With no time to waste, Marvel has put out its second Disney+ series with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, described as a buddy cop series featuring the two titular heroes as they go on a global adventure testing their abilities and their partnership. Much like previous series WandaVision, this series takes place after the events of 2019's Avengers: Endgame, albeit taking place 6 months after as compared to WandaVision's 3. However, unlike the MCU's first Disney+ entry, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a lot more grounded in reality, choosing to deal with two of Marvel's street-level heroes and how they're dealing with the aftermath of the universe-spanning calamity that the Infinity Saga ended with. If episode 1 is anything to go by, I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of this series. Let's dive in.
INITIAL THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS (SPOILER ALERT)
Avengers: Endgame ended with Steve Rogers going back through time to return the Infinity Stones, only to stay put in the 1940s to have his time with Peggy Carter, after which he chose to live out his natural life, coming back to 2023 as an old man. No longer capable of taking on the mantle of Captain America, he gives the shield up to Sam Wilson, telling him that he's the one destined to become America's next protector. It's actually quite interesting to point out that the MCU's biggest film ended with the three who have taken on the mantle of the star-spangled superhero at some point, Steve Rogers, Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes. Anyway, on to the series itself.
6 months after Sam receives the shield, we see that he's decided not to use it, instead choosing to return it to the US government for safekeeping and to be put up in an exhibit dedicated to the life and legacy of Captain America. It's not made clear to us what has happened to Steve now that he's old but what we do know for sure is that the general public isn't aware of what has happened to him, with people even speculating that he's up on the moon watching over the Earth (which is a nice nod to Nick Fury's former status as the Man on the Wall in the Original Sin comic storyline). As of right now, Sam is still working as Falcon, deciding to work together with the government on a contractual basis, with his first onscreen mission showing him saving a US Air Force (USAF) captain from the hands of French mercenary Batroc the Leaper, with ex-MMA fighter Georges St-Pierre reprising his role from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and the terrorist group LAF. We get a lot of action right from the beginning, with Sam going on a high speed chase with his airborne chase, giving his lots of air acrobatics and even showing off Redwing's capabilities. For those of you not in the know, Redwing in the comics is a real falcon with a psychic link to Sam Wilson but in the MCU, it's a part of Sam's wing pack, a robot with some form of autonomy to itself, first appearing in Captain America: Civil War.
Anyway, life isn't all peaches and cream for Sam because underneath all the superhero shenanigans he gets up to, we see that he has a good amount of family issues to deal with. He was one of the 50% of life in the universe snapped away by Thanos, leaving his sister Sarah (played by Adepero Oduye) all alone to raise her two young boys as a single mother. We take a trip with Sam to his hometown of Louisiana, where we see his sister's fishing business going under, spending more money than she earns. With little choice left, Sarah plans on selling their family's boat but is met with strong resistance by Sam, who doesn't want to lose precious family memories forged on that boat. The series gets very real in these moments, showing us that underneath the glory of superheroes as shown on the big screen, the little guy suffers as well and while we got a small glimpse of that in WandaVision, we're going a lot more in depth into that aspect with the financial struggle that Sarah is going through. The Wilsons attempt to take out loans in order to finance their business but are turned away at every turn, even with Sam's previous heroic exploits with the Avengers.
Sam isn't the only one going through very real problems with his life because Bucky is suffering as well. Having spent a better portion of his adult life as a brainwashed Hydra assassin known as the Winter Soldier, Bucky has been put in a coma and woken up countless times over the decades, only for his memories to get wiped every time he gets too close to remembering who he was. The series reintroduces him to us very much like any other soldier who has been at war for too long, as a broken man suffering from PTSD, having nightmares of the terrible acts he committed under Hydra's name. We see Bucky going through therapy and it's revealed that the US government has pardoned him for all the war crimes he's done and he's now in the process of "making amends", such as bringing a Senator that he brought to power using his Hydra influence to justice, all while crossing out names on a notebook. For a brief moment, it almost seems as if Bucky has a normal life, even going out for a meal with an older Japanese man, Yori, and even going on a date with a waitress. Of course, we soon find out that Yori is another one of Bucky's amendments if you will because as we find out from the opening flashback, Yori's son was killed by him because he happened to bear witness to one of his assassinations. Wrong place, wrong time, and now Bucky is trying to make amends by taking care of Yori in his son's place.
Meanwhile, there's trouble brewing in the world as the return of the ones snapped away has created chaos in the world, with another terrorist organisation known as the Flag-Smashers rising up. The Flag-Smashers believed that the world post-Thanos snap was better and they believe in a world without borders. Sam's new sidekick of sorts, Joaquin Torres (played by Danny Ramirez), a USAF 1st Lt, investigates the group and goes undercover, witnessing them robbing a bank in Switzerland. Torres gets knocked out by a member of the group with superhuman strength and eventually he gets Sam into the loop, with the pair now keeping a closer eye on these terrorists. Just then, we see that the US government has decided Captain America's shield, which Sam returned as an act of goodwill, is now free real estate and in the wake of the Flag-Smashers' attack, they've created a new Captain America, much to the annoyance of Sam. The episode ends just as we see the new superhero appear on the news, flashing a smile and winking at the camera. As we all know, this man is Jonathan "John" Walker aka U.S. Agent (played by Wyatt Russell) and while we don't know much about him yet, we do know he's a high-ranking military personnel and will eventually go up against the Flag-Smashers, believing himself to be a better representation of American ideals than Steve Rogers was. This description of the character is fairly similar to that of his comic origins but we'll get more into that later.
So far this series is taking a far more grounded path than we've seen in the MCU films and I'm all for it. Because the films need to focus on a larger story, they skim over what happens on the ground but with the series, they can show us what it really means to be the little guy and the struggles they go through. It feels human and I think that's the direction they're going for with the Disney+ series. We saw Wanda's fight with depression and Vision's struggle with identity in WandaVision, and now we're getting a closer look at Sam's money problems and Bucky's PTSD. All these are very realistic issues and I hope they get explored a lot more as the series progresses. Throughout the series, we're probably going to see a lot more of Sam's inner turmoil at whether he's worthy of taking on the mantle of Captain America. As we know, Steve himself was the one who picked his successor but because he felt unworthy, even saying that the shield feels like it "belongs to someone else", a problem that he discusses with James Rhodes aka War Machine, with Don Cheadle making a guest appearance. If you didn't already know, Sam has become Captain America in the comics as well, after Steve was aged into an old man, and this move was met with a good amount of criticism both on the page and in real life, in no small part because many people believed a black man couldn't be the one representing America as a hero.
I have no doubt that this will be adapted onto the screen in some form, with Sam having second thoughts about becoming the star-spangled man with a plan because of his race. I do hope they touch on this a little bit, especially with the current situation the real world is in, but at the same time I don't want them to focus too much on it in case it gets overbearing. It's definitely still an interesting concept to explore though, with the scene of Sam and Rhodes discussing Captain America's legacy being a killer to watch. Rhodes will play a mentor figure to Sam throughout the series, guiding him into finally becoming a true hero. As for Bucky, I think his character's motivations are pretty clear. All he's known for so long is just wake up, fight, kill, go to sleep, and the entire process is rinsed and repeated again and again and again, with some mindwiping thrown in there for good measure. Now, he's working to move past his, well, past as the Winter Soldier and become a true hero in his own eyes. The series will undoubtedly explore the darkness dwelling in Bucky's mind, and I'm very intrigued to see how the director and producers will choose to touch on Bucky's mental health.
The first episode hasn't actually shown us any of our two heroes' interactions with each other yet, only mentioning that Sam has been trying to reach out to Bucky, only for the latter to ignore his texts. The series has definitely taken on a pretty dark tone so far and I do see it continuing for the rest of the episodes, although I'm sure the buddy comedy aspect of things will rear its head fairly often. I do hope that the humour doesn't overwhelm the more serious themes that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier are touching on because I think being more serious will be a lot better for the series. Compared to WandaVision, which was very clearly a TV series in vibe, our second series actually feels a lot more like a movie that's just been split into parts and I think that's exactly the idea that Marvel is going for with this series. It's great because it keeps viewers on their toes and excited for what's to come next. That's the beauty of integrating the Disney+ series into the MCU, it just adds way more cinematic value to what could've just been regular TV series, much like previous TV MCU outings like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Apart from the characters mentioned above, there's actually a lot more we haven't seen yet. For starters, we haven't gotten a good look at the (most likely to be) main villain of the series and that's Baron Zemo, with Daniel Brühl reprising his role from Captain America: Civil War. The last time we saw this Sokovian terrorist, he was in the CIA's custody after causing the Avenger's disassembly and this series will give us a closer look at Zemo's villain origin story as well as expanding more on his motivations, with him wanting to eliminate all superheroes, which he believe to be a plague on Earth. We will see him don his classic purple mask and have a much more comic accurate costume, with fans sure to be very excited to see the return of one of the few MCU villains to have executed their plan successfully. I do wonder what his involvement will be with the Flag-Smashers but safe to say, nothing good will come out of this terrorist collaboration. Zemo is also one of the names in Bucky's book of amendments, probably because he wants to bring him to justice for the crimes he made him do in Captain America: Civil War.
We also don't know much about the Flag-Smashers yet. From the trailers and what little we've seen from episode 1, some members have superhuman abilities, with their leader potentially having the ability to influence minds as well (as seen from set videos). The leader is Karli Morgenthau, played by Erin Kellyman, who for all intents and purposes is a teenager with unclear motivations. She's of course a genderbent version of Karl Morgenthau, who in the comics is the supervillain Flag-Smasher and we'll definitely dive into her origins as well as how the Flag-Smashers got their powers as we move along. In fact, we might actually have a lead here because in the credits, the words "Power Broker Watching" appear and in the comics, Power Broker, Inc. is an organisation run by the Power Broker that gives superpowers to people through an augmentation process, with one of these people being (cue shock and horror) U.S. Agent himself. Yes, the government's newest Captain America is one of the Power Broker's experiments and while we don't know if that'll be how he gets his powers in the series, if the credits are anything to go by the Power Broker might be the one that gave the Flag-Smashers their superhuman abilities.
I just want to quickly point out that Sam's USAF support Joaquin Torres is actually a teenage superhero in the comics also going by the name Falcon. Unlike Sam, Torres was turned into a human/bird/vampire hybrid (yes, really) by the machinations of Dr. Karl Malus, who was, you guessed it, part of Power Broker, Inc. It's entirely possible that the series will see Torres given powers but I highly doubt that that'll happen.
The first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has really drawn me in so far with it's dark realistic themes and it's cinematic pacing. I'm very very excited to see where the series leads us, especially considering how it ties so heavily into greater aspects of the MCU, both past films and future films/series. I read somewhere that this series will tie into future Disney+ series and I highly suspect that it'll be important for Armor Wars and Ironheart but other than that, it remains to be seen where we go from here. I hope you'll join me as we join Sam and Bucky on the rest of their buddy cop adventure to take down the Flag-Smashers, and I'm sure we'll have an awesome time as well.
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