By this point, Captain America is known as one of the world's most popular superheroes but, like with Iron Man, that wasn't always the case. Thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the character has been pushed to the forefront and is now in the same conversation as heroes like Superman and Spider-Man.
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Across the 7 movies in the franchise that feature him, fans have been able to see Steve Rogers grow into an icon, in both the MCU and the real world, turning a character that was not well known into a household name.
Set during World War II, the movie introduced audiences to Steve Rogers as a scrawny young man desperate to serve his country. After enlisting in the army and being chosen for his selflessness, Steve is granted the super-soldier serum which enhances him physically. While the government initially only used him for propaganda, they eventually saw his value and gave him a proper uniform and his iconic Vibranium shield.
Rogers became their greatest soldier, leading a team called the Howling Commandos with one of the members being his best friend, Bucky Barnes, who would tragically die while they were fighting the Nazi leader known as the Red Skull. After discovering Red Skull's plot to drop bombs in cities all across America, Steve hijacked the plane carrying them and defeated Skull. However, since the plane was stuck on autopilot, Steve was forced to crashland the plane in the Arctic while he said goodbye to the love of his life, Peggy Carter. Steve remained frozen in the Arctic for 70 years before being discovered by SHIELD and waking up in the present day.
While still adjusting to modern life, Steve was quickly approached by Nick Fury who asks him to join the Avengers Initiative with the mission of tracking down the Tesseract and Loki. Aboard the helicarrier, Rogers met the other members of the team and although they did manage to capture the God of Mischief, he found a way to escape, killing Agent Coulson and unleashing the Hulk in the process.
Despite the team's arguing and dysfunction, they were eventually able to band together to stop Loki and his army's invasion of New York with Captain America being the team's unofficial leader, wearing his brand new uniform which was designed by Coulson himself. After the battle was over and Loki was apprehended, the Avengers went their separate ways.
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The second Captain America movie reveals that, in addition to visiting Peggy in his spare time and keeping a list of all the things he missed while on the ice, Steve had started working alongside Black Widow as an agent of SHIELD. However, after an assassination attempt was made on Nick Fury, Steve learned that HYDRA had been growing inside the organization since it was founded and that they were planning on launching Project Insight, an operation that would have three helicarriers patrol Earth and eliminate people that posed a threat to them.
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Steve also has to deal with the revelation that Bucky didn't actually die and was now being used as a weapon by HYDRA as the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed supersoldier Assasin that the agency sent to kill him and Natasha, forcing them both to go on the run and seek the help of Sam Wilson, a soldier he met while running earlier in the movie. Eventually, Steve was able to succeed in stopping Project Insight, taking down both organizations in the process. Luckily, during that battle, Steve was also able to slightly get through to Bucky and the movie ends with him and Sam beginning their search for him.
The movie opens with the Avengers storming a HYDRA base to retrieve Loki's scepter and following up their successful mission with a party at Avengers Tower where Steve discusses the search for Bucky with Sam and then attempts to move Mjolnir along with the other members of the team, somehow making it budge. The party is then interrupted by Ultron, the sentient peacekeeping program Tony created which starts to attack them before making his escape.
After later locating and trying to take on Ultron and the Maximoff twins, Steve experiences a Scarlet Witch-induced vision where he sees Peggy in a dance hall celebrating the end of the war, telling him to come home. After regrouping with the other Avengers at Hawkeye's farmhouse, they discover Ultron's final plan to destroy the Earth and go to stop him. After Steve delivers his best speech in the franchise, the team manages to kill and defeat Ultron. The movie ends with Steve and Black Widow getting ready to train the newest members of the Avengers: Rhodey, Sam, Wanda, and Vision.
The final movie in Cap's trilogy finds Steve and Tony Stark on opposites sides of whether they should sign the Sokovia Accords with Tony believing they need to be supervised and Steve's stance being that governmental oversight would lead to unnecessary restrictions that would limit their ability to help people which is reinforced by a quote he hears at Peggy's funeral. His decision to not sign the Accords leads to the team dividing even further with half the team and the rest siding with Tony.
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After locating Bucky in Romania, the two reunite and Steve spends the rest of the movie protecting him from being killed by Black Panther after he was framed for the murder of King T'Chaka and later from Iron Man when he discovers Barnes was responsible for the murder of his parents which Steve secretly knew about. After an intense battle, Steve leaves behind his shield after Tony says he didn't deserve it. Now a fugitive, he proceeds to go on the run with Sam, Wanda, and Natasha after breaking them as well as Clint and Scott out of the Raft. He also sends Tony a note, apologizing, and a cell phone to call him on in case he ever needs him.
After years of being on the run from the government, Steve finally returns, along with Sam and Natasha, to help protect Wanda and Vision from Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight while sporting a completely different look with his beard grown out and his uniform weathered after years of using it while on the run.
After Vision is injured, Steve makes the decision to bring him to Wakanda so that they could heal him and remove the mind stone. There he reconnects with Bucky whom he left there to have his HYDRA brainwashing fixed. He then leads the charge against Thanos' army alongside Black Panther and even tries to take on Thanos himself when he arrives but is almost immediately knocked out. Since the Avengers were unsuccessful in stopping Thanos from getting the final stone, Steve was forced to see both Bucky and Sam, his two closest friends, turn to dust as a result of the snap.
After the devastating loss of the last movie, the Avengers confront Thanos before discovering that he destroyed the stones and Thor angrily kills him. The movie then skips 5 years and shows the team desperately trying to move on with Steve now leading a therapy group for survivors of the snap. After Scott Lang shows up and reveals his plan to reverse the snap by using time travel to recover the stones, the team reunites and Steve and Tony finally made amends with Tony even giving him the shield back.
Avengers: Endgame brought about the end of Steve's arc and features some of the character's best moments in the MCU like him facing off against Thanos' army by himself before being joined by the resurrected Avengers, him finally lifting and wielding Mjolnir, and him finally saying "Avengers Assemble" before leading the team into battle. After defeating Thanos, Steve uses the time travel platform to put the stones back before returning as an old man, revealing he spent the rest of his life with Peggy in another timeline and that the reason he came back was to pass the shield and mantle of Captain America on to Sam.
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