I was not expec🤪ting to care much about Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It was ‘Hobbes and🉐 Shaw, but make it Marvel’. A miniseries between two tangentially related characters based off a single funny scene involving a stuck car seat, it seemed like a testament to Hollywood’s ability to make a movie or TV show out of anything. Sandwiched between the much more creatively compelling prospects of WandaVision and Loki, it seemed a little take it or leave it. And yet, it did manage to make me care, and now I’m so frustrated with the path it has taken me down before the finale.
It started off ropey, with some “fuck yeah” milit🎶arism and a very on the nose metaphor for the US saving the Iraqis, but once Sam was back in America, things settled very quickly. It became apparent that Falcon and the Winter Soldier was a show about race, and confronting America’s history with it. When Sam inherited the shield, he became a Black man representing American ideals, which presented a very different context to Steve Rogers holding the shield, or if he had passed it on to Buc𝕴ky instead.
Sam explores the weight of this, and it seems to be part of the reason he gives it up, thinking it was better for Steve to hold it. However, as soon as he surrenders it, it is passed to John Walker, a white soldier with fascist tendencies. There are fascinating parallels being set up; the differences between John and Sam, between John and Steve, between Steve and Sam, and between 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:John & Lemar and Sam & Bucky; two duos that share many similar traits but apply them in complet💃ely different ways.
This is all with Bucky’s trauma and lack of self worth in the background, along with a left-wing villain whose aim is to remove the b🎃orders rei💟nstalled post-blip and return to the open world they have lived in for the past five years. In between these superhero stories, Sam’s family 🦋fails to get a bank loan, implicitly because of their Blackness, and he is almost arrested for raising his voice in the street - the only reason he is not is because the cops recognise him as Falcon and back down. We also see Isaiah Bradley, the Black supersoldier, discuss how he was experimented on, used, and imprisoned, in a clear analogy for the Tuskegee syphilis study and the way America has always feared the Black man.
The show sets up these layered plots magnificently, then just… doesn’t bother. The interesting left-wing villain is just a standard terrorist, John Walker&rౠsquo;s link to the army is severed as soon as he displays excessive violence, there’s going to be a shield on shield showdown, and while Isaiah had a heart to heart with Sam about what it means for a Black man to have that shield, Sam basically says “Nah,” and decides to keep it because he can represent change.
It feels very “America used to be racist but now it’s not,” which is neithꦡer accurate to reality nor to the themes of the show. Falcon and the Winter Soldier has rallied against that idea. Sam may listen to Isaiah in the end and give it up, but it’s odd that we need this shield smackdown first. It feels like Falcon and the Winter Soldier wishes to say so much about modern day America and the links to police violence, institutional racism, and white supremacy, but its position in the MCU means it is unable to.
Is this just me projecting? Perhaps. That the show stꦛarts with a ringing endorsement for the military undermines my point, and Marvel has tiptoed close to subverting its conventions before, only to back down and play it safe. The billion dollar franchise does not deserve the benefit of the doubt; but maybe Malcolm Spellman does. Falcon’s showrunner Spellman is best known for Empire, on which he was a lead writer and producer. While also imperfect, Empire was brave in the face of issues like r🐈ace in America - especially in entertainment - and sexuality. Its depiction of mental health was heavy-handed, but there was an attempt to tell a story that drove at the issues. I can’t help but feel there’s a Falcon script out there that does the same, one that was likely stripped back for a predictable ending with room for the universe to continue onwards. Not to mention that in order to keep their Department of Defense budget and access, the MCU needs to defer to its authority.
I was ready to let the show just wash over me, watching it to scan for the basic plot points and vague character development that would continue into the MCU’s next instalment. Plus, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:more Zemo. But it pulled me in, and it’s disappointing that it feels like it has never been allowed🌄 to go all of the way.