It’s the end of a long, winding, and politically muddled road in “One World, One People” from Disney+’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Kenneth Laster: Welp the six week journey of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has concluded and despite looking like it would end strong last week with it’s high point, the finale dipped back into a disappointing but expected finish. How did this finale find you Adam?
Adam Reck: After the great fifth episode, this finale has the unenviable task of wrapping up every contradictory element this series has been serving up throughout, and given how uneven it’s been throughout, no one should be surprised that it couldn’t stick the landing.
Oh Say Can You See (Anything In This Lighting?)
KL: So it may be best to tackle things as they come with this ep because there is a lot!. I pointed out the “Six Part Movie” thing making for weird pacing last episode but Good Lord did I feel it here. I can imagine it working on a binge watch, but this episode starting us in the middle of the Flag Smasher’s plan was super disorienting to me but alas. What did you think of this first chunk?
AR: I also had to remind myself that at the end of the 5th ep the undercover smashers had already taken the GRC hostage, because we are off to the races from the start here: stairwells, armored police vans, and everybody is running around in circles. We also very quickly get our first glimpse at Sam’s new Wakandan Captain America threads. What did you think of the new uniform?
KL: It’s comic accurate I’ll give them that. It…doesn’t look like it fits well? It also suffers from my biggest (just kidding one of my many) gripes about this sequence is that it’s filmed at night with shaky camera work. I really thought we left this in 2012 with The Amazing Spider-Man and Arrow. But the threads are verbatim the look from the comics, which is a design I’ve never been in love with–it feels too far away from the Captain America silhouette for my taste and the primary white and blue gives me a very clinical feel. Also Sam’s lil ears sticking out is a little silly on screen. Steve’s costume got away with it because it was a helmet but it’s just a hole in a head sock here which I don’t think translates incredibly well. You?
AR: I like this costume when Daniel Acuna draws it, but you’re right about the ears and the fit. His shoulders look a little, I dunno, puffy? There isn’t much time to critique the fashion though, because New Cap immediately has to fight Batroc the Leaper who seems to have been shoehorned into the final leg of the show specifically for this call back to his fight with Steve Rogers. What follows is a dizzying and confusing helicopter chase sequence and — Raise your hand if you thought the one helicopter Cap threw into the river was full of hostages! Bucky is doing stuff too! And Walker is back and– no one cares about his whole murder thing?
KL: Yeah it’s really dizzying honestly. I do love Batroc because I feel like he is the most ridiculous character to have made it into the MCU and have stuck around for as long as he did. I screamed for joy when he showed back up last episode and he will be sorely missed. Disorienting editing aside, I do find it funny how specifically the helicopter set piece is set up for a character who’s whole deal is flying. It reminded me of the old trope of “Aquaman being perfect for all of the nautical crimes”. It was a fun enough set piece though (aside from everyone cheering for Sam saving NYPD from their chopper…seems unrealistic.)
But back to John Walker, yeah his moment of breaking bad lasted all of…2 minutes? And 2 minutes of last week’s episode specifically? I get into it later but it feels like in between episode five and six Wyatt Russell signed his U.S. Agent multi-project contract because that is the only explanation for his character shift here. He went from unhinged murder Cap trying to kill Bucky and Sam at the start of last episode to trading quips with them in this one. I don’t love it!
Secrets and Speeches
AR: After much soaring and punching and helicoptering, Karli, Sam, and Sharon Carter have a big standoff. Before our new Cap can show up, Sharon reveals she’s actually been the “Power Broker” the whole time. Ken, were you even the least bit curious about the identity of this oft mentioned villain? It seemed terribly anti-climatic given I’m not quite sure what she did.
KL: I’ll be honest–I did not give a single shit who the Power Broker was. Like I was fine with it just being this off-screen crime lord and leaving it at that but it definitely felt like a puzzle box for puzzle box’s sake. The reveal that it’s Sharon was definitely something I saw predicted since she’s…the only real possibility that means anything to the show, but even then it doesn’t really feel right. I was excited for Sharon’s return and for her bitterness towards the powers that be, and even the meta commentary of the MCU forgetting her and all of her attitudes in the Madripoor episode made sense and were compelling and added a really interesting POV for this show with so many conflicting ideologies. Karli’s trying to burn down the status quo, John, Sam, and Bucky are protecting it, and Sharon was just done with it. While I guess that can still be maintained with this new status, as it stands now it feels so far away from that motivation to the point where it feels like she’s just an antagonist just to be an antagonist which–good for Emily Van Camp getting to do something in this franchise but– weird nonetheless.
AR: We’ll probably touch on it again with the post-credits scene, but I can’t really muster much interest in Emily Van Camp as a secret villain. Luckily, we don’t dwell on this much because Captain America is here to yell “I’m not fighting you!” at the series main villain, Karli, whose quasi-evil plot he’s already said quite clearly he agrees with. There’s some shoving, until ultimately Karli has Sam dead to rights at gunpoint, when suddenly Agent 13/The Power Broker shoots her point blank and kills her. Given the convoluted nature of off and on approvals of Karli’s whole deal, the fact that she had to die to resolve this story felt like really weak storytelling. Especially since Sam’s about to give a speech that is going to get her what she wanted the whole time.
KL: It really sucks man. I saw this whole arc coming a mile away and I think I’ve expressed how exhausted I am of the “valid points–wrong methodology” approach to antagonists because it only serves to show the status quo and the systems that preserve it as the only methodology to affect change and after the year we have had, it’s just such a weak and honestly insulting trope at this point. Princess Weekes gets into the treatment of the group really well here. The choice to make Karli and the Flagsmashers killers is both a weak story decision in that–it’s a lazy shorthand to invalidate their points AND it doesn’t work in the context of the show because the leads kill people and the man who publicly murdered someone to shock and awe is palling around with them and walks on to another project at the end. The fact that John Walker gets a road to redemption, and Karli doesn’t get a chance to continue fighting for a better world just feels like such a choice based on “setting up the next thing” instead of actually giving a satisfying resolution and the fact that Karli is a mixed race Black “teenager” (as the show points out) makes it just feel awful.
And Sam’s speech makes it…worse. It feels like the show bending itself backward to try and please literally everyone. Karli’s body is still warm as he tries to “validate” her by trying to instigate “dialogue” but also condemning her methods, and also saying that he “gets it” and it is maybe the worst attempt at a thesis statement that I have ever seen in my life. I can truly hear the writers going “fuckfuckfuck” through that monologue and I feel for them because trying to wrap up truly all of the messiness of this show into a concise speech is impossible.
AR: I was also frustrated about Sam’s speech, if only because it’s hand-wavy magic. We’ve spent multiple episodes showing the Flag Smashers working tirelessly to provide food, education, medicine, and shelter to those in need. They also used violence to call attention to their cause. So you have an international super-powered terrorist cell resorting to murder to stop a governing body from voting. Does anyone really think that a single person’s off the cuff speech in the middle of a street in the midst of an attempted assasination attempt is going to change anything? If this plays out the way it would, these officials would not change their vote. They would ignore the black man they just met, and go back inside to finish the job in response to the rage they feel for being abducted and nearly killed. Yes, Sam saved some of their lives, but no improvised pontificating is changing these peoples’ minds.
KL: I think the highest praise I can give this show is that it was ambitious and I think I truly wish it wasn’t. It tried to bring a very real Black lens towards the implications of Sam taking up the shield to the Black Americans this country terrorizes and it did that well in the fifth episode *but they HAVE to have Sam be Cap.* It tried to empathize with the ideology and struggle of Karli *but they did that too well and now she has to kill and be killed*. I can see its attempts to be subversive and as those attempts were happening it was exciting but ultimately it comes back to tropes and things that are “necessary” within the formula and the story conventions and it is incredibly poorer for it. If they had just out and out made Karli an unsympathetic villain, and watered down Isaiah’s story, I think it would have been easier to enjoy, but to go that far and still conforming to the expected story beats just ends up with a messy and mass appealing message that does more harm than good.
Putting the Pieces In Place
KL: The back half of the ep is full of epilogues and making amends. New costumes, museum exhibits, and a cute lil party. Where do you want to start Adam?
AR: Can we talk about the etiquette around telling your friend that you killed his son? I know the show was racing to the finish line here, but we spent a nice chunk of time earlier in the show on establishing how the Winter Soldier killed this guy on a mission, we even sat through an awkward date between Bucky and the bartender, and it wraps up by him going “knock knock, hey I know how your son died, I killed him, I didn’t have a choice,” and then kind of stalking the guy later? This is not how this should have gone down! At least provide some context that you were a brainwashed assassin for God’s sake! But I guess if we didn’t do this quickly there wouldn’t be enough time to introduce Mr. I Was Psycho Before But Now Everything’s Cool: U.S. Agent.
KL: Gosh yeah. I didn’t notice how weird that scene was until a friend was talking to me about it. Theoretically I get cutting the emotional fallout of that scene and leaving it unsaid or implied because how could they ever have that conversation play out in the last twenty minutes of this show but damn is that kind of unsatisfying considering it’s been a thread dangling the whole series. Definitely left me wanting more but it was far from the thing that bugged me the most. Now for Mr. John “I-signed-a-multi-picture-deal-so-I’m-likeable now” Walker. I’ve gone into my thoughts on why I am disappointed where he ended up. I feel like I can’t even be excited for whatever “weird” thing they are setting up because his arc is so unearned it’s driving me actually insane.
This super-cop who murders a man in broad daylight, gets paid leave and now is friends with the good guys, and gets a new costume and a fun adventure. Just because he saved the van of politicians (poorly at that). Again it’s the “it’s in the comics so it’s in here” storytelling trumping where this story needed to go. John Walker needed to be U.S. Agent by the end of it so he’s here, it doesn’t matter where he was last episode or if it makes no sense. I could say the same about Sam committing to being to Cap but I digress. Thoughts on Walker?
AR: Walker’s arc is baffling. It also doesn’t help that they couldn’t afford more sets, so they just use the military courtroom to reveal Walker’s new costume. We’re supposed to be excited about a character that the show has set up as an antagonist psychopath. I have no issues with the fact that we’ll inevitably see Kurt Russell’s son again (probably in the just announced Captain America 4), but I do take issue with us being asked to accept him as a hero. Similarly baffling is Sam’s surprise for Isaiah Bradley: A small room in the Smithsonian’s Captain America exhibit just for him! Which . . . oh boy, I do believe Sam would arrange to have this statue and this plaque made, but I can’t imagine Isaiah doing anything but picking that statue up and throwing it through a wall. Sam’s idea that this will ensure “no one will forget” about Isaiah’s service, is well-meaning.
I’ve seen incredible and well-curated testaments to history in museums (The Emmet Till Memorial inside the National Museum of African American History and Culture comes to mind) but this is a living man who was tortured by his country who is appropriately furious at the nation and the Captain America symbolism. His tempered reaction to Sam taking the mantle seems in character, him being teary and grateful for this side room strikes me as very odd. Really curious how you felt about that scene.
KL: The brilliant and talented Corey Smith (AR: Amazing work last week) all but called this scene in our last installment, but the way this “emotional catharsis moment” actually presented itself is actually more confusing than what he thought was going to be the case. Isaiah’s story isn’t that he is the “forgotten” part of Captain America’s legacy. It’s an element sure, but in this series his whole deal is that he went to jail for thirty years for not letting Black soldiers be disposable. A statue in the back of a museum simply does not solve all of that and the idea that it does is the same thinking that leads to people believing naming an FBI building after Fred Hampton is anything anyone wants. I have seen people say that a better alternative would be to schedule one more day in that courtroom set and give that pardon scene to Isaiah. It still wouldn’t be enough but it would actually give some tangible payoff to his specific story in this show rather than a vacant gesture.
Reparations and restorative justice look different for a lot of people, but this exhibit is below the bare minimum, and I agree it is incredibly out of character for Isaiah to accept it as something more. Any last dangling threads to wrap up?
AR: We do see Zemo order the remaining Flag Smashers blown up, which begs the questions: Can you make phone calls from The Raft? And can you kill super-soldiers with a car bomb? I simply do not know. What I do know is the show ends back in Sam’s hometown with some feel-good music and what might be my ultimate pet peeve. And man, we’ve been kind of shredding this episode to pieces, but we have to address this: THEY NEVER SAILED THE BOAT!!! After all that buildup, they go back to Sam’s sister’s place, they party, they stare at the water, and they don’t sail the boat?! Think about how much screentime we’ve spent with this boat. They talked about the boat, they went to the bank about the boat, they argued about the boat, and worked together to fix it, all in a symbolic effort to show Sam repairing his relationship with his sister and building one with Bucky and we don’t even get to see the finished product! It’s exasperating! Speaking of exasperating, I guess we should mention the obligatory after-credits scene? Or not. Your call.
KL: Not much to say other that we didn’t hit above i.e. Sharon’s heel turn is off, and Isaiah should have gotten this pardon. But with that, it looks like we are finally freed from the tyranny of this show. Ultimately, I truly don’t know what to make of it. There were moments I liked but it feels drowned out by just having such a messy core. Thanks for joining me to close this out Adam.
AR: Thanks for having me, Ken! And my compliments on your coverage this season. Excellent job!
Adam Reck is the cartoonist behind Bish & Jubez as well as the co-host of Battle Of The Atom.
Kenneth Laster is a critic, cartoonist, and cryptid with a movie degree.
