Disney Plus' new MCU show comes a couple weeks after the end of Wandavision, though I find it interesting that this one was initially intended to be the first of the Disney Plus shows. While Wandavision was an ontological mystery and Loki looks to be a madcap romp involving time travel, Falcon and the Winter Soldier seems likely to be more grounded, borrowing its tone from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which introduced both Anthony Mackie's Falcon/Sam Wilson and reintroduced Sebastian Stan's Bucky Barnes as the cyborg-assassin brainwashed by Hydra.
Both these figures have been major supporting players in the Captain America movies, and this series is certainly focused on the world that Steve Rogers has left.
In fact, Steve's ultimate fate remains untold: we know by the end of Endgame that he went back to the 1940s to live out the life that he'd originally wanted, living in secret with Peggy (yes, Endgame's time-travel rules are perhaps a little inconsistent, given that Steve's arrival means that he always traveled to the past - though I wonder if Loki's series will handle the paradox his escape creates.) Steve finally looks, well, closer to his age (the super-soldier serum must have helped keep him healthier than your typical 106-year-old - or 171 if you still count his years in the ice) but whether he's alive or dead, he's very clearly not in the public eye anymore, and it seems that most of the world thinks he's as gone as Tony Stark.
Sam is Steve's chosen heir, and it's his words that are the first we hear in this episode, when he handed Sam the shield and told him it was his.
But as we find out soon enough, Sam has turned down the mantle of Captain America, placing the shield in the Smithsonian (Air and Space museum, for some reason - you'd think it'd be American History, but oh well). But Sam is still doing missions, now working for the Air Force given that it really looks like the Avengers aren't a thing anymore. Our only big action set-piece is what one assumes to be classic Falcon stuff - he flies with his wings to rescue a prisoner taken by, of all freaking people, Battroc the Leaper (you know, the French pirate from the beginning of Winter Soldier). We get a big sequence involving planes, helicopters, and wing-suits, as well as what I would guess will be a thematically-relevant ticking clock where Battroc is trying to take his hostage to Libya, where the U.S.A.F. doesn't have the treaties to follow.
Apart from a fellow soldier/agent working with Sam, we don't get much in the way of action this episode after that sequence. What little we do is some stuff with an organization called the Flag-Smashers, who are described as having thought things were better after the blip, and who hate the idea of nation-states and borders. We see them organize a sort of flash-mob cover for some kind of robbery using an AR app, but I think you've always got to pay attention when a group of villains is introduced and they don't kill anyone. As a grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I'll tell you that I have a strong skepticism toward nationalism, and I wonder if the show will address some of the complex themes that arise when your hero is dressed up like the American Flag.
In my mind, Captain America is meant to represent only the admirable American ideals - egalitarianism, sticking up for the weak and vulnerable, etc. But that has certainly not been America's only legacy in the world, and the flag and other national symbols have always been co-opted by jingoists. Indeed, as the episode ends, we're introduced to a new character who has been chosen by the government to become the next Captain America - the vibranium shield is not left to rest in the Smithsonian, but is instead picked up by this new guy. And while we know almost precisely nothing about him, the fact that it's not Sam immediately raises a whole ton of red flags along with the red, white, and blue ones.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
The show's two title characters don't even see each other in this episode. Most of the episode is dedicated to seeing just what they're doing with their lives.
Sam's life looks ok at first. He's continuing to do his superhero thing, albeit for the military, and he's a huge celebrity for being an Avenger and saving the freaking universe. He's even inherited a bit of Tony Stark's "I can do it better" when working on repairing his wingsuit, complaining about how the Air Force's techs never fix it up as well as he can.
We also meet Sam's sister, Sarah (Adepero Oduye) and her two sons. I suspect that Sarah might have been the younger sibling originally, but the five-year absence of her brother has forced her to become much more practical, running the family shrimp business. The two of them have a very sibling-like argument about selling the family boat that they had grown up living on. Sam's optimistic that they can save it, while Sarah has already resigned herself to selling it.
Sam, looking to leverage his "I'm literally a superhero" charms, takes his sister to the bank to get a loan, but even while the banker snags selfies with The Falcon, he turns them down - citing, absurdly, Sam's lack of income for the past five years as a reason to deny him. It seems crazy that there would be no legal protections for those who were "blipped," but it also seems thematically linked to a kind of disillusionment with the government's capacity to take care of things (art imitating life.) A pair of black siblings being denied a loan by a white banker is also, well, something that has happened a whole lot in American history, and I'm again curious to see if this show is willing to tackle the harsh realities of race and racism in this country. Notably, Steve Rogers picked a black man to succeed him as Captain America, whereas the government has picked another white guy. At this point, the show is raising these themes, so I'm going to be very curious as to whether they'll really confront them.
Bucky's story is darker, but then, so is his backstory. We learn that he's been pardoned on the condition that he goes through therapy. And his therapist, who is adept at calling out his bullshit (also, she seems to be a veteran as well) has him working to make amends for his past crimes as the Winter Soldier. But Bucky is isolated and fighting against the healing process. We see him reliving one of his past misdeeds, slaying some targets in Russia and then killing an innocent Japanese-American man who just happened to be in the hotel to witness the assassination. It is this man's father that Bucky has befriended in New York in an attempt to... well, it's not totally clear. Frankly, I'm a little skeptical that his therapist would actually recommend that he seek out and associate with people he had wronged, but thankfully, when he feels compelled to confess his heinous crime to the grieving man, he realizes that would be a terrible idea, and makes an excuse to walk away.
Nevertheless, Bucky's in a really awful rut. While he has performed his own heroics like Sam, he was never an Avenger - indeed, he was the catalyst for the break-up of the Avengers, which is arguably why Thanos won in the first place. I don't know if he's fully internalized that level of guilt yet, but either way, he's depressed, sleeping on the floor of his apartment, and having a very difficult time as a 106-year-old man who looks like he's in his late 30s, a man out of time just like Steve, but without the positive connections and friendships the helped Steve get through it all (and hey, even Steve couldn't actually take it in the end, choosing instead to go back. You wonder if Bucky doesn't regret going with him.)
The first episode here is certainly all set-up. We're looking at a world that has had to struggle to adjust first to the devastating loss of the snap/blip/whatever, and then its bewildering, disorienting reversal. (One of my roommates recalled learning about the Ice Age in high school biology, and how the end of the Ice Age also led to mass extinctions, just as the beginning had, because things had adapted to the cold, and couldn't survive in the warmer world that followed.)
But I actually really appreciate the focus on the characters and their situations. The MCU has done so well, I think, largely because it's about the human beings first and then the superheroes they embody. Episode one is about Sam Wilson and James Buchanan Barnes, not yet The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
But we do have a sense of what's coming: the "Flag-Smashers" look like a threat, though it's not clear yet what threat they represent. And the new, false Captain America must be some kind of danger, though it's not yet clear what sort of threat he represents.
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