According to the MCU timeline, Rogers was frozen from the early forties to 2011, before being resurrected in 2011... and Alexei was in jail for "twenty years", presumably from 1996 to 2016.
Has Alexei been around since the early 1940s, or was he just lying?
I think he was lying and trying to make himself seem more prolific than he actually was. One of the inmates in prison even mentions that Cap was still on ice when Alexie was the Red Guardian.
He then later asks Natasha if Cap ever mentioned him and I think the reason why was just to see if Cap even knew who he was, not because they've actually had conflict before.
This.
shareI think what they're getting at is that Alexei started half- believing all the propaganda legends that were manufactured around him.
share
I think what they're getting at is that Alexei started half- believing all the propaganda legends that were manufactured around him.
This movie makes it pretty clear Alexi was lying since a prisoner calls him out on his claim a second later.
shareChief Hopper is always ending up in a Soviet prison. He probably ran into Bucky.
shareNeither. Its a plot hole
shareAlexei's eager, casual expectation that Cap remembers their battle shows he totally believes it happened. That's why he was so offended at his arm wrestling opponent; 'what I'm saying is TRUE and you're treating me like a liar?!' And while Alexei's self-absorbed, big red's not so detached from reality as to have multimodal hallucinations.
Steve Rogers was indeed frozen in '45... one iteration of Steve Rogers. As we see in Endgame, another iteration traveled back in time and would have been living his life concurrent with the Red Guardian's career. Steve can't act overtly, but it's not his style to sit on the sidelines, and he's gotta fill the decades with something besides plowing Peggy. It makes sense that he went on secret missions from time to time, and once ran afoul of his Russian counterpart.