Sam has a great insight in this week's episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. As he discusses Bucky's difficulties in adjusting to life and putting the Winter Soldier behind him, and Bucky's apology over his outrage that Sam would turn down the shield and thus the role of Captain America (inadvertently leading to the truly unworthy John Walker taking it on,) Sam points out that as much as they both loved, respected, and valued Steve, even the original Captain America was not the ultimate arbiter of goodness. It didn't matter what Steve thought.
Bucky is looking for external definitions to qualify his rehabilitation. He wants a figure of authority to sign off on his return to being a good person, and not the cyborg super-soldier assassin that he was for so long. Sam sees through the problems with his process of making amends: Bucky wants to feel better by making amends to others, when the truly good act would be to make them feel better.
Sam is a good person, and has basically never wavered from being one. When we're first introduced to him, he's dedicated himself post-military-service to aiding other veterans with the trauma of their time in combat. In fact, he inspires Steve to do similar work after the trauma of the Snap.
We see that the community he is from is one that is tight-knit, as demonstrated when he calls in the whole neighborhood to help fix up the family fishing boat. And one can imagine that his faith in community extended to a faith in his country. Meeting Steve Rogers reinforced that faith.
But the story of Isaiah Bradley, even though he only learned of it recently, was always lurking at the back of his conception of this country. Historically, America has been a land of freedom, opportunity, and optimism for people who look like Steve Rogers and John Walker. But that promise has always been dangled before its racial minorities, especially Black Americans, only to be so often torn away and replaced with the opposite.
Consider, for example, the story Bradley tells of why he was arrested and locked up, experimented on for 30 years. He describes how his brothers-in-arms, the other subjects of the experiments to replicate Erskine's serum, were captured at a POW camp, and the US Military considered simply bombing the camp to prevent anyone from recovering their research. Bradley broke away and stormed the facility alone, bringing the POWs back.
Does that sound familiar? It's almost exactly what Steve Rogers did. Back when he was nothing but a USO mascot, he stole away to rescue a group of POWs (including Bucky) that Hydra was experimenting on. The military swiftly recognized Steve's value and promoted him to a special forces role. Bradley was tossed in jail for 30 years.
This is a show that is definitely doing too many things, but it was nice at least this time to get a strong focus on Sam.
Let's just touch on the other developments:
John Walker gets "other than honorably" discharged (not being up on my military terms, I don't know if this is the same as a dishonorable discharge or something that's a different category) and is stripped of his title as Captain America. He lies repeatedly about killing the person responsible for Lamar's death, even to his family. The episode is called "Truth" and John keep demonstrating his unworthiness by being unable to acknowledge that he killed the wrong person - one even wonders if he can admit it to himself.
After getting a relatively light punishment for, you know, 2nd degree murder, he's approached by shocking reveal Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who gives off some very Power Broker-y vibes (and from narrative efficiency sounds like she could be it,) offering Walker future work.
We also see that Sharon Carter has hired freaking Batroc the Leaper to do... something, and then we see him meeting with Karli in New York to supply the Flag-Smashers with what looks like some hardcore military hardware. Is Sharon the Power Broker? Also, what's her long game here? This isn't actually the first time Batroc's been hired by a good guy (assuming Sharon's still good) as in Winter Soldier he was hired by Nick Fury to take the ship to make a distraction for Black Widow to get information of Project Insight.
Karli's weaponized flash mob abilities gather a group to take over the security of the GRC meeting, where they're voting on a mass deportation bill. Even if Karli's violent methods are troubling, the show certainly seems to come down on the side of "policy-wise, Karli should win, but her methods are just going to make this situation worse."
And that question of American Nationalism is sort of at the heart of all of this:
The ideal America, as I see it, is as the Anti-nation. It's a land where it doesn't matter where you were born or what you look like; you get to be American if you believe in freedom, equality, and democracy. There's unity like you'd get in a traditional nation-state, but it rejects ethnicity as a basis for national identity.
But we're not in the ideal America (the optimist in me says not yet) and there's little more obvious a counter-argument that we are than the experience of Black Americans, who, despite having been here for as many generations (often more) as any White folks, are never given the same sort of ownership, belonging, and agency over the country's destiny that White people have claimed.
Karli seeks to represent displaced people from all over the world who are under threat of being forced out of their homes in Europe, but it boils down to the same question: who gets to belong here (wherever "here" is) and who doesn't. Karli is arguing for a world in which everyone belongs everywhere.
America could be the place where everyone belongs. We have a contradictory legacy of diversity and racism. We're a nation of immigrants, but we're also a nation that created race-based restrictions on citizenship and basic human rights. We're a nation with freedom of religion, but we've also had a powerful political movement to venerate a single faith (and in fact, a single reading of that single faith) as superior.
And that's why the idea of Sam taking up the shield that represents America is so fraught: for all the people that will celebrate this step toward a better America, there will be those who lash out against it. And as Bradley argues, maybe America isn't worthy of having a Black man as its representative.
I really wonder how this story's going to end. We only have one episode left. Zemo's story seems over -he's been taken by the Dora Milaje and is being sent to the Raft (though I wonder why not to Wakanda) and there are still questions of what the deal with the Power Broker is. But as I see it, the key things we have to deal with are these:
Karli's making a move on the GRC. She probably wants to kill them all, which is tough because while murdering a bunch of unarmed people is an unambiguously evil act, her ultimate intention of preventing the hateful "Patch Act" from going forward is a noble one. I think Sam's the best-equipped person to talk her down, but I also hope that Sam doesn't just stand by and let the displaced people get screwed.
John has gone off the deep end, and is now making his own (presumably non-Vibranium) shield. I don't know where he's going, but it can't be good.
Bucky... despite also being one of the title characters, I don't think we've got time to deal with his whole thing. Sam has put him on a new path to rehabilitation, but I don't know if we have time to see all that happen. At the very least, he can back up Sam. Bucky's supposed to be making amends by helping others to feel better, not just himself, and so I'm curious to see how that manifests in the next episode. "Start with one," says Sam, and I think we've got to see Bucky help someone with their problems. John Walker looks beyond redemption by this point, but maybe Bucky can help him as someone who has also done some really heinous things in his past.
The whole Sharon thing I have no idea.
I think Sam's got to become the new Captain America - arguably he already has during his training montage. But maybe he'll show it to the world in the final episode (with some new Wakandan wings!)
Anyway, reflecting on the series up until now:
I don't think six episodes has been enough to touch on every theme they wanted to. But I do appreciate that the MCU is trying, within its superhero story structure, to deal with some very deep and complex issues like racism, nationalism, trauma, and identity. I think this show will probably compare less favorably to Wandavision, which had the benefit of keeping a fairly tight focus on its main character (though it also had the odd set-up for Monica Rambeau, who I liked but also felt like she was on a different show) and thus could feel like a superhero-examination of grief, fairly distilled (and also take a really bonkers approach to format, at least for the first several episodes.)
Still, I think the MCU does a couple things really well: first, that it approaches these larger-than-life superheroes as humans (or human-like people) first, and lets that inform their superheroics. The other is that it acknowledges the complex moral and ethical dilemmas of the real world and tries to say something about them. It might not hit as original or coherent an argument as the most sophisticated works of art do, but there's a genuine effort that can provoke thought and reflection in its audience all while providing popcorn-munching entertainment.
One last note, somewhat unrelated:
As a cinephile Angelino (a city that probably has a disproportionate number of cinephiles) I'm pretty sad to hear about the closing of Arclight Theaters. While it might be odd to hear so many people lamenting the loss of a chain of movie theaters, for those reading who have never been to Arclight, it's basically a movie theater that never seemed to cheap out on the experience (the tickets weren't the cheapest either, to be honest.) They had good food, often had exhibits with things like props and costumes you could see while waiting for the movie, and were just a nice place to go see a movie.
There's one in Culver City I often walk to, and I've seen probably most of the MCU movies that have come out since 2013 there. Granted, it's the movie theater closest to Sony Studios, so I'm sure that some other chain will buy the location, but Arclight was always just kind of a nicer experience than any other chain, and so I'm sad to see it go.
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