Did you enjoy your week away from the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Doesn’t matter because they are BACK, BAYBEE! The Winged Avenger and The Assassin with a Metal Arm and a Heart of Gold (rusted maybe) are teaming up in Disney+’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. But not just yet…
Kenneth Laster: Lads! Lads! Lads! Born from a tense scene of Bucky asking Sam to move his seat up, Falcon and the Winter Soldier is HERE!
Dan Grote: THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWWWWWWWWN! I have a special place in my heart for Captain America and his amazing boyfriends, Ken, so I was on board for this show from jump … but if I’m being honest, for this to be the thing that follows the heartbreaking work of staggering genius that was WandaVision. … It’s not fair to compare the two, but it’s clear we’re now figuring out what the MCU is post-Endgame, outside the hexagonal bubble of Westview, and … well, let’s just start unpacking.
Birds, Boats and Banks
KL: The show does excellent work at giving us a look at where exactly our heroes are at post-Endgame. Sam’s working with the Air Force (to fight my boy BATROC!) and heading back home to figure out loans on his family boat with his sister. What are your thoughts on Sam’s status quo?
DG: We definitely get a deeper look at Sam’s home life than I was expecting. It’s also a very different home life from the comics, with MCU Sam coming up in a Louisiana fishing family and joining the Air Force vs. comics Sam raising birds in Harlem and becoming a social worker. Not that that’s a bad thing. Either way, we’re talking about a person who’s loyal and wants to do good, whether he’s serving his country or helping his sister try to consolidate her debt.
But the most high-octane and the slowest parts of this first episode are wrapped up in the Falcon half of the equation. We see him take down a Batroc-led cell of terrorists in the opening, and we see him spend his downtime on the water arguing family finances.
At the heart of all this is a fairly on-the-nose bid to equate life after “The Blip” (I can’t believe we’re just calling it that seriously) with life after the pandemic and the social unrest of the past year, this idea that we’re picking up with familiar characters in a changed world. I know Anthony Mackie and producer Malcolm Spellman have said in interviews that the show would reflect some of those issues, but at the end of the day, we’re dealing with a corporate product. I’m not the guy to say whether any of that’s working, but I will say, as a fan of Sam Wilson, that I appreciate that he’s being thoughtfully developed.
KL: I think Sam’s scenes are interesting, however I think I might have had my expectations too high with regards to reading up on Spellman’s takes as well as so many of the specific things of Sam’s story being pulled in early reviews that the final execution left me wanting a bit more. Post-Blip life is very pandemic-inspired, and I remember watching a Kevin Feige interview about how they really just stumbled into that relevance with this actual life-changing global event. I think it’s going to be one of those things where historians will think one came after the other, like how I assume people will think Gen Z were called “Zoomers” because of Zoom rather than it coming before.
But back on topic! I did enjoy Sam’s story in this first ep, but not as much as I enjoyed Bucky’s. I think the biggest drag for me was the circular argument between him and his sister, which I think kind of dragged down in context of the many more interesting nuggets of Sam’s story raised in this first episode. While the argument over financials in a superhero show threw me for a loop, I do have to praise how authentic a lot of these scenes felt.
There’s a real recognition of Sam greeting a guy back home with “trying to get like you,” which is Black as hell, and his nephews are some nerdy-ass Black kids that I know all too well and it was very nice to see. The bank scene was honestly worth the early praise; the ease with which a Black person can be idolized while being turned down for a loan evokes a number of real world instances of Black celebrities and figures not being immune to systemic and everyday racism. I also think the U.S. government scooping the shield to the whitest man alive, John Walker, is going to be grounds to explore the racial reality of a Black Captain America. But again I agree fully with you that this is still a show from Disney+, which two weeks ago had a Black woman take bullets from authorities for imaginary children, so I remain apprehensive, especially seeing where some of the larger story beats might be going down the line with the villains of the show.
You’re on My List
DG: And then there’s Bucky, who, when actually forced to acclimate to the world, it turns out has a lot more in common with Nick Miller from The New Girl than I was prepared for. Ken, thoughts on where Bucky is in his life?
KL: Bucky’s story in this was (pardon the phrase) a sleeper hit for me. The Cap films really only gave him crumbs compared to this. A whole lot of his character development happened off screen, and I really enjoy getting to see him deal with his trauma and his attempts to make amends. It was a real treat getting to see him go through therapy and detail his steps toward making things right. It’s also a great setup to the more black-and-white “amends process” compared to the absolutely heartbreaking and complicated situation he’s in with Yori, which is the Bucky angst I didn’t know I had been starving for. Healing is usually really damn complicated, especially when there are people who have been harmed in the process. The reality that there’s no way this friendship can last given what Bucky has done in his past is the reality of righting wrongs where it is just so messy it doesn’t always feel good. It’s good shit!
I also really love a lot of the visual choices in Bucky’s scenes. The shot of him standing outside the restaurant, entering and seeing a part of the conversation from the outside, was a really nice choice. Alongside the deep blue of the scene of him in the hallway going to Yori’s apartment. A lot of neo-noir elements. I know a lot of this show is going to be gray concrete, so I’m taking the good shots where I can get them. What’s your take on Bucky’s road to redemption?
DG: He just looks so … uncomfortable. Putting aside the Yori stuff for a second (which felt telegraphed, not gonna lie), his date with the sushi bartender was five straight minutes of him wincing. Which it should be! Bucky has the same problems Steve did. He’s a 100-ish-year-old-soldier adjusting to modern life, with all its tiger dating pictures and drunken Battleship games, but unlike Steve, he also has to atone for being a relentless killing machine. He hasn’t had a casual conversation since 1945, while Steve got a taste of having a modern band of brothers in the Avengers. He has to do all the same things Steve did, but on hard mode. But hey, props to him for going to therapy and trying to work some of this stuff out.
Flag Smashers vs. Pentagon Approved Storytelling
KL: Unfortunately this isn’t a slice-of-life show, and they promised a team-up. Therefore we have the Flag Smashers. I feel like I can already get a sense of where they are going with them, and I don’t particularly love it. What are your initial takes on these guys?
DG: Hard to tell. On one hand, Lt. Torres tells us they believe in a world without borders, but on the other hand, all they did was rob a bank like the gang at the beginning of The Dark Knight. So my hackles are up for a warning about the perceived dangers of globalism, but also they might just be punch goons.
KL: I mean I know this is a Disney+ program and MCU flicks have a distressing relationship with Pentagon meddling and that causes for some dodgy and undeniably centrist politics, but I was kind of surprised how very clear it came through with this. Along with the “world without borders” line (said by Torres, whose comics origin is tied to helping Mexican immigrants cross the U.S. border), there’s a line from Sam who says when things “get better for one group they get worse for another,” which honestly taken together are kind of gross. Using these two characters of color to parrot talking points against leftist ideologies feels particularly insidious.
Sam’s line and the Flag Smashers in general are vague enough, but it’s not hard to see them as a stand-in for more radical leftist ideologies who will in a *best* case scenario have “good intentions but bad execution,” which is the way this type of villain goes. In the Miles Morales game, the bad guys were the anti-corporation protesters who “had bad execution.” Black Panther had Kilmonger, who “had a bad way of going about it.” It’s likely the Flag Smashers will get tied in with Zemo, who will then influence their “bad way of implementing their ideology.” Obviously, I’m not saying that the brutal or “bad executions” were in fact good, but they are an obvious way to dismiss villains whose leftist ideology sounds too enticing.
Again, this is all speculation from one episode, but the direction is already starting to stink. Especially so in a show that has made a big statement of exploring the state of racism in America. I feel like Sam’s conflict with John Walker taking up the mantle will be compelling, and I’m already sold on Bucky’s journey, however I just really wish they didn’t come with such heavy baggage of existing within a DOD approved product from the Disney corporation.
DG: Two things on that point. 1) I took Sam’s line about things getting worse for one group when they get better for another as his suspicions as a Black man of a desire by others to revert to “the good old days.” But that doesn’t negate the fact that this show is treading on dicey ground with the Flag Smashers.
2) Steve, Sam and Cap all voluntarily enlisted in the military. I don’t see any version of this that suddenly finds itself going anti-military or tacking as far left as many would like. But it’s telling that the MCU, which like we said made Sam a military man, has now subsumed Torres, the Falcon’s Falcon, as well.
We’ve only got five episodes to go, but there’s a lot of room to disappoint.
Kenneth Laster is a critic, cartoonist, and cryptid with a movie degree.
Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Winston Wisdom.
