Last night yielded an unexpected journey to the cinema to see the newest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Going in I was a little hesitant, both as Captain America is not among my favourite characters, and yet I am also fairly familiar with the Winter Soldier storyline. Somewhat surprisingly though I loved this movie, in fact it might be the best of the entire Marvel run thus far, and it has done what few others have done by improving on the original. That being said, with a little bit of deduction combined with the previous knowledge from the comics very little was truly surprising for me (minor spoilers follow after this.) What surprised me more so though was that I was able to figure Steve's neighbour Sharon as a SHIELD agent as soon as they showed her, but that I didn't figure out that it was Sharon Carter (duh). I also somehow missed seeing her on all of the promotional posters which I have since found on the internet.

That having been said, there is something left to ponder. At the end of the movie, it seems likely that the Black Widow, will either not be back or be back in a limited role for the following Captain America movie, and it seems likely that Sharon Carter takes a larger role. I think this is the first time that I have ever seen the actress in anything (despite the fact that she is Canadian, and got her start on Canadian tv shows) but it makes me wonder if the franchise is ready for this actress taking on a bigger role in the following movies. The character of Sharon Carter is vital to that of Captain America, but in terms of the character development thus far, it seems like a secondary unimportant character. The development of Falcon, as a veteran of the Middle Eastern Wars - and dealing with PTSD - was an interesting spin on the character, but Sharon thus far is one dimensional, her most important character development being that she listened to Steve at the right time.

With her role in the tv series Revenge, it seems as though Emily Van Camp is ready for stardom, only it seems as though more work needs to be done to establish her in the MCU.

Perhaps they'll flesh her out in a future short film.

@chalkshark: Oh yeah that might work, she could become the new Clark Gregg of the Marvel shorts.

Oh nice! One of my main criticisms towards MCU shared by many is that it doesn't really reflect how many cool female characters their are. I am still annoyed about Sif's lack of roles and presence in Thor, and no Wasp, Wanda or Ms Marvel in Avengers. Oh and uh Emily Van Camp, I recognize her from a random odd show they played here a few years ago, called Everwood. Did not know she was Canadian, but thats always a plus in my books.

@sc: True, though they did pretty well by Black Widow in Winter Soldier

@sc wasp was originally supposed to be in avengers one but disney told joss wheadon to put black widow in their instead so he had to tweak his script accordingly probably only because scarlet johanson was the one playing black widow