and their relationships upon the war’s end. They discuss their feelings and ultimately embark on another mission to a base in France, in which they unexpectedly discover the current location of the Weapon Plus facility and successfully capture the four main agents, although the scientists led by Arnim Zola are able to escape. Plans for the invasion of Germany are being finalized, and as part of this process, Nick Fury, with Natasha standing guard, must covertly meet with Soviet representatives. Relations rapidly break down during this meeting for reasons not entirely clear, but it culminates in Fury’s sudden, shocking assassination at the hands of Soviet agents. Natasha angrily pursues these individuals and is able to execute one of them, but the other, fellow Black Widow Yelena Belova, escapes. Natasha has no choice but to formally defect to the US for her own safety.
Chapters 11 and 12. The End of the Line: At the fierce Battle of Nuremberg, the Liberty Legion proudly serves on the frontllines alongside the US’ 7th Army, while the Soviet army continues its battering of Berlin. Intel comes straight from the recently captured Weapon Plus agents that Hydra has been planning a final strike, a series of bombings in late April that will hit many major cities, including Berlin in the midst of battle, and would create enough global chaos and instability for them to attempt to seize power from Axis and Allies alike in the immediate aftermath. Steve and Howard immediately volunteer to dispatch alongside other SSR agents to interfere with Hydra’s plans, while the rest of the Legion remain behind to continue the fight in Germany.
Later, as the fighting in Germany eventually nears its end, Namor’s head is clipped by a bullet from a German sniper, leaving him stunned and bleeding badly. Despite objections from some of the Legion, it is ultimately decided by Peggy that he simply be left to die given both the uncertainty over handling Atlantean physiology, and all else that currently occupies the Allies. Meanwhile, Steve and Howard have begun tracking the locations of Hydra’s bomber planes and destroying them before they have a chance to take off. When procedure on Hydra’s strike is suddenly sped up in response, Steve suddenly dives onto the plane bound for New York just as it’s taking off, while Howard and others mobilize to shoot the rest out of the air before they can reach their targets.
Aboard Hydra’s plane, Steve is shocked to discover that he is face to face with his lost lover, the body of Bucky Barnes reanimated and enlisted into Hydra through primitive cybernetics. Although the shock and pain of this experience briefly gives this undead cyborg warrior the upper hand, Steve looks into the cold eyes of his opponent, accepting that his friend and companion is still gone. This foe is merely the soulless puppet of evil men who are desperate with their backs against the wall, and it, they, must be stopped at any cost. The two soldiers’ knock-down drag-out fight disrupts the pilot’s efforts and takes the plane off its intended course, spiraling northward. Steve decisively destroys the cyborg, incapacitates the pilot, and takes hold of the flight controls, halting Hydra’s plot for good by sacrificially crashing the plane and its cargo into the Arctic.
With World War II coming to a brutal atomic close over the summer months of 1945, the Legion’s mission is done and their morale has received its death blow from the loss of Captain America. While the Western world celebrates its heroes despite all their faults, after the requisite public appearances and behind closed doors, the Legion disbands. Connie Wagner and Kate Bishop, Nightcrawler and Hawkeye, resign in mourning for their losses and dissatisfaction over their teammates’ decisions, and operate independently for some time. Peggy Carter reforms SSR into the new SHIELD agency and serves as its sole director, with Clint Barton, Howard Stark, and Natasha Romanova working under her as field agents.
15 years later, in 1960, Steve is mysteriously awoken in a SHIELD facility, having survived his previous actions and remained frozen in the Arctic for years before his rediscovery. Steve runs out of his bedroom, and he stops in his tracks from the bewildering sight before him, an un-aged Peggy Carter looking him in the eyes, at the center of a lineup with Black Widow and Hawkeye, Iron Man, a helmeted Black Panther who seems different than the man Steve knew, Dr. Banner, and the Ant-Man and Wasp. Confidently, Peggy states: “Steve, a lot has happened. The world needs you again.”
