The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Year: 2021
Created by: Malcolm Spellman
Starring: Daniel Bruhl, Erin Kellyman, Anthony Mackie, Wyatt Russell, Sebastian Stan & Emily VanCamp
Episodes: 6
BBFC: 12
Published: 24/04/21
Created by: Malcolm Spellman
Starring: Daniel Bruhl, Erin Kellyman, Anthony Mackie, Wyatt Russell, Sebastian Stan & Emily VanCamp
Episodes: 6
BBFC: 12
Published: 24/04/21
Avengers: Endgame was a symbolic moment in cinematic history and brought to a close over a decade’s worth of storylines and character arcs, whilst simultaneously acting as a springboard for some of the series secondary characters to take up the mantle left behind from some of the series main stars.
When Steve ‘Captain America’ Rogers (Chris Evans) passes the characters symbolic shield onto Sam ‘The Falcon’ Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in the final moments of Endgame, it was an act that was both a closure to the Captain America story that many had grown so attached to, and the start of a new Captain America story in a world that was going to be very different.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier then acts as the MCU’s first proper exploration into life after ‘The Blip’, caused by Thanos wiping out half of all life in the universe, and the Avengers reversing those effects. Whilst it had been touched on in Spider-Man: Far From Home, and WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Solider puts the effects of The Blip at the heart of its story.
Six months after receiving the shield from Steve, Sam is struggling to come to terms with the responsibility that comes with donning the stars and stripes to become the new Captain America, and as such donates the shield to the U.S. Government to display in a museum dedicated to Steve and his exploits as Captain America. Meanwhile, James ‘Bucky’ Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is continuing to struggle with adjusting to life after overcoming his brainwashing by the Soviets. Whilst the Winter Solider is gone, the scars left behind from his destruction are still very visible, and Bucky wants to set the record straight. Unfortunately, with Steve gone, there’s nobody around who understands his pain, and takes Sam’s donation of the shield as a personal attack because it’s not what Steve would have wanted.
Meanwhile the Global Repatriation Council (GRC) is desperately trying to find lives for those who disappeared during The Blip. In the five years between them disappearing, and then reappearing, many people found that their property and belongings had been sold off, that their jobs had been taken, and that banks were unable to provide them with any kind of support because they had been gone for so long. Angered by the way that the GRC is handling matters, a group of Blip refugees have banded together under the banner ‘Flag Smashers’ and are responsible for a series of terrorist attacks around the globe with their aim being to try and revert the world back to the way it was during The Blip, to allow for nations without borders, in doing so they have also resurrected the super soldier program responsible for creating Steve and Bucky to give their members a fighting chance when the war starts. In response to this the U.S. Government elect decorated war veteran John Walker (Wyatt Russell) as the new Captain America, so that he may investigate and dismantle the Flag Smashers before they cause more damage.
Unsure about the new Captain America, Sam and Bucky team up with Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) and their old nemesis Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) to infiltrate the Flag Smashers and stop the impending war by means of diplomacy.
When Steve ‘Captain America’ Rogers (Chris Evans) passes the characters symbolic shield onto Sam ‘The Falcon’ Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in the final moments of Endgame, it was an act that was both a closure to the Captain America story that many had grown so attached to, and the start of a new Captain America story in a world that was going to be very different.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier then acts as the MCU’s first proper exploration into life after ‘The Blip’, caused by Thanos wiping out half of all life in the universe, and the Avengers reversing those effects. Whilst it had been touched on in Spider-Man: Far From Home, and WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Solider puts the effects of The Blip at the heart of its story.
Six months after receiving the shield from Steve, Sam is struggling to come to terms with the responsibility that comes with donning the stars and stripes to become the new Captain America, and as such donates the shield to the U.S. Government to display in a museum dedicated to Steve and his exploits as Captain America. Meanwhile, James ‘Bucky’ Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is continuing to struggle with adjusting to life after overcoming his brainwashing by the Soviets. Whilst the Winter Solider is gone, the scars left behind from his destruction are still very visible, and Bucky wants to set the record straight. Unfortunately, with Steve gone, there’s nobody around who understands his pain, and takes Sam’s donation of the shield as a personal attack because it’s not what Steve would have wanted.
Meanwhile the Global Repatriation Council (GRC) is desperately trying to find lives for those who disappeared during The Blip. In the five years between them disappearing, and then reappearing, many people found that their property and belongings had been sold off, that their jobs had been taken, and that banks were unable to provide them with any kind of support because they had been gone for so long. Angered by the way that the GRC is handling matters, a group of Blip refugees have banded together under the banner ‘Flag Smashers’ and are responsible for a series of terrorist attacks around the globe with their aim being to try and revert the world back to the way it was during The Blip, to allow for nations without borders, in doing so they have also resurrected the super soldier program responsible for creating Steve and Bucky to give their members a fighting chance when the war starts. In response to this the U.S. Government elect decorated war veteran John Walker (Wyatt Russell) as the new Captain America, so that he may investigate and dismantle the Flag Smashers before they cause more damage.
Unsure about the new Captain America, Sam and Bucky team up with Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) and their old nemesis Zemo (Daniel Bruhl) to infiltrate the Flag Smashers and stop the impending war by means of diplomacy.
There’s a whole lot going on in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and that is the primary reason why the series feels so underwhelming. Totalling just six one-hour episodes, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier bites off considerably more than it can chew by having so many moving parts, and not exploring any of them with the level of depth they truly deserve to make them compelling.
Starting off with The Blip, the show makes various little attempts to show just how damaging that event was to various areas of modern life such as housing, employment, banking, and global politics. Unfortunately, though it only ever scratches the surface of these subjects without really getting into the meat of it all. Now whilst that wouldn’t have made for a particularly thrilling superhero beat-em-up affair, what Marvel are trying to do post-Endgame is broaden the scope and depth of the types of story they tell and doing that will often require a lot of explanation. The way the world functions has changed on a global scale, and the core conflict of The Falcon and the Winter Solider centres around those changes. But the show never gets into the ramifications of those societal and economic changes, because it’s more concerned about trying to be an action-thriller, than a political drama.
Secondly there’s the Flag Smashers, led by Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman). Whilst the motivations of the Flag Smashers are explained clearly, the effectiveness of their movement is hindered by Morgenthau’s character development. We aren’t given enough information about Morgenthau in context of The Blip, this once again comes back to not being given enough information about how the world has changed, but what little explanation we get about Morgenthau is not enough to make her a relatable character, which the series is clearly trying to do. It even goes so far as having Sam share the ideals as the Flag Smashers because he is struggling in the same way they are, in an attempt to bring the audience on board with their plight, but it doesn’t work because we don’t understand the context, and Morgenthau’s personal history isn’t given anywhere near the level of depth it needs in order to make one of the shows central villains relatable.
Thirdly there’s John Walker/Captain America. I would personally argue that this whole storyline is a waste of time and doesn’t go anywhere interesting in relation to the story at large. Whilst the actual story of Walker being the wrong Captain America, and doing a bad job of it, is interesting and something I’m glad got explored, it doesn’t work very well alongside the story of the Flag Smashers and The Blip; at least not in a six-episode series that shares the screen time with two considerably larger stories.
Starting off with The Blip, the show makes various little attempts to show just how damaging that event was to various areas of modern life such as housing, employment, banking, and global politics. Unfortunately, though it only ever scratches the surface of these subjects without really getting into the meat of it all. Now whilst that wouldn’t have made for a particularly thrilling superhero beat-em-up affair, what Marvel are trying to do post-Endgame is broaden the scope and depth of the types of story they tell and doing that will often require a lot of explanation. The way the world functions has changed on a global scale, and the core conflict of The Falcon and the Winter Solider centres around those changes. But the show never gets into the ramifications of those societal and economic changes, because it’s more concerned about trying to be an action-thriller, than a political drama.
Secondly there’s the Flag Smashers, led by Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman). Whilst the motivations of the Flag Smashers are explained clearly, the effectiveness of their movement is hindered by Morgenthau’s character development. We aren’t given enough information about Morgenthau in context of The Blip, this once again comes back to not being given enough information about how the world has changed, but what little explanation we get about Morgenthau is not enough to make her a relatable character, which the series is clearly trying to do. It even goes so far as having Sam share the ideals as the Flag Smashers because he is struggling in the same way they are, in an attempt to bring the audience on board with their plight, but it doesn’t work because we don’t understand the context, and Morgenthau’s personal history isn’t given anywhere near the level of depth it needs in order to make one of the shows central villains relatable.
Thirdly there’s John Walker/Captain America. I would personally argue that this whole storyline is a waste of time and doesn’t go anywhere interesting in relation to the story at large. Whilst the actual story of Walker being the wrong Captain America, and doing a bad job of it, is interesting and something I’m glad got explored, it doesn’t work very well alongside the story of the Flag Smashers and The Blip; at least not in a six-episode series that shares the screen time with two considerably larger stories.
I can’t really talk about why these stories don’t work the way they should in a single review, because I’ll be here forever, but to summarise my feelings on the matter, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier should have been not only a longer series (maybe around ten episodes) but should have run for multiple seasons. Season one should have dealt primarily with explaining how the world changed because of The Blip and focused that change on Sam struggling to get his and his sisters’ business up and running. As well as how Bucky is coping with the loss of Steve. Then bring in the Flag Smashers gradually as the greater workings of a post-Blip world have begun to fall into place, so now their plight actually makes sense, and we can spend time looking at it from their point of view. The super-soldier stuff could come in here as well, and we can explore why the super-soldier program was so damaging to people, rather than it being relegated to a couple of short scenes of Sam talking to a new character we have no connection with.
Season two could then deal with the introduction of Walker’s Captain America to combat the Flag Smashers. We could get a great deal of backstory on Walker, and a deep dive into his psyche as he struggles to carry the enormous weight of being Steve’s successor. Over the series we can see him struggle to live up to expectations, then when the moment comes for him to truly break and become the villain, we can then see how that plays into the super-soldier storyline more and get a truly great three-way battle between Sam & Bucky, Walker, and the Flag Smashers.
If you’re not a devoted fanatic of the MCU then The Falcon and the Winter Soldier can very easily be skipped. It has a nice setup for the fourth Captain America film, but beyond that it doesn’t do anything the MCU hasn’t already done better in the films. For hardcore MCU fans, you’ve probably already watched it, but if not then set your expectations low and gear yourselves up for what feels like a non-superpowered rendition of Captain America: Civil War, but with way less meaningful exposition.
Season two could then deal with the introduction of Walker’s Captain America to combat the Flag Smashers. We could get a great deal of backstory on Walker, and a deep dive into his psyche as he struggles to carry the enormous weight of being Steve’s successor. Over the series we can see him struggle to live up to expectations, then when the moment comes for him to truly break and become the villain, we can then see how that plays into the super-soldier storyline more and get a truly great three-way battle between Sam & Bucky, Walker, and the Flag Smashers.
If you’re not a devoted fanatic of the MCU then The Falcon and the Winter Soldier can very easily be skipped. It has a nice setup for the fourth Captain America film, but beyond that it doesn’t do anything the MCU hasn’t already done better in the films. For hardcore MCU fans, you’ve probably already watched it, but if not then set your expectations low and gear yourselves up for what feels like a non-superpowered rendition of Captain America: Civil War, but with way less meaningful exposition.