Captain America and the Winter Soldier

   Six episodes is what we got for this story about Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes reckoning with the legacy Steve Rogers left to them. We also had Zemo, John Walker, Karli Morgenthau, Sharon Carter, the Dora Milaje, and "Val."

Did The Falcon and the Winter Soldier bite off more than it can chew? Yes.

Six episodes, the third of which was a mess of weird pacing and story choices, was not enough to cover what this show set out to. But was it all bad? No.

Let's talk themes:

The biggest theme, or idea, that the show dealt with was the complex legacy of America as an identity, a history, and a nation, particularly in its treatment of Black people. Steve Rogers handed Sam the shield at the end of Endgame because he, correctly, saw Sam as a natural heir to its legacy. Steve had comported himself with integrity, optimism, and selfless heroism, and in Sam he found a kindred spirit. To Steve, whose view of America as a country was informed by his own perspective on its values, there was nothing complicated about handing that legacy to a man he felt shared his values. And Bucky, who had come to see Steve as an infallible moral authority (something that was more or less magically confirmed given his use of Mjolnir) was also blind to the difficulties in asking a Black man to take up that role.

It's multifaceted. On one hand, Sam has the reasonable fear that he'll be hated for claiming that title for himself - that America, or at least the shockingly large portion of America that still holds a white supremacist idea of American identity, would never embrace him as they had with Steve. No matter how heroic he is, some people will just simply never accept that a guy who isn't white could take up that title.

But the other major aspect of that complexity is not just those who would question his worthiness to take that title, but also the question of America's worthiness to have him represent it. Isaiah Bradley more or less was the first Black Captain America, but he was hidden away and punished for doing precisely what Steve had done in WWII. In a country with a 400-year history of utterly atrocious treatment of Black people, from slavery to modern-day killings by police, in what way does America deserve the service of a man like Sam Wilson?

I think it's notable that Sam's embodiment of that role is almost entirely his own. Yes, he's learned to toss the Vibranium shield around (somewhat poetic that the metal the shield is made from was stolen from an African country) but he didn't take any super-soldier serum, and he's still his own superhero with his own suite of abilities. He's taken the core of what it means to be Captain America - to stand up for our loftiest ideals - and made it his own.

The series does something similar to Black Panther, actually. In Black Panther, Killmonger's fundamental argument, that Wakanda has been doing the wrong thing by isolating itself and hoarding its prosperity, technology, and stability, is actually valid and correct. In the end, he does convince T'challa of this, but what makes him the villain is that his proposed solution is wrong - to pay back colonialism with colonialism. I don't think that Karli Morgenthau works quite as well as an antagonist, but I do think that we have here an example of a person whose motives are good. Really, where I think the story suffers is that her turn from heroic freedom fighter to murderer feels a little abrupt (it happens in that messy 3rd episode.)

But, it does provide Sam with a chance to prove himself - yes, he does an awesome job of stopping the plot to kill all the GRC members, and he wins the day, but it's when he steps up to the members of the Council and explains to them why their plans for mass deportations are wrong.

Steve understood what it meant to be weak and powerless before he got turned into a muscular athletic god, and it was that perspective that kept him humble enough, and focused enough on defending people like he had been, to prevent the power he had from corrupting him. Sam's experiences as a Black American (and also a generally larger-than-most amount of empathy) have given him the ability to see what Karli was fighting for and recognize the righteousness of her cause.

There are about three million other things that happened in that episode that bear talking about, but I think the core development of the series is Sam becoming the true Captain America. And wouldn't you know it, there's a fourth Captain America movie now in the works, which will presumably center on Sam Wilson's tenure in that role.