The second TV installment in Marvel’s Phase Four, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier mostly re-created the blockbuster feel of the films, in terms of its action and tone. But series creator Malcolm Spellman used the scope of the Disney+ show to explore race in a way the MCU rarely has, as Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) struggled with his Captain America identity (which was made official by season’s end). The show followed Bucky’s (Sebastian Stan) efforts to recover from his trauma and set up the stage for forthcoming MCU projects by introducing U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and a possibly villainous Sharon Carter (Emily Vancamp). But was the often sloppy six-episode journey really worth it?
Here at The A.V. Club, we’ve had mixed feelings about the show, which often struggled to reach the same heights as WandaVision. So we discussed our thoughts about the finale, “One World, One People.” Did the end of Karli (Erin Kellyman) and the Flag-Smasher story make sense? Would the show have benefitted from more Sam and Bucky banter and partnership? And how will characters like Helmut Zemo and Isaiah Bradley factor into the MCU now?
Sam Barsanti
I believe that the Marvel movies—at their best—are more than just cheap excuses to move some pieces on the board in service of The Next Big Thing, but two shows deep into the MCU’s Disney+ venture, I can see more than ever why some people have that take. The MCU stories work because of the strength of these characters and how (just like in the Marvel comics of old) they feel more like people than impossibly huge and powerful gods. But they do not work when they depend on the twisty plots and mysteries that the TV format lends itself to so well. Both WandaVision and TFTWS have relied to some degree on trying to hook the audience with questions about what’s going on, and in both cases I couldn’t give less of a shit about the way they were eventually resolved. The ticking time bomb of John Walker was a dud, the Flag-Smashers’ scheme never made any sense, and both Zemo and Sharon Carter became completely different people for the sake of plot and an obvious twist.
That all being said, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan rule, and the only reason any of this show worked at all is because of how good they are. Hell, I really liked the escalating cheers from New Yorkers as Bucky and Sam started saving people, and even though Mackie’s big speech was so heavy-handed that I thought for a second that he did have the Super Soldier Serum, I loved that it gave him a chance to just lay out everything the show should’ve been about from the beginning—and it doesn’t hurt that the scene seemed like an obvious nod to my all-time favorite Captain America moment in the comics.
Shanicka Anderson
I must preface this by saying I am unhealthily attached to Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes, and Steve Rogers. I’ve always been invested in their storylines and what happens to them. As someone who absolutely loathes Avengers: Endgame, I put a lot of pressure on TFTWS to “fix” the wrongs I took as a personal slight (namely, Steve’s character basically getting body-snatched, barely talking to Bucky after he became a fugitive to save him, and then ultimately deciding to peace out and stay back in time with Peggy and presumably poof her previous husband and family out of existence). I was hoping the show would tie up loose ends and give me closure. Unfortunately, I left this finale feeling even more unsatisfied.
In short, I think the series wasted Sam and Bucky. Part of the draw for me was getting to see both of them on screen together engaging in hijinks and some beautiful, beautiful banter. Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan are incredible, and I wanted even more of their comedic dynamic. I wanted more time with Sam and watching him settle into his complicated role as Cap. Instead we got hours of Zemo and John Walker, chasing the Flag-Smashers, who weren’t ever believable as villains, and trying to figure out who the Power Broker was (which… what the absolute hell)—plot lines that forced Sam and Bucky to take a back seat in their own series. WandaVision, which I initially had no interest in watching, was a poignant and masterful exploration of grief and loss. I hoped to finally see something similar with Bucky and Sam working through losing Steve. Instead we got 7,345,374 heavy-handed close-ups of the shield that did nothing to unpack the giant Old Man Steve-shaped elephant in the room.
Saloni Gajjar
The Falcon And The Winter Soldier’s many narratives were frustratingly messy. For all its well-meaning attempts to deal with Sam’s and Bucky’s identity struggles, the show just didn’t dig deep enough, instead spending time on plots that were ultimately unsatisfactory. The big villain, Karli Morgenthau (and the Flag-Smashers), was perfunctory, and I still don’t think I fully understand what her endgame was because her storyline wasn’t mapped out properly. Even with John Walker, the finale quickly puts him on a path to redemption after he publicly decapitated someone as Captain America. It’s haphazard.
The show was at its best when it focused on the two titular protagonists. Every single scene with Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) was stellar, as were the banter-filled Sam and Bucky moments or their meaningful conversation in episode five. Those are the subjects they should have addressed more, but the show opted for redundant reinvention arcs for Helmut Zemo and Sharon Carter. Those appearances, including moments with the Dora Milaje and “Val,” were fun, but they took away from the meatier substance that could’ve made TFTWS as emotionally impactful as WandaVision. The show has transformed Sam into the new Cap and turned him and Bucky into a formidable duo, so I’m hoping their journey comes to the forefront as the rest of phase four unfolds; otherwise there’s not much to take away from TFTWS.
Alex McLevy
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a lot of us are calling out some of the same issues—namely, that TFTWS bit off way more than it could chew in just six episodes. Or that, as a result, it ended up being essentially one-fourth of a good TV show, soaring like Sam when it narrowed the focus to the two lead heroes, and succumbing to bloat any time it strayed too far afield with awkwardly unresolved or papered-over storylines. (Walker may as well have not publicly decapitated someone, given how completely shunted aside that beat was in the finale.)
So instead, I’ll express my appreciation for how the Marvel series did its best to incorporate the uneven fun of reading comics on a monthly basis into its weekly installments. As a kid, when you’d get into a new comic, you didn’t always know who all the heroes and villains were, so when an issue ended with the reveal of some returning nemesis or surprise guest, it often felt like you were being invited to the party at the exact time the party was happening, confused and exhilarated all at once. The Falcon And The Winter Soldier often came across like that: bringing in old names or faces, familiar from a movie here and there, solely for the purpose of nudging viewers with an “Eh? Eh?” and then quickly resolving their appearance with a scattershot and unfocused “Tune in next time!” It’s not satisfying, exactly, but it did what it was supposed to—keep you on the hook, even if you didn’t always love being there. So in that sense, it actually felt quite a bit like reading a Marvel comic, just not one of the better ones.
Danette Chavez
Like Alex, I didn’t mind waiting for clarity about where everyone’s allegiances lie—after all, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier drew a lot from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which had some serious double-crossing. But as others have also noted, kicking the can down the narrative road has once again worked against the reborn small-screen MCU.
I appreciate everything Sulagna Misra was able to take away from the ending, and I try my best to judge the show that exists instead of the show I wish existed, but TFTWS was as ambivalent as Sam Wilson about what it wanted to be. At times, it seemed to want to reckon with the psychological toll of the MCU, from the heroics to the Blip (which I still contend is a misnomer for a five-year period in time. It also makes the term “post-Blip” really confusing.). In other moments, we could see how Spellman tried to challenge the franchise’s patriotic notions, particularly in the story of Isaiah Bradley. The Falcon And The Winter Soldier even teased the buddy (maybe more) comedy that many viewers would have been happy to watch. The show never committed to one path, so the six episodes remain just elements of a story that never came together. There were certainly more efficient ways to set up a Captain and the Winter Soldier story, but, if I may be the optimistic one, maybe this means season two (or season one?) will come out more fully formed.
295 Comments
John Walker was a dudI see what you did there, fellow Lynx.
This show suffered a lot from what we could maybe call “Dynasty Warriors Syndrome” where the protagonists kill and maim their way through the bad guy’s mooks without a care in the world, but then the villain dies and it’s a tragedy because she had a name and dialog. And how many times did Karli and her gang of superhuman terrorists need to go back to the SAME APARTMENT BUILDING? Seriously, after the third time superheroes just catch you at home, maybe find a new hideout?
I always had a big problem with the term “Blip” as if nothing that happened in that 5 year period mattered. Children were born, loved ones died, great art was created, atrocities were committed yet all of this is wiped aside in favor of a “return to normal”
Folks who did great things in that 5 years would have every right to be pissed,
That being said, they also don’t have a right to keep the mansion they moved into but didn’t earn (simply because it was empty) when the rightful owners returned.
They spent 5 years rebuilding a society. At least some of them deserve the mansion.
it looked very much to me they weren’t rebuilding, they were just coasting on fumes. The trashed neighborhood in SF, The baseball stadium, etc…
They went from half the world instantly dissolving to having time or resources for: 1) Having high school girls’ basketball games 2) Gas for Tony’s car 3) Peanut Butter for Nat’s sandwich 4) Therapy 5) Beer for Thor.
Somehow, they didn’t blow each other up. (Which is why I cut Heyward, Walker, Lemar and a few others who would have seen how close it all came to mass destruction a little slack for their PTSD)
I do think the MCU has to do two seemingly contradictory things a LOT better going forward.
1) Celebrate the people who kept the lights on and tell their stories without turning them all into paranoid lunatics like Heyward2) Celebrate the good things that come from people coming back. Families reunited. The talent in art, sport, philosophy, and science that has returned. Extinct species returning. Whatever Something good, because there are times when I think the Endgame crew should have just enjoyed their beer and peanut butter and not bothered.
the first question they need to answer is why didn’t they just ask Thanos to wish for twice the resources?
Gravity. If you double the number of Jimmy Dean Pancake And Sausage Rolls On A Stick then you see the Earth’s crust start to get pulled apart.
not if you double the size of the planet
We’re already on the edge of critical mass of Jimmy Dean Pancake And Sausage Rolls On A Stick. We just can’t risk the formation of the greasy, artificial mapley black hole that might ensue from passing the tipping point.The Microwaveable Waffle And Scrambled Egg Deanwiches are a lot airier, so those could be doubled safely, I’d say, but we still better ask Neil deGrasse Tyson to be sure.
So you’re saying you flunked science.
i’m saying it’s a freaking comic book movie, get a life
OK,1) wish for a duplicate Earth without people or animals to be set on the opposite side of the sun in a synchronous orbit and move half of the living things there.
2) shrink the living things to half their sizemy point was that Thanos was predisposed to a solution that took away things rather than added to them
His comics motivation of ‘Make Death love me!’ made more sense than his MCU motivation of ‘I don’t understand science!’
100% agree. and they had a perfect setup with Hela (goddess of DEATH) that they could have used.
Yep…I feel like they thought that would be too abstract but the ‘kill half the universe to save the rest’ plan falls apart after like 5 seconds of thought. He’s called ‘The Mad Titan’ and he’s obsessed with the anthropomorphic personification of Death, makes total sense to me.
And what space-god WOULDN’T fall for goth Cate Blanchett in a body-stocking?
can I get an AMEN?
can you see Thanos following around Hela like a lovesick puppy? all the time with the texting and the tweeting…
Dude, let it go, she’s just not that into you…
Seriously, she was RIGHT THERE
Movie Thanos was basically a Republican who thought he could fix problems with the absolute dumbest fucking ideas.
Movie Thanos came up with a plan decided it was good and no more thinking needed to be done just execution no matter what. A very Republican thing indeed.
Snap the Universe Great Again.
Thanos’ movie plan doesn’t make sense, from a logical perspective. But I don’t think that’s a bug, it’s a feature.
In keeping with the MCU’s overarching theme of Bad Fathers, he’s really more out to teach the universe a lesson. He’s not thinking about what happens in a few generations when all of the population is back to pre-Snap levels. He’s thinking about how he has the answer, and with his ubermensch force of will, he’ll inflict that answer on the universe for their own good.
Thanos doesn’t have that kind of imagination. I also suspect Thanos thought the whole experience of seeing half the universe die would teach the survivors something that would prevent another “inevitable” intervention by a being such as himself. That’s how a lot of abusive types work.
Regarding Nat’s Peanut Butter… there is a thing going around the internet where someone zoomed in on the jar & figured out her Peanut Butter had expired like 2 years before the scene in question was supposed to be happening.
In actuality, it was almost certainly because they used an off the shelf jar to film a scene set in the future, but if we take it as it was presented in-universe things may not have been going that well.
Well, she still had bread and jelly too.
Peanut butter is, like the #1 disaster food right? Keeps forever, high protein, doesn’t need to be refrigerated, cooked, or a can opener.
Did you miss the 5 years in between?? And all the visual indicators of decline? You think the entire world would just shut down, make no effort to move on? Or… Do you need literally everything spelled out for you?
First, adjust your tone.
Second, five years is an incredibly short period of time to go from that kind of catastrophe to even a semblance of normal life, which is what was depicted. I think that’s a heroic story and I don’t blame the ones who did it being a little annoyed at Monica, Bucky, Sam and other returning heroes who now think they know the answers.
And you know how long it would take, based on… what? Just personal assumption.
Your tone remaining unadjusted aside, what exactly is your point?
That it took a shorter period of time? So they deserve even MORE credit for getting the world back on its feet faster?
All that does is prove my point even more, that Heyward, Walker, Hoskins and the others who were left behind are heroes. It’s three weeks later when Tony gets back. At that time, they don’t even have a census done. They literally haven’t figured out who is still even there, let alone if any of them know how to farm the crops rotting in the field or manage a nuclear power plant that lost 80 percent of its staff.
Five years later, we see what they have – enough food for diners to be open and have enough food on hand to feed the Hulk. There’s car and air travel (Clint got to Japan somehow) meaning there is oil still being processed and refined.
Tony’s daughter is 4, which means she was born 1 year post-Snap. Pepper was able to deliver that baby safely. Even for one of the richest families in the world, that’s incredible.
I think the people who helped make all that happen have the right to tell the people returning to STFU.
The central conflict is that, before the Snap, there was enough food to feed five Earths, enough houses for three times the world’s population, enough doctors to heal the sick, and no one was willing to distribute it to the people who needed it.When the Snap happened, suddenly the world governments realized they needed people to raise crops, maintain infrastructure, and look out for each other. In a crisis, the world sought out collaboration, community, and mutual aid and support.And when everyone returned, they all wanted their stuff back. The billionaires wanted their shares, the real estate magnates wanted their empty houses, the grocery stores wanted to pour bleach on their garbage cans to keep people from eating again.The world went from solidarity in despair and a world beyond wealth and greed back to inequality, starvation, and mass murder by neglect. And the GRC set forth to rebuild the same structures of desperation and want that enabled it.
According to Nagel, this killed a lot of people. Starvation, homelessness, disease. The GRC killed with the stroke of a pen and the show kind of never puts us in that space, only giving it lip service in Episode 3 and never addressing it again until Sam’s speech three episodes later comparing the GRC to Thanos.
yeah…. you can’t really go there with a comic book property or else you end up in the land of “why did Superman allow 9/11 to happen”What Thanos didn’t care about was that while some civilizations were doing better or worst jobs managing their resources, he applied his solution to everyone regardless of how well or poorly they were doing.
There have been 3 stories come out since the blip, and all have addressed it to some degree. How do you get nothing happened after a series literally about millions being displaced by it…?
reread the OP. I never said nothing happened. I said the exact opposite.
I said that I DIDN’T like the MCU calling it “the blip” AS IF nothing had happened.
My mistake.
to Shankia,
Steve WAS the husband of Peggy. He didn’t abandon the time line. He had the full knowledge of how history went after he was thawed out and judged the world went just fine in the end (well good enough not to tamper with) and so he stayed with Peggy knowing that a younger version would be thawed out in 2014. They had many, bigger missions defeating enemies that you and I never heard of because they were stopped.
Ever hear of the big Zackdorn invasion of ‘52? No? You’re welcome…
But he still let Richie Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big Boppa get on that plane before it was taken down by the Beatnik Werewolves? Fuck him.
did you mean the Big BoppER?
he saw the future where their next album sucked, so yeah, time to “take the Chevy to the levee”
Not in the branched timeline, I didn’t.(He said, backpedaling furiously.)
“’Hello babyyyyy’ Steve whispers with menace into the Big Bopper’s ears, before jumping out the plane door and landing safely on the ground. After confirming the demise of the passengers on the plane, he walks swiftly to a nearby pay phone and dials. “Hello, operator, could you connect me to the residence of Don McLean and family” Steve says, in a friendly, yet chilling voice. “I think he’ll like what I have to say…”.
And that is the story of how the song “American Pie” came to be.
In Steve Rogers’ defense, Buddy Holly was sort of a dick…
But he also didn’t save people in the other time lines he went to give back the stones in (Thor’s mom, Howard Stark, Gamora, etc).
The whole point was for Steve to not suddenly turn into a god and try to fix the consequences of other timelines. I love La Bamba, but when Dr. Strange tells you not to touch anything, you listen.
There’s a huge difference between giving the stones back to their proper timelines and sitting back for 70 years while your best friend is tortured.
Dr. Strange: “Damn!”
Tony: “what happened?”
“We only had 1 in 14 million, but some person aptly named Brilliantmistake decided to save Bucky. No Winter Soldier means the other 6 were brought to life earlier and teamed up with Thanos.”
“But didn’t he think about cause and effect, regardless of timelines?”
“Brilliantmistake thinks he’s smarter than everyone, so no, he didn’t”
Or, alternatively, that timeline becomes even better because Cap take care of Thanos early and effectively. Strange was only seeing the possibilities from that point onward, not all the possibilities from 1945 onward.
-_-
Dude
Cap couldn’t even take on Thanos with all the Avengers, and half the universe had to chip in.
What are you watching? A Snyder film?
No, I’m watching these films, where Cap would never stand by and let bad things happen, especially letting his best friend rotten in a hellish existence for 70 years. The films where he’s had 70 years and a host of knowledge to do the right things. Where he has the chance to contact Thor, and tell him to go for the head. To contact the Ancient One. To not accept a defeatist, do-nothing scenario while there is still breath left in his body. It’s a wholly Snyder-esque take to think he would simply give up.
Oh, I think he totally abandoned the timeline, but went off to create a new one. There is no way he leaves Bucky in Russia. There is no way he lets Alexander Pierce and HYDRA rise to power (much less watch Peggy go to work every day clueless about what is happening)
He can’t fix that stuff without totally disrupting the prime timeline. So, he creates a new one.
BUT… there’s a dark side. The same people that did evil to Isaiah Bradley are there. They are going to want to get that serum out of Steve and into more people. He could very well end up on the run. Some kind of Secret Avengers with Steve, Peggy, Bucky and Howard. Maybe a certain Norse God or a defector from the 1950s era Black Widow program poke their heads in.
To Ms. Anderson, I think you might have had a little too high expectations for Falcon and Winter Soldier if Cap’s story in Endgame made you feel that way. I’ll only say that the man deserved a break.
maybe he kept the Bradley experiments from getting bigger/worse?
It’s the old “Kill Hitler and someone worse takes his place” paradox.
Butterfly Effect and all of that. Better the devil you know.
He knows just how bad HYDRA got but kept them from complete takeover because he could feed Peggy intel from time to time to keep them in check. and he knew that – in the end – both Bucky would be rescued and HYDRA would be defeated
I can do this all day…
But how many people did he let Bucky kill in the meantime? Winter Soldier “shaped the century” with his violence, at great cost to his soul.
Steve wanted a dance with his girlfriend. He didn’t want to let evil happen on his watch.
It’s entirely possible he creates more evil to fight by getting rid of HYDRA. But Steve’s a one-problem-at-a-time kind of guy.
Just can’t get there with you, my friend.
And this is ignoring the idea that Cap is a public face – the newsreels in First Avenger. There is a timeline theory that him merely showing up at the grocery store with Peggy one day changes the timeline. So, unless he is hiding in the attic like that LMD in the Black Mirror episode and only comes out to give oral to Hayley Atwell – there are worse existences – then he changes the time line.
it’s a bigger, noble sacrifice to know whats going to happen, but let it happen anyway, knowing that – on the balance- it was worth it. No doubt it would take a toll on Cap, but that can be the hero’s journey as well. The relief on his face when he could finally talk to Sam when the two are finally “resynced” at the end of Endgame is palpable.
In my own head Peggy (and much later Bucky) were well aware of his true identity and even went on missions to stop things we never heard about and that’s where Steve felt his worth.
The world thinks he’s dead. he’s got all of the resources of Shield (on the side, in secret) to keep him off the grid and no internet to track his every move. It could as easily been done as not. It’s a comic book, after all
It’s not a bigger nobler sacrifice, it’s an abandonment of everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, that Steve stood for. The idea that he could stand up and fight for the little guy. The idea that he would stay loyal to his friends and work to save them. That it was worth it to stand up for the right thing no matter what the consequences. There’s just no damn way he would let Bucky suffer for 70 years when he could stop it. Not in any timeline or universe. Plus, Cap staying in this timeline violates the same rules of time travel they explicitly set up earlier in endgame.
sez you.it doesn’t violate anything as long as they were able to return the stones to the exact time they were taken.
Cap’s destiny was always to return to the past
it was…inevitable.
“Bucky” didn’t suffer at all until the day he broke his programming and started remembering what he did. He was used as a machine and his personality wiped afterwards. He didn’t even start to question his identity until he saw Cap on the bridge. Hardly 70 years.
I mean, ultimately, it’s “sez anyone” including you, me, the other commenters, and, apparently, the movie creators that can’t even agree amongst themselves. But Bucky didn’t suffer at all? That’s a hard no. There’s problems with both options in terms of time travel, but I’ll stick with the one that doesn’t totally destroy Cap’s character and everything he stood for (and violate the all the time travel rules the movie laid down), at least until another movie comes out to either clear things up or sow more confusion. Possibly, that will be the Loki series.
well, I think we’ve beat this horse long enough.
“Good game, good sport”
That’s assuming he *could* stop it. This is where the “whatever happened, happened” idea of time travel stories comes in. Bucky was a prisoner/slave for 70 years; no one rescued him. Perhaps people tried, including people from the future who knew exactly what was happening to him, but they failed for some reason, which we know because he was a prisoner/slave for 70 years.
That only assuming they are using the “only one possible timeline” model, like Lost.
Right, which is effectively the same thing if we’re saying he stayed in his original timeline.Maybe he left his timeline, lived a life where he freed Bucky, then as an old man came back to his original. Or maybe he stayed in his timeline, tried to rescue Bucky but couldn’t, lived to be old and came back to the funeral.My point is he could have stayed in his own timeline without abandoning Bucky.
Maybe. I just find it hard to believe that no one would have noticed him trying to save Bucky for 70 years. And I truly can’t believe Steve “I can do this all day” rogers would stop trying. But then again, it is all a bit of a mess.
Well, it is, yeah. It bothers me that they establish all the rules about how time works in the MCU and then they kill past-Thanos before (to Thanos) he has done a lot of major stuff.
Which I guess means they created another timeline where Thanos was killed in 2014 and the snap never happened?
That’s exactly what happened.
Old Steve was there, at the closing moments of Endgame, in the prime timeline. He didn’t jump from an alternate timeline, and the things he knew happened, happened. Steve was always meant to go back in time to the 1940s and marry Peggy Carter, it’s a closed loop.It is weird that people now speak of him as though he’s gone, when in truth he just got old…but this is all handwaving due to Chris Evans no longer wishing to play the role.
No way he leaves Bucky there to be tortured. If he does, then fuck Steve Rogers.
The Russos confirmed that Steve did jump from another timeline.https://bgr.com/entertainment/endgame-captain-america-ending-timeline-explained-5906067/
I think its more that Old Steve’s time with Peggy wasn’t in the Prime timeline. If it was… then just about everything involving Sharon post-Civil War is 100% neglect of a family member unless Old Steve turns out to be the actual Power Broker after pulling some Nick Fury level paranoia planning and Karli’s defection was a total surprise.
Why couldn’t he jump from an alternate timeline? He had decades to figure it out. He could have gotten Howard Stark to start working on it right after he helps win WWII.
I’m going to love when it’s finally revealed in a movie that the moon joke was serious.
But like, super serious and makes a dig at comic fans…
“Yeah, they needed me to fight more alien invaders. I was the Man on the Wall.“
If Steve watched Star Trek at all (and you know he did cuz he had it in his pad of things to see) he knew that sometimes you got to let Edith Keeler die for greater good.
One person? Yeah, but not however many Bucky killed and Pierce had killed.
I would argue that Tony needed his parents to die to make him the Tony we know and love. How many more people would have died if Stark Industries never gave up making weapons
OR… Rogers can tell Howard to throw Obadiah to the street while Tony is in preschool and problem solved.
Lifelong Dr Who fan here ever since I was 10 and saw Pertwee in the role so I can help with the time travel stuff :Don’t think about it too hard. It’ll make your head hurt.That’s how a 40 year fan of Dr Who deals with Time Travel and continuity.
“There is no way he leaves Bucky in Russia. There is no way he lets Alexander Pierce and HYDRA rise to power (much less watch Peggy go to work every day clueless about what is happening)”This is a steep assumption given he was on a mission specifically to fix the timeline. He’s not an idiot.
He really kind of is sometimes.
A non-idiot would have understood that what happened in Nigeria cannot happen again and that some compromise must happen.A non-idiot would have said, “I am so emotionally invested in Bucky that I lost sight of the fact that a terrorist might have had a vest bomb and I should get help for that.”A non-idiot would have told Tony that his parents were killed by HYDRA.
A non-idiot would have listened to Vision and said, “This man wants to jump on a grenade to save others. I should understand that.”I realize we all salute every utterance from every orifice Cap has, but the man done fucked up before. And he doesn’t let Bucky stay there.
You’re insisting that a character went off on a load of wild adventures, entirely offscreen, and never mentioned by anyone; creating an entire new timeline, that is never shown or mentioned by anyone, nor indicated to exist; based on how you believe the character would behave.That’s not even theorycrafting, that’s fanfiction. You’re arguing with the film itself. Also, to repeat myself – he was not open to changing the timeline. If he was, he’d have exposed Hydra/pulled the plug on Zola during the time-heist, or taken some action to prevent the snap, or at the very least not bothered to remain hidden after attaining the gem and particles.
Well, considering we have almost 80 years of time between when he dances with Peggy and when we see him give the shield to Sam, I am indeed thinking he did a few more things than play backgammon.He had a mission during the time heist. Sure, you can see where he’d be tempted to create a timeline where Zola was exposed, or where he put Rumlow through a concrete wall and headed off the Nigerian disaster, which staves off the breakup of the Avengers, but that wasn’t the primary mission.
When he goes back to see Peggy, he has no mission. He has no overriding objective, except to keep Peggy and Bucky safe.And given the way timelines work, you can make a strong case that just his existence in 1946 creates a new timeline, unless he does more than hide in the basement for 80 years.
“When he goes back to see Peggy, he has no mission. He has no overriding objective, except to keep Peggy and Bucky safe.”He did have a mission, he was restoring the timeline, so that branches wouldn’t be created and the un-snapping would be meaningful. That’s the entire reason he was back in the past.“Well, considering we have almost 80 years of time between when he dances with Peggy and when we see him give the shield to Sam, I am indeed thinking he did a few more things than play backgammon.”He had a whole notepad of films to catch up on 😛
I keep hoping for one more Steve Captain America appearance, maybe his adventures of returning the stones, OR being parts of a 1960s Avengers he helps start. Holy shit want I a retro MCU movie so bad, they could bump into Hank and Janet, take on Soviets, all that wonderful stuff.
It’s easy. Throw the bag at Evans and Comic-Con 2022 is him coming out announcing how things have been going eradicating HYDRA.
He announces his love and partner and Atwell comes out. He announces his best friend and Stan comes out. He announced his weapons guy and Cooper comes out. He announces a defector from the Black Widow program and (Pick one) – Mila Kunis, Olivia Wilde or Mary Elizabeth Winstead come out.
He announces that he needs help from Isaiah Bradley and John David Washington comes out. Then, he says he’ll need some help from an old World War II buddy from Madripoor. The lights go out and when they come up, Hugh Jackman is standing there.Make it so.
I would completely flip out
It’s definitely not helping matters that they’re being deliberately vague about Steve’s fate in the alternate timeline because they want to leave the door open to future projects involving Chris Evans.They’ve purposely left two questions open:(1) Was there always “our” Steve Rogers in the prime MCU timeline aging from 1947 to 2023? Like, is he in the rear pew at Peggy’s funeral in Civil War, hiding his face so the younger Cap can’t recognize him? Did he arrange his visits to Peggy in her nursing home only on days when his younger self wouldn’t be there? My interpretation is no — he lived out his life in a totally different timeline, one in which he exposed HYDRA’s infiltration of SHIELD right from the beginning, rescued Bucky, and worked with SHIELD to protect the Infinity Stones before Thanos could ever retrieve them.This is left open because if Chris Evans wants to return at any point in the next 10-15 years, they can make a movie or series of movies that take place entirely in the alternate timeline and deal with these issues.(2) What happened to Old Man Rogers in the prime MCU timeline? Did he go back to his alternate timeline after that lakeside chat? Did he die of old age shortly after handing off the shield? Or is he still out there somewhere living off the grid? Sam and Bucky both refer to him as “gone,” but that can mean any of these three things.This is left open because they can either have a future Chris Evans cameo in the old age makeup, or bring Steve Rogers back by using Hulk’s version of time travel to de-age Old Man Rogers (something similar has happened in the comics).Unfortunately, they’re causing some serious story issues by waiting around for Chris Evans to buy one too many yachts and release one too many box office bombs. We can’t really buy into Sam or Bucky’s efforts to process the loss of Steve, when they have purposely refused to tell us what that loss looks like or what it means.
Steve had to have lived out his life with Peggy in an alternate timeline instead of the “real” one. There’s no way he sits on the sidelines and watches half of all life getting Snapped – like the man himself said, he sees a situation going south, he can’t ignore it. It’s also the only logical explanation for where the new shield comes from – he retrieves it from the ice in the alternate timeline and brings it back with him to give to Sam.
I don’t want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we’re going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.
Well, this is always going to happen and has been going on for decades. I guarantee all ER plotlines stop cold if George Clooney decided he didn’t like the movie roles he was being offered and decided to try TV again.But I disagree that they should be in a box because of it. As you said, the alternate timeline is there just waiting to be dealt with and for all we know, Evans is secretly on board, but they can’t really announce stuff until after Dr. Strange 2. It is entirely possible that not only Evans, but Downey, and ScarJo all decide they like having franchise cash more than not having it. Ruffalo and Renner are in TV properties and Hemsworth seems to want to play the role for longer already (and his non-Thor movies are either crap, bad box office or both)Then we have the MCU point of view.Their entire plan has been knocked backwards and while for the most part, these two TV shows have been well-received by fans (The first rule of DaBard is to ignore any critic who complains about too much action in a comic book property. The second rule of DaBard is that Dorne sucks in the books too) they haven’t been able to release a movie in two years. And even before the pandemic, the loss of Chadwick was devastating, not just for the talent and personal friendships, but because he was the new face of the MCU along with Larson. Mackie and Stan were always going to be part of that future as well, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the MCU hedges its bets a little, especially if Shang-Chi or Eternals doesn’t land as well.
The Russos already clarified that there were two Steves in the alternate timeline, but not in the main timeline. The new reality created in the alternate timeline only affects the alternate timeline.
The Russos said that, but Endgame writer Christopher Markus said this: “We are not experts on time travel, but the Ancient One specifically states that when you take an Infinity Stone out of a timeline it creates a new timeline. So Steve going back and just being there would not create a new timeline. So I reject the ‘Steve is in an alternate reality’ theory. I do believe that there is simply a period in world history from about ’48 to now where there are two Steve Rogers. And anyway, for a large chunk of that one of them is frozen in ice. So it’s not like they’d be running into each other.”
While I agree that the Russos’ explanation makes more sense, it’s clear that the creative team behind Endgame wasn’t on the same page. And since this is all coming from interviews and not addressed at all by the actual content, it’s wide open for a retcon in either direction (based on Chris Evans’ willingness and availability, of course).
I took the Ancient One’s speech to mean that totally removing a stone creates an alternate timeline that will destroy itself, not that removal is the only way to create an alternate timeline or that all timelines require infinity stones. It doesn’t make sense anyway since all the stones are destroyed in the current timeline. Restoration of the stones simply meant that those timelines could exists in a parallel fashion to the main one. That’s the why the “ripples” part of the conversation took place. Their actions might create alternate timelines, but return of the stones meant those alternate timelines wouldn’t be substantially different because of their actions (they might differ because of other factors though)
Yeah I think we (and the Russos and most fans) totally agree on this point. But the Endgame writers disagree!It’s telling that Steve’s shadow weighed so heavily on Falcon & the Winter Soldier that the arcana around his departure — which, to be clear, was totally just intended to allow Chris Evans to pursue other work because he was tired of playing the role — is still inspiring debate even after we saw Sam pick up the shield and call himself Captain America.
It’s amazing that the creators themselves disagree on how it worked. You’d think that they would have sat down and figured it out beforehand. To be fair, there’s problems with both choices. You’ve either got a Cap that totally abandons his principals in the main timeline, or the awkward problem of two Caps in the alternate timeline. I still think the second option is the best one, as it fits both Cap’s character and the time travel rules they set up, but the fact that the people behind the movie can’t agree means there’s fodder for people to argue about forever, or until another movie comes out that either clears everything up or creates whole new mess of contradictions to argue about.
Writers are never the ones who make final decisions on what’s canon, and I’m really sure that the Russos trump either Christopher Markus. so you can reject it all you want, but that’s not going to change the canon. And frankly if there’s one thing I’ve learned in decades of seeing/reading retcons is that, if they wanted to bring Steve back, they could make it work.
Which leads to my head canon that one of the alternate timeline’s Caps winds up with Peggy and the other with a rescued Bucky, thus satisfying all the shippers.
I approve of your head canon.
In my head canon, Steve thaws out his younger self in 1947, and they both marry Peggy, with old-Cap having her on even days of the month and young-Cap having her on odd days of the month. And then every Leap Day old-Cap gets mad about this arrangement because young-Cap gets Peggy on both February 29 and March 1.
LOL. I am good with happy thruple Cap too. That way there’s always a Cap dad at home with the kids while Peggy and the other Cap are saving the world.
This explanation directly contradicts Hulk’s (and later The Ancient One’s) explanation of how time travel works. Everything they said specifically revolves around the idea that you can’t change what’s happened, and that any changes cause a branch. It’s the whole reason why Cap had to return the stones to begin with. I’m interested to see if Loki clears up the MCU’s conception of time travel.
they could be wrong… Even The ancient one was open to the idea of skipping back and forth in one’s own timeline without creating a new universe/timeline. the only trick is that you have to “win” to be able to do it – see Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Until they deal with the idea that they were wrong, I have to accept their explanation as being true, since the logic of the movie’s many time travel plot twists depended on their explanation.
agreed. even Smart Hulk said it’s either all real or all nonsense (or words to that effect) when talking about time travel.I never believed the notion that everyone is creating infinite universes everyday simply by deciding to turn left or right at an intersection. I believe that all human endeavor unifies to create a single timeline that we all share
I feel like the writers, in trying to avoid a reason for why the Avengers can’t just pull a Back to the Future and stop Thanos in the past, created a really weird version of time travel that doesn’t make perfect sense, mostly because they themselves contradict themselves.
Endgame established immediately that you can’t affect your own past with time travel. Nothing Steve or any of the other Avengers did in the past would affect their present.
How was Old Man Steve then back to give Sam the shield? No idea. I guess he lived out his life with Peggy and THEN traveled back. But by the rules established in the movie (both arbitrary and contradictory ones, as all time travel rules are), Steve did NOT live out the rest of his time with Peggy in the same reality as the movies we’ve been watching all this time.
why not? why couldn’t he been alive and hiding (well is it hiding if nobody is looking for you?) in the prime universe all this time.
Sure would explain Peggy’s confusion at her hospital bed seeing young Steve (beyond routine dementia, that is)
I’m not saying it couldn’t make sense. I’m just saying that Bruce Banner explicitly states that isn’t how time travel works in the movie, and it’s why they can’t just time travel back to when Thanos was a baby and strangle him like Rhodey suggests.
If it did work that way, then none of the events of Infinity War would have happened, because Thanos time traveled into the future and then died, so he wouldn’t have been around to attack Xandar for the Power Stone and then attack the Asgardian refugees at the start of the movie.
But anyway, I’m with you. Ultimately it doesn’t matter to the narrative because they told me it didn’t matter. Timey-wimey ball and all that!
Because it’s an utter destruction of Steve’s character and violates all the rules they set up around time travel.
“utter destruction” is a bit of an overreaction, don’t you think? Steve was a soldier first and knew that he would lose people “on his watch” his duty was to make sure their sacrifices were justified.
Maybe! Although obviously its hard for me to wrap my head around him doing nothing. At any rate, there are a lot of contradictions that will presumably either be completely explained or made infinitely worse by Loki and Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
PS I tend to favor the Doctor Who idea of time travel . that the person who does the traveling creates a sort of “eye of the storm” and is immune from the effects of their actions during their time in the past. call it a temporal bubble if you prefer. much easier than trying to create an entire branched universe.
alternate take. we have a chance to save Jackie Kennedy from a second bullet and we did
alternately… we stopped the third bullet and saved Jackie
This addresses one of the most overlooked issues I see in Endgame. If time travelling creates new timelines, all of the surviving Avengers from the main timeline essentially abandoned it to go live in a new one where half their friends weren’t dead.So is that original timeline still existing now, but without all the time traveling Avengers? It really didn’t seem to solve anything.
I’ve got to say – I decided to catch up on it this weekend and… I think I passed out for an hour at a time. I seem to remember enjoying it while any random episode was in front of me but if you asked me what happened 30 seconds after the ep was done I’d come up with a blank. I want to like it since I actually like everything in front of me – the actors the effects and so on. But even less than 24 hours after finishing it… I remember the Falcon flying in with a dead person in his arms and Zemo dancing. That’s it; Ask me the plot and I’d draw a blank.So apparently my take on it was simple – enjoyable but forgettable.
The only reviewer complaint I can vibe with is that the series felt overstuffed, that yes, it “bit off more than it could chew” thematically, and how many total characters were running, punching, flying, talking, head-tilting, or leaping across the screen at any given time. In that sense, WandaVision was a much more simple story. Two main characters, and one major antagonist, with the secondary characters kept firmly secondary. However, unlike most of the reviewers, I accepted that this was an adventure series, and I did not expect or demand anything more than a stone skipped across the surface of some thematic ponds. I wouldn’t expect “sociologically deep” from a Mission Impossible movie, either. I did not judge F/WS by the metric of what I wanted or what I would have done if I were in charge. And that was the chief flaw of most of the reviews, with the exception of Danette Chavez — the extreme subjectivity, often combined with outright inaccuracies in character and plot descriptions.
I think the show struggled when it veered away from straight adventure and into mystery, though. It’s a regular problem with serial dramas when they feel like they have to carefully ration out critical, high order information over multiple shows so that viewers don’t really understand until the end.The more shows move from the fun of how things play out and get hung up on explaining the why, the worse they tend to get. It’s a lot better to do the set up of the characters and plot right away and then add pieces that expand on what people already know than to leave audiences unclear who major actors are until things are almost done. Cliffhangers should be “how will Sam and Bucky get out of this mess” rather than “who is the shadowy Power Broker and what are they up to.”
I agree, it’s hard to pull of genre-mixing, at least in such a narrow window. Not all flavors blend, and the story-structures of a mystery differ from an adventure.I also feel they botched the Power Broker story. Why would the Power Broker (Sharon) save Sam and Bucky from Selby, then… immediately send hit-men after Sam and Bucky? Help them find Nagle, then be angry that Nagle got killed? And then nearly get killed by… her own hit-men? Sharon Carter working for the Power Broker, but playing double-agent, I could see. Sharon Carter being the Power Broker made no sense.
Sharon as Power Broker is still an unresolved plot-line. Not only did she do all those things, but she also kept threatening the lives of the Flag Smashers and then met in person to try to bring them back on-side after planting an (expensive) agent in their midst that she ended up killing.Without knowing what Sharon actually wants, it’s impossible to say whether this is bad or brilliant writing, but she’s clearly part of an ongoing plotline.
Or maybe a Skrull.
The Power Broker needed to put the Bounty on Sam and Bucky to maintain control of her kingdom. Hence the you guys need to see this guy and get out of town before bounty hunters show up. The people weren’t her employees just random bounty hunters looking for Sam and Bucky. Nagle still had value, and nobody expected Zemo to murder the guy other then Zemo. Its all about her maintaining the Power Broker image. Sam and Bucky weren’t leaving until they talked to Nagle and Sharon needed them out of there in order for her to dump the bounty later. Keep in mind Sharon only hired Batroc, because she was still trying to get Karli and her pals back on her payroll.
I assumed it wasn’t the Power Broker that put out the bounty, but some ally of whats-her-name that was killed.Either way, they weren’t her own mooks, but bounty-hunters, so they wouldn’t have been aware of/cared about Nagle.
That would work.
Did you catch the John Wick reference btw with everyone getting the bounty text? 😀
No, but I’ve never watched the John Wick movies.
Just popping in to vote that F/WS should be the short form, going forward.
I think A LOT of peoples issues seem to be explained by the fact that they completely reworked the plot after it was mostly completed. The ORIGINAL plan by the bad guys – virus that kills half the worlds population – would have worked much better and made much more sense.
Is this confirmed to be the original plan? I’ve heard that a virus was involved, but nothing near that specific.
If you look around the web there have been stories about it since last summer when they delayed it until after Wandavison and did reshoots. The original having a pandemic storyline has been much been proven, but they are tightlipped as always.
Interesting. Could Sharon’s mercury vapor bomb have been a reworked part from the old storyline?
Not sure but I have to wonder if her clumsy “Heel Turn” was due to the changes.
Neither. It was fine.
To answer your question: new highs. Hope this helped!
I’m so glad they had the restraint to do this as only 6 episodes, rather than the more typical 10ish. Peak-tv has fallen in love with wheel-spinning, and taking one idea and stretching it to fill the episode order. TFTWS definitely had some of that too, but at least it was still pretty quick.
This. As it seems that Marvel seems to have learned its lesson from the Netflix series that 12-13 episodes is way too long for a superhero drama.
Yeah there wasn’t a single Netflix Marvel show that wouldn’t have been better for losing at least 1 or 2 episodes.
The NF shows’ problem wasn’t too many episodes, it was that each episode was like 20% longer than it needed to be. Each scene, even.
I like the hour long format, myself. There were entire episodes that should have been cut though. The first Jessica Jones season could have told its story in like 8 episodes total, that’s the worst but all of them suffer from the problem one way or another.
While I admire that they’re trying to tell one story, simply, and not wheel-spin, I actually think one or two more episodes would have done this one good. More on what Sharon had been up to the whole time, more on the FlagSmashers’ motive/end goal, a little more character time.
I think there were two deep problems with the flagsmashers story:They were all going to die, which means they’re all designed to be cannon fodder, and so there’s no real effort put into making them interesting enough to really join the MCU.The reveal that they were working for Carter was always going to be a big surprise for the finale.More episodes wouldn’t have fixed that, because they really were just meant to be pawns.What might have helped would be planning for them to hang around in the MCU. So have the Carter betrayal happen a bit earlier, and they realize they’re pawns, so then they become the serpent society or zodiac or something.But that was never going to happen. If we’d gotten two more eps it would have just been more speeches in warehouses, killing time to get to the finale.
I dunno a bit more of a back story for the FS (maybe show how the Blip affected them) informs us more about their viewpoints. I felt what we got on screen was a little bit of speechifying about how the new world order/GRC was bad and not a lot else. Other than Karli, did any of the other members have any meaningful dialogue?Also Walker was given a good intro proper in episode 2, but didn’t do much apart from get in the way of Sam and Bucky before going off the rails because (cliche alert) his best friend got killed. I’m glad he gets to continue his story as US Agent. I just wish we could have found out more about him before that, as well as see him do some Cap America stuff outside of hindering Sam and Bucky.
I don’t mind that Walker’s story was a little slight, just like Rambeau’s was in wandavision, because presumably we’ll see them again.But I’d like to see them do that with the badguys too. Frank Grillo/Crossbones in the movies (or even Zemo) would have been an okay model here: cast a few interesting flagsmashers, give them some personality, and then leave an opening for them to come back in the future. As it was the flagsmashers were boring because they were meant to be boring.
I agree with you on the Flag-Smashers and one episode should have done it. I think the pandemic screwed up stuff for FatWS. Black Widow’s release was contingent on this series being released ahead of it, but things had to be changed on FatWS so they slapped some patches on and called it a day. It worked if not perfectly.
I’m okay with Sharon Carter though. I’m positive we’re going to get backstory on that at some point, probably with Secret Invasion.
I agree with you. Actually a bottle-ish episode JUST about Carter and the Flag Smashers, maybe mid-season to set us up for some dramatic irony when we know Carter is not on the up-and-up and fleshes out the Flagsmashers more – that’d be great.
I think this could have done with 2 extra episodes. The Flag Smasher felt very underdeveloped to me, an episode’s worth of time (spread out over 7/8 episodes) would have made them stand out more to me.
Also John Walker’s story felt a bit rush. Again give us an episode’s worth of extra back to John (and Lamar4’s) background to make them stand out more.I understand that things had to be rewritten on the fly, as the showrunners had to dump a pandemic plot thread, but what we got left with wasn’t that interesting IMO.
i keep reading this…they had to abandon a pandemic plotline. is that verified, or just rumor?
Nothing confirmed, but a few reviewers like Empire magazine have mentioned the show having to rewrite plot details.
Granted this could be them just repeating rumours from other people’s rumours, which make it seem like a real thing. It seems like there might be something to it, but I’ll concede this isn’t verified anywhere.
I agree. Sharon/Powerbroker was particularly undercooked, and to a certain extent the Flag smashers. Plus a few scenes of Bucky actually coming to an understanding of Sam’s reluctance to take the shield. Instead we got 4 episodes of him ragging on Sam then a sudden apology.
They should have used the comics’ Flag Smasher. Not these ‘refugees are good but evil but good but evil after all’-grungy types without a single clear plan or goal except ‘let’s blow people up so they will give us houses again’.
I still feel like it could’ve benefitted from a couple of extra episodes, just so that they could fill in more of the Flag Smasher and Sharon Carter’s relative backstories. The audience never really got any first-hand understanding of why the Flag-Smashers became so radicalized, or how Sharon Carter went full villain. We don’t experience any of these horrible conditions or how the pre-post-blip brought the world together, so it’s all relegated to speeches and monologues and shitty politicians being OBVIOUSLY shitty to the point that any nuance is lost. It’s all suggested and referenced, which is a tough nail to hang your whole villain/s plot on.
It would’ve been risky to go full Lost-style flashback episode (since we would’ve ended up with a couple of episodes almost completely without Bucky or Sam) but I think it would’ve helped a lot for the writers to “show their work” on how Karli and Carter ended up where they are. (And, yeah, Karli having a plan more detailed than “kidnap or maybe kill a bunch of people.”)
It was woke SJW Mary Sue trash. With the except of episode 4 where the real Captain America finally did what needed to be done to protect America and stopped a terrorist.
Oh, NO ONE misses the bloat of the Marvel Netflix shows. But this show had the opposite problem– it was frustratingly unfocused and dealt with sideplots that were completely unnecessary (Oh, you bet I’m looking at you, Madripoor). It refused to dig too deeply into any one of its themes/plots and ended up underserving all of them. Zemo and Sharon were completely extraneous. Just give us a story about Sam, Bucky, Walker, and Isaiah. That’s where the story is.
This probably could have been done in two episodes. I really think Marvel should look more to the DC shows and give them smaller villains of the week to make everything more comic-y. And more fun. And more varied. Just having people of the same strength level bash each other into walls the whole time is boring.
“both Zemo and Sharon Carter became completely different people for the sake of plot and an obvious twist.”Zemo’s motivation was to kill Super Soldiers, that didn’t change at all. Sharon was completely defined by the, what, 15-20 minutes of screen time she’d had in the movies, so I don’t know how you can say she’s completely different. She was a SHIELD agent, ffs, how can you assume you know what her motivations were?It seems a lot of reviewers in these parts really wanted the show to be something different than it was.
Indeed, if we’re being honest about Sharon’s origin story, she was introduced as a SHIELD agent who was living next door to Steve Rogers and lying to him about nearly everything.
Exactly! Not to mention that it was during the time period when SHIELD was totally an arm of Hydra. Anyone who thinks they know MCU Sharon’s character and motivations are either working off of the comic character or inserting what they want her to be.
They clearly want her to be the next generation of Perfect Paragon of Justice that Peggy Carter came across as, but Sharon has grown up in a completely different world than her great-aunt did. What Peggy though of SHIELD’s Hydra infiltration, we never got to see, but Sharon lived it. While I’d like to always believe that Sharon is on the side of good, she’s also a student of Fury, so she knows that underhanded methods are sometimes required to do what’s right and I’m cool with that.
Absolutely. She’s still had less than an hour of screen time all told, there’s just no way to judge what her actual motivations are at this point.
In a way Sharon is a metaphor for millennials dealing with the absolute trash that prior generations have made of this world. Everything that she was raised and taught to believe mattered has betrayed, endangered and finally banished her. Even Steve left her dangling in the end. Now she is doing exactly what the world taught her works: being an opportunist, cashing in and recruiting younger generations as cannon fodder for your plans.
This is a seriously selective read that no one would come away with if they weren’t desperate to defend the show’s naked retconning. Sharon is unequivocally heroic in the final act of Winter Soldier when she saves the life of the SHIELD tech and takes on Rumlow. The movie even includes her in the coda montage showing she’s moved on to joining the FBI. She’s a minor character, sure, but there’s no ambivalence about her status as a heroic figure.
#1- It was the CIA, not the FBI.#2- In the very next movie she uses her CIA access to steal Cap’s shield and Bucky’s wings and help them escape custody. The very next movie…#3- The fact that you’re calling a subsequent change to Sharon in a later project that in any way alters your perception of her as Perfect Agent only serves to prove my point that some people have unrealistic expectations of Sharon Carter as a character.#4- My premise is not that Sharon is black or white, but grey like Fury. Willing to do what others won’t do to achieve what she thinks is right. There’s no judgement on my part in that, just acknowledgement.
SHIELD’s hiring record is f’ing terrible. As a SHIELD Agent, there was always an 85% chance that she would become a villain.
Seriously, even if Agents of SHIELD doesn’t count the whole organization was being run by Hydra for decades.
Zemo going from a single black ops soldier whose family gave a very middle-class vibe to a baron with unlimited resources isn’t a retcon I particularly mind.
Sharon going from an obviously virtuous agent of SHIELD, whose close personal relationship with Peggy Carter was a huge influence on her upbringing and helped to establish her moral code, to a crime boss? Nah.
Sharon was shown in both The Winter Soldier and Civil War to go against The Rules to do What’s Right, just like Steve would and did. She was someone who was willing to plant herself like a tree and tell the world “no, you move.” Trying to paint her retroactively as some shifty spy whose motives and personality were never established is disingenuous.
Eh, I’m perfectly fine with them doing something more with a character who barely had any screen time in the movies.
That’s fair. Personally, I’d be a lot more fine with it if they’d elaborated on her motives, because as presented in the single scene she discussed them, I don’t buy that she’d break bad like that.
First and foremost, we’re expected to believe that Steve Rogers did nothing to help her after the events of Civil War, well into the five-year gap between Infinity War and Endgame. During which time Steve and Natasha are living openly in the United States, so their status as fugitives is clearly not an issue anymore. So why is Sharon still forced into hiding in the Madripoor underworld instead of just going back home post-Snap?
And considering that she was shown to be really, really close to Peggy – she spoke at her funeral, and in nothing less than “she was my role model for my entire life” terms – I’d like for them to address how utterly ashamed Peggy would be of her if she could see her niece as a murderous crime lord.
We have seen almost nothing of her backstory or motivations. She’s a spy and worked for SHIELD when it was being run directly by Hydra, who knows where her true alliances lie. You can say anything during a funeral speech, especially what’s expected of you.Also, it a comic book character and they do these kinds of things all the time. I’m interested to see where they go with it: Is she a Skrull? A long term plan Hydra sleeper agent? Just pissed that everyone kinda forgot about her during the chaos of the Snap? I dunno but I’ll keep watching to find out 🙂
Sure! Maybe Sharon is super-deep-cover, or a Skrull, or a rogue Life Model Decoy. We’re talking about a spy in a Marvel comic property after all!
But based on what we saw, saying “she was in SHIELD when it was run by Hydra” implies she might be Hydra. And she was an active participant in foiling Hydra’s plans to launch Project Insight. So maybe she was crooked even back then, but it was certainly suggested at the time that she isn’t okay with totalitarian states or terrorists with superweapons.
So granted, if she’s somehow not the real Sharon Carter, then none of this applies. But if she IS the real Sharon Carter, then her plan to sell state secrets and high-tech weapons to the highest bidder means that it’s a complete 180 from the character we met in that movie. Which, again, could be possible, but would take more than a single brief conversation to justify for me.
If we’re talking about bitterness here, she has it twice over, too. First, learning that the organization her aunt founded and devoted her life to was infiltrated by Hydra and had been for decades then the destruction of that organization. Second, joins the CIA, only to get branded a traitor for helping Cap, without the support of the Avengers-on-the-run or the house arrest option Scott Lang and Clint Barton got. And then, yeah, the world basically ended.
Prior to Infinity War, Steve was also on the run, and in no position to help Sharon. After Infinity War, Sharon was believed to have been among the blipped.
But Steve managed to break into the Raft (presumably one of the most secure locations on Earth) in order to help Wanda and Sam while he was on the run.
Expecting me to believe he’d abandon someone else who put themselves in harm’s way for him just because she doesn’t wear a costume is asking a lot. Especially when they’d just established a romantic connection.
What, exactly, was he supposed to have done for her to not be considered “abandoning” her? She wasn’t in jail, so didn’t need Steve to break her out. Prior to Infinity War, what did she need that Steve could have provided?
I don’t know, but she’s clearly holding a grudge about it, so maybe Steve could have at least checked in and seen if she needed anything? And I have a hard time believing he wouldn’t have done that, considering that undying loyalty to his friends is kinda his whole thing.
Barring the possibility that Sharon’s speech to Sam in Madripoor was all a lie, her heel turn hinges on her feeling abandoned by the guy who’s trademark is not ever abandoning people. And if that doesn’t make logical sense to you, I agree! And that’s my whole gripe with how she’s now somehow a bad guy solely for the sake of a last-episode reveal that everyone saw coming a mile away!
How would Steve have even been able to “check in on her” when he was a wanted fugitive?
gave a very middle-class vibeBased on what?
Based on the voicemails he listened to from his wife in Civil War, where she talks about things like their son’s birthday. Or how he told Black Panther at the end of the movie about going to his father’s home outside of the city, and how he found their bodies huddled together in the rubble. None of it explicitly states they weren’t nobility, but it feels very ordinary and down-to-earth.
Further, Friday tells Tony Stark that he’s Colonel Helmut Zemo, leader of Sokovian kill squad Echo Scorpion, as opposed to being Baron Helmut Zemo, wealthy heir to a noble title. (The Scorpions were a real-life Serbian paramilitary group whose members committed war crimes under Slobodan Milosevic, which implies a populist background rather than an elitist one.) He’s shown in the movie to be a single driven man, rather than someone with an extensive network of resources to call on in his mission to destroy the Avengers.
Again, none of that directly contradicts the idea that he’s also a baron, so I’m fine with it. It just doesn’t match the tone established in Civil War, where the theme is that the Avengers are being forced to face the consequences of their actions and the anger of the regular, everyday people who get caught up in their city-destroying fights.
None of it explicitly states they weren’t nobilityYeah, there’s a reason for that.the Avengers are being forced to face the consequences of their actions and the anger of the regular, everyday people who get caught up in their city-destroying fights.Zemo was, in his mind, one of the regular human beings caught caught up in the machinations of superhumans who forced them to face the consequences of their actions. And him being a Baron doesn’t change that.
That’s why I led with how him being a baron doesn’t bother me. It’s clearly not what was originally intended in Civil War, but none of it explicitly contradicted anything in Civil War either. So it’s fine.
The movie in his head.
Please ask someone who saw Civil War who wasn’t already familiar with Baron Zemo from the comic books whether or not they thought Zemo was a wealthy and powerful member of Sokovian nobility.
One of us may have been inventing things that the movie didn’t tell us, that’s for sure.
Okay. I saw the movie but I’ve never read Marvel comics*. The way Zemo was able to operate throughout Civil War sure felt like he wasn’t exactly Joe Average. The Baron reveal evoked zero reaction of disbelief in me.
*Btw I’ve noticed that, as a general rule, I sure seem to enjoy the MCU more than folks who are thoroughly versed in the comics verse.
Fair enough! And I agree, clinging too closely to the comics’ versions of things certainly seems to ruin some parts of these movies/shows for some people.
Fittingly, revealing Zemo’s barony while simultaneously revealing Sharon Carter’s heel turn is staying true to the comics for one character, while deviating wildly for another. Thus, they’re guaranteed to upset somebody somewhere!
It’s entirely possible that she is exactly the person we saw in WS and CW and that she’s under deep cover or something.
I kind of enjoy the fact that Zemo is now a rich kid and member of a Sokovian kill squad. That is a very special kind of psychopath right there.
For sure! Plus: on the one hand, he hates both Hydra and super-humans because they’re inherently supremacists. On the other hand, he’s born into nobility and he’s actively participating in missions to murder enemies of the state in order to presumably maintain that status quo.
So he’s also either a really complex guy who’s using his wealth and power to dismantle those supremacist groups, or he’s a massive hypocrite who’s mostly mad that some elites are more elite than him!
¿Por que no los dos?
The way I took it is that Zemo, who clearly loves his country, feels that being a noble actually carries some level of responsibility, and that serving Sokovia as a soldier is his way of fulfilling that.
‘It seems a lot of reviewers in these parts really wanted the show to be something different than it was.’
This counter-critical tic never fails to annoy the everloving fuck out of me.Yes, we wanted the show to be something ‘different’. We wanted it to be less of a half-baked fucking mess.
Carter is either an evil independent, still working for rogue agents associated with the CIA, or a Skrull. Possibly more than one of those.Establishing which she is spoils whatever plotline they’re setting up for later. Both this and Wandavision are clearly designed to supplement and set up later movie plots, so of course the shows are going to leave questions and motivations unresolved. That is certainly a trend open to criticism, but if the reviewers want to be critical of it, call it out instead of claiming as though these shows are supposed to be complete in themselves.Would this show have made any sense to someone who had no idea who Captain America was?
And it seems a lot of genre fans get very gatekeepery when reasonable criticism about the construction of the show gets their pants in a bunch.
The problem is we know NOTHING about her motivations, and the folks writing here are being pretty explicit about that. If you bring being a Marvel fan into this, especially if you have an awareness of how certain characters are portrayed in other media, well, you may have a lot more tolerance for where characters might be going because you’ve already constructed that for yourself ahead of time. If you bring being a critic of film and television into this, you might be less willing to let some of the film-school levels of bad storytelling that happens in this one, ESPECIALLY when it contrasts with some scattered moments of excellence.
If you bring both, as I’m sure a lot of the folks writing these reviews do, well, you might be a lot more conflicted about it. Thus all the pained “BUT SAM AND BUCKY AND ALL THE ACTORS ARE GOOD”. For a lot of folks, they’re just going to WISH they could love this show, but not because it’s not the show they wish it was, as you claim, but because of what the show tried and failed to be, especially compared to other examples in Marvel, Disney, and other pieces of genre TV. It’s not “if I were writing this show, this is how I would do it”, it’s “man, here’s all the examples I know of times this exact sort of thing was done better, and I wish I could look away from that, but I can’t, not despite my level of affection for these characters and this plot, but precisely because of it”.
Not that internet comments should be taken personally, but man, it really sucks having to have your critical faculties and nerd credentials questioned just because you want a TV show to earn its moments of awesomeness and catharsis instead of just put them in haphazardly without connecting them to a more artfully developed story. Wandavision had NOTHING as poorly constructed as Falcon and Winter Soldier episode 3, and the simple fact that both exist in sequence on the same network in the same brand begs a comparison and the question “Why?”, not some presumptive desire by the greater critical community to pillory the show for not being Breaking Bad or something.
“nerd credentials questioned”lol ok
That and we haven’t seen Sharon in, what, seven years? That’s a long time. People change.We don’t get her motivation because her being the Power Broker is a surprise twist. When they return to her story in a second season or Captain America 4 then we’ll likely get more and hopefully it will make sense.
Yeah, like, good.
I think it’s weird they seemed to avoid Walker and what is clearly PTSD in this. Also Sam rebuilding his sister’s boat with his neighborhood is cool and nice, but also he got vibranium wings overnighted from Wakanda. He does know people and could get his sister’s stuff together by asking tiny minor favors for massively wealthy and powerful people he also knows. The Flagsmasher stuff was very messy and too many things to point out to mention. This series had large plot holes that were hard to overlook and I’m usually cool with just accepting stuff. I think part of it is the realism of this as opposed to Wandavision which is so fantastical it’s easy to accept more.
the Snappening has always been a better name for what happened than the Blip
What’s snappening!?
I think I’ve already forgotten most of this show. There were some big-bite efforts that I appreciated (The World Has Changed stuff, the John Walker stuff, race, Bucky finally getting a little agency) and a few standout scenes (the Dora Milaje!) but the story scarcely ever felt like it was going anywhere and never once properly baited me for the next episode.
John Walker getting publicly disgraced, fired, and cutoff from benefits but then getting recruited by a mysterious person with completely unknown motivations/connections (on TV, at least) to be a bootleg off-book agent isn’t really redemption. I don’t understand why people said that.
I might be oversimplifying things, but it seems like most of the problems with the show had to do with setting up the next thing. We’ve got to have Zemo show up – not because he’s important to this story, but he’ll be in a movie later. Sharon Carter gets five minutes of screen time so she can be revealed as a big bad for a movie later. All the stuff that won’t impact the next thing on the Great Marvel Spreadsheet was good. Ok, the Flag Smashers were just there to give the heroes something to do. And I’m giving them a pass because covid screwed up their original story idea.So I’m torn, because the last three “episodes” of Star Wars suffered because different directors yanked the story around. So you need a plan for your franchise. But it seems like Marvel is too much the other way.
I feel like I can see it both ways with Zemo. No doubt they have future plans for the character, and this helped navigate him in place, and establish his ongoing presence.At the same time, I thought he was an interesting foil for Bucky (being one of the last ties to Hydra and all) and his perspective on super soldiers made for a legitimately interesting contrast to characters like Walker, Sam, and Karli.
You make a good point. He did get a decent amount of screen time. But it seemed like once he wasn’t useful, he literally went down the drain and that was pretty much it.
I think maybe it was a problem of too many antagonists. They shuffled him off-screen in the penultimate episode because they still had so much else to deal with and it would’ve been tough finding an excuse to keep him involved.
I kinda wish there was an extra episode to flesh things out a bit more. Give Karli/Flag Smashers at least half an episode early on (like episode 2 or 3) just to flesh out what they’re fighting for. Maybe things could’ve been tighter in the 6 episodes we got, but things felt so overstuffed that the series needed more room to breathe.
Possibly. But usually in movies and television, more doesn’t usually means more of the same, not better. A good example is The Walking Dead. When they had 10 episode seasons, there was always two episodes in the middle where they didn’t do much and just sort of spun their wheels. When they went to 8 episodes, I thought it would be much tighter. Nope, still two episodes in the middle where they didn’t do much and just spun their wheels.
Everything Sam & Bucky was great. All the “America will never accept a black Cap” stuff was bracingly good, touching on relatable real-world issues with a depth and impact rarely broached by the MCU. The bank scene, the cops pulling up when Sam and Bucky argue in the street, the down-home stuff with Sarah, all the Isaiah stuff, Sam and Bucky’s training montage conversation… all great. The action scenes were reliably serviceable – there was no world-beating elevator smackdown, but they did the job. I loved the transition of Zemo into a “villain who helps the heroes because circumstances cause motivational alignment” character (see also: Loki, Nebula). He reminded me frequently of one of my all-time favourite villains, Farscape’s Scorpius, so that’s a tick in the “pro” side of the ledger. Also loved seeing the Dora again – one of my favourite lines in the series is “the DM has jurisdiction wherever the DM find themselves to be”, simultaneously a badass flex moment and a can-o-worms counterpoint to the questions raised about the moral jurisdiction of organizations like the GRC, or larger franchise echoes like the Sokovia accords. So… the problems. Could’ve been vastly improved by eliminating Karli as a character completely. The larger plot could have remained the same – someone’s making new supersoldiers, BuckySamZemo team up to stop them, Sharon is ultimately behind it all, Walker proves himself unworthy, Dora’s show up, Isaiah, all of that. But Karli and the Flag Smashers didn’t need to be actual characters – her only real purpose was to give voice to the reasonable concerns of her group, which could have been achieved via speechifying from other characters. Basically, she didn’t need to be Killmonger, and we didn’t need to spend as much time with her as we did. Who we did need to spend that extra time with, frankly, was Sharon Carter, whose heel-turn reveal, telegraphed and obvious from practically her first appearance, receives precisely one scene of partial motivational explanation. All that time spent with Karli could’ve gone into fleshing out a transition that fundamentally alters Sharon’s character. Flag Smashers could’ve been nameless operatives and the plot would play out similarly. Sharon, really, is the one who was “radicalized beyond redemption”, and the show suffered by spending too much time grafting that arc onto a character we’ve only just met and who won’t survive the finale, instead of one who we already know and already know the backstory of. A believable, impactful heel-turn for Sharon was right there, given enough time to show it. Ultimately: entertaining but second-tier MCU. Certainly ain’t no WandaVision. Final thought: man, was I ever glad there was no post-credits finale Skrull reveal.
He reminded me frequently of one of my all-time favourite villains, Farscape’s Scorpius, so that’s a tick in the “pro” side of the ledger.I see you too are a person of culture…
I too loved Scropius
I think Scropius was from the porn parody Furscape.
Farscape sits comfortably in my all-time TV top five.
I just finished a rewatch of the whole Farscape series for the first time in more than decade. I was delighted to find that it still holds up and is wonderful!
Karli didn’t need to be Killmonger – well the problem is she *wasn’t* — Killmonger was much more fleshed out, he was *right* that Wakanda should share its wealth, his motives were pretty easy to understand. Karli had potential that was squandered somewhat messily and we never got to know much about her.
I agree she was a messy character – I guess I’m saying they could’ve gone into the motivations of the Flag Smashers without creating a flimsily sketched character to act as a nominal “villain”, and instead funnelled that screen time into more fully addressing Sharon’s shift in allegiances. I would’ve welcomed a sequence akin to Monica’s “waking up after the Blip” parts from episode 4 of WV that addresses how she went from loyal Shield operative to criminal bigwig of Madripoor more than any deep dive into Karli’s character.
I agree with you, in general. They could have made it work without Karli, I’m just saying they could have done more with Karli specifically and also made that work – as you said, even just a fairly brief sequence akin to Monica’s backstory.
It was woke SJW Mary Sue trash. With the except of episode 4 where the real Captain America finally did what needed to be done to protect America and stopped a terrorist.
I can’t tell if this is serious or trolling, but I can tell you that this is what I wrote after I tapped “reply”. How exciting!
It’s the fake Lizardo troll. Ignore him.
do you masturbate while you troll, or afterwards? do you use the same crusty sock every time, or a new one each time?
I usually dump in your wife’s mouth.
well…i wudn’t exactly call a little bit of drool a dump exactly, hero. but you do you…
I save the small loads for your kids.
nods. white supremacist? check. pedophile? check. some g**ddamn stupid self abusing trolling piece of shite, living in mommy’s basement, sucking off mommy’s ssi? check.gud on you, mate. you’re a man.
LOL! He MAd!
nods. orrrr….maaybe he finds your childish shit just barely entertaining enough to engage with for a short bit.mad? jesus lord save us from farking stupidity..
I thought that everything having to do with Sam’s journey to becoming Captain America and the weight of a Black Captain America was fantastic. The story of Bucky continuing to right his past wrongs and heal from the trauma he went through as the Winter Solider was less well done but I thought entertaining enough (for context though I say that as someone who enjoys most of the MCU films). But everything having to do with the geopolitics of the MCU post-Endgame was awful. The MCU never does well when it tries to dip into the politics of its universe and this show was no exception – everything about Karli and the Flag Smashers, the Global Repatriation Council, and the post-blip state of the world was confused, lazily thought out, and poorly written.
To me it seemed like the writers seemed to have a better sense of what was going on with the Flag Smashers and the GRC but forgot to actually write those parts.
Yeah. Their goals didn’t click with me until episode 5. That should’ve been cemented by the third episode, especially if the main character is going to be talking about how they aren’t entirely to blame in the finale.
The writing is messy, but I cut MCU’s geopolitics a little slack because unlike most superhero properties, I’m just glad it gets acknowledged at all. And frankly, next to how DC tries to examine the same in things (BvS, or how the Wonder Woman movies deal with politics) Marvel is doing a comparatively better job.
Yeah, I just think if they’re going to do it they can put a bit more thought into it. There are a lot of very smart, thoughtful political theorists and writers out there who are also huge comic book fans and who I’m sure would be willing to spend a couple of hours helping MCU writers think this stuff through for free.
I still wanted to see more about the utter wreck the world was, post-blip, rather than just some throwaway mentions and info dumps.
As far as I’m concerned, this series earned its keep with one line: “A sorcerer is just a wizard without a hat.”
I do kind of wish they had spent less time running around chasing super soldiers and more time with Bucky and Sam arguing about things like wizards.
Bucky explaining that he doesn’t always think to use his robot arm because he’s righthanded was probably my favorite part of the series.
That was seriously brilliant, so grounded, funny, and realistic
I could see Bucky being #TeamGandalf, and Sam #TeamDumbledore.
I’m so confused that people think Walker getting hired by Val is some sort of redemption for him.Dude needs therapy, not a new career as a deniable black ops man for the American military.
Yeah, that didn’t strike me as a redemption at ALL; who thinks Val is up to anything good??
“who thinks Val is up to anything good??”Apple?
Who said Val is tied to the American military? In the comics, she’s been affiliated with SHIELD & Hydra, as a triple-agent for Leviathan (Russian spy stuff….which is why she was supposed to make her first appearance in Black Widow before all the theatrical release delays).We don’t really know who she’s working for at this point, or which side the U.S. Agent is being recruited for (…and neither does he). Just because he’s transitioned from Johnny Walker blue to Johnny Walker black, it doesn’t mean he’s being redeemed; he’s still just a pawn in someone else’s game.
The story says she is, she’s on the commit that discharges him and they meet later in the same building to give him the new suit.
That’s the bill of goods he’s being sold, haha!But yeah, she clearly just sees him as a weapon, for whatever her master plan is – he’s going to be her personal Winter Soldier.
I was sure Sharon was Power Broker pretty much all along, and when Val turned up I thought she’d turn out to be working for Sharon in some capacity. It came as a surprise that she wasn’t (or at least that it wasn’t revealed in the show, which is as good as saying she wasn’t), so I’ll be interested to see where her loyalties do lie. Maybe Black Widow will give answers, or at least more clues…
They explained a lot of things, but never really went into his PTSD. They kinda showed it, but not explicitly. I don’t know his issues were very underdeveloped.
I’m not sure how much of it is supposed to be PTSD, as opposed to the consequences of picking the perfect soldier, rather than a good man, for the role.There’s a quote about how building a soldier is about shaving off just enough of their humanity for them to be able to take a life, and still sleep at night, without turning them into a monster.Walker underwent that process before he was given power, fighting a bad war – he was built to be a weapon, in a way that Steve never was.It’s not his *fault*, per se…but it does mean that he can never be Captain America.
Yeah, he even has a rage tic in the last few seconds he’s on screen. That dude is still FUBAR.
US Agent has always been a mix of Captain America (Super Soldier Serum), and Frank Castle.
It was woke SJW Mary Sue trash. With the except of episode 4 where the real Captain America finally did what needed to be done to protect America and stopped a terrorist.
I think the “redemption” was when he chose to save people instead of pursue revenge. Like, “Yeah, he murdered a man in cold blood with Cap’s shield after doing his damndest to kill Bucky and Sam, but really he’s a good guy. And now he can backslap and quip with Bucky.”
The scene where he was hired by Val was . . . weird. It was all humor and celebration for something that really should’ve come across as sinister.
I mean…he entered that situation fully intending to beat a teenaged girl to death out of revenge.He did end up saving those folks…but it was portrayed as a *tough choice* for him. Walker’s not a monster, but he’s *dangerous*, and I think they did a good job striking that balance in the finale.I also think the scene with Elaine worked really well at showcasing the Walkers’ naïveté – Val is clearly bad news, but Walkers a soldier, not a spy…and she’s promising him a war.
Walker is a tool, and as one of the few with Super Soldier Serum, he’s a potentially powerful one. Val’s his handler. He’s no hero, but he is a dupe, and he isn’t irredeemable. Yet.
Yeah, I think the show meant to demonstrate that he was more ambiguous than full-bore villain or total good guy, but they overshot and suggested that all was well and, after all the murder, he’s totally fine, now, and all is forgotten.
Again, he struggled to decide between beating a teenaged girl to death and saving a bunch of people…and we leave off with him celebrating the chance to run deniable black ops missions for a character who’s been Madame Hydra in the comics.The guy can be a dangerous time bomb without being a cackling Republic serial villain.
She’s about the most subtle villain since Palpatine, so no, that didn’t work for me at all. ‘I’m really bad! No I’m not. Or AM I??? Just kidding. OR AM I???’
Yeah. Walker getting hired by a lady known in the comics as Madame Hydra isn’t exactly the way to end a “redemption arc.”
Either way, I don’t think that he was ever on a redemption arc, but put on a downwards spiral. The last episode just reminded us that Walker is more nuanced than we (or in particular, this roundtable) thinks. I’m sure we’ll see him again soon.
Yep – Walker works best as a man who desperately wants to be Steve Rogers…but is only ever one bad day away from being Frank Castle.Man, he’s a lot of fun.
Yeah, I found this interpretation in several of the AV and Ringer write-ups as somewhat missing the mark. I took Walkers story resolution to be a bit more sinister on the MCU’s part – I read it that he’s going to be more of a Punisher/Deadpool kind of situation: a darker counterpoint to Sam’s “good” soldier. I hope this is the avenue they pursue. I think having US Agent out there sets up an interesting plot for Captain America 4 and beyond.
This EXACTLY. Val is one of the most allegiance-less characters in Marvel comics history, having been on every possible side and inventing her own a few dozen times. That USAgent is working for her is in NO way a redemption arc. If anything, it’s further down the dark and spiraling rabbit hole of misery and mistake. I thought that much was obvious by the fact that they were having that conversation in an entirely empty room, with no cameras, no senators, no military, no press… nobody.
I also couldn’t disagree more that Zemo was “reinvented.” This is exactly who Zemo is, who Zemo’s always been, at least in the MCU. He’s manipulative, sure, but he’s cunning and ruthless with a moral code of sorts. When he felt like his work was done in Civil War, he was ready to take his own life. Since then, he’s realized, his mission isn’t done, and so he continues on.
“Smart, ruthless, hates super-soldiers.”bAsIcAlLy A tOtAlLy NeW cHaRaCtEr!!!
Not redemption, perhaps, but certainly a lack of consequences.
As I believe I said in other threads, and somewhat the point of a lot of responses in this article, it would be nice if they were a little more implicit about the journey we were meant to be on with him (or with MOST of the characters). Especially considering his WAY off the mark attempts to be buddy-buddy with Bucky during the last episode.
And no, that doesn’t mean an “I am a good guy” or “I am a bad guy” speech. But maybe an actual discussion about how much of his backstory was bullshit vs PR and how he felt about that, how much responsibility the American military DID have in creating him, more than one minute devoted to whether or not he felt guilt about Lamar. I don’t need individual scenes to be longer: we just needed more scenes, and to be frank, characters that represented some of the concepts and themes they were going for.
Like, if that dumbass senator character had simply been Walker’s superior officer, it would have made all the “court martial but not a court martial” shit make more sense, as well as the “you made me” (which, again, was acted quite well on Russell’s part) and there could have been opportunity for those characters to interact and actually know where that version of Captain America fit in the government hierarchy, and how we were supposed to feel about it.
But as it is, we’re not really clear how much his being fucked up IS John Walker’s fault, or part of his PTSD and guilt from Afghanistan, or IF he has PTSD, or how much of this is just his weird self-justifications. We’re just left to assume one way or the other based on what we ourselves bring to it. And considering this is a show about how much people’s experiences and privileges color their perspective, that we are given so little insight into Walker’s beyond what the government and Lamar say, or the refugees who are motivating the greater conflict of the entire show, is unfortunate. Not because that’s what I wish the show was, but because it seems to be what the SHOW wishes the show was, yet failed at it.
…I really didn’t need all that.I feel like Walker’s thematic contribution to the story can be summed up pretty easily:That strong man, who has known power all his life, may lose respect for that power. But a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion. That the most important aspect of Steve’s heroism is that he stayed who he was: Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.They used Walker to illustrate this, by showing what would happen if the serum, and the title, and the shield, had been given to someone who defined his value on being “A Perfect Soldier,” rather than a good man.
Highs.
As someone who actually read comic books, the show was fine. Occasionally great, sometimes ludicrous. It was a comic book on the TV. That’s all I wanted or expected.
Sam’s opening comment suggests that he thoroughly missed the mark on what WandaVision was about–that it was meditation on grief, and how people respond to a lifetime of it; and that the ties to the MCU were fairly small, and outsized attention was paid to them by annoying fans who couldn’t see the deeper story. I will, to my dying day, defend the way WandaVision played out.
I don’t care one way or the other. It kept me entertained for six weeks and showed me more of the characters I love in the MCU.I’m good with that. I give the series a solid B.
But was the often sloppy six-episode journey really worth it?I’d argue it wasn’t that sloppy considering they had to shoot and rewrite the show during a global pandemic.
It was woke SJW Mary Sue trash. With the except of episode 4 where the real Captain America finally did what needed to be done to protect America and stopped a terrorist.
Zemo and Sharon Carter became completely different people…but the show opted for redundant reinvention arcs for Helmut Zemo Zemo wanted to kill super soldiers, Sharon was duplicitous. They’ve been that way from he start. Instead we got hours of ZemoWe certainly did.
I liked the show a lot, but I find it hard to disagree with the criticism that it was too scattered, had too many moving parts, and suffered in not focusing more on its leads.I think this is just the nature of the Marvel Beast right now. They’ll give us a show focused in on a great duo like Bucky and Sam…but they also need to include a couple dozen worldbuilding elements, easter eggs, a ton of setup for future projects, trying to establish post-Blip life, etc. I feel like it’s a bit of a Catch-22: the show wouldn’t exist without the Marvel Beast, so they have to feed it in turn…even though it kind of comes at the cost of its own identity.I also find myself in a bit of a weird conundrum, because I was maybe a tad disgruntled at Bucky getting short-changed in how his story resolved (to say nothing of how, like others said, the show kept shunting its two leads aside in favor of everything else)…but at the same time, the only reason I was invested in Bucky so much to begin with was because of the show.This is Marvel’s third attempt now at building a branching tv universe. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a bit rough-going for a while.
This and WandaVision seem to be commercial hits (and even more so, hits with fans), even if there’s some critical ambivalence. Of course, being critically acclaimed and super popular didn’t save the Netflix stuff, but that seemed like it was more on the business end.
Yeah, the Netflix stuff definitely seemed to end abrupt because of the oncoming Disney+. Since these shows are produced in-house, and like you said seem to have been quite successful, I imagine they’re safe, at least for the time being.
Marvel has never been shy about flashbacks but in F&WS, for some reason, they deprived viewers of something that could have made this a truly great show.
What the Flagsmashers plotline needed was some serious leaning in to the ‘benefits’ of what Thanos’ Snap accomplished: Earth’s resources no longer strained by overpopulation. Along with the shock and global trauma of losing 50% of the people (which Marvel has touched on a little bit) there was some kind of five-year political shift across the planet that we have been told about but not effectively shown.
Flashbacks showing the migration of Earth’s population and a bit of the politics that went on during those five years would have been welcome. And one or two flashbacks of Isiah in action in the ‘60s or ‘70s would have put F&WS over the top.
Ok…….I know my take is a lazy one, but here goes: I agree with all of the criticism in the comments and elsewhere. Karli was not fleshed out enough as a villan, Walker was not fleshed out enough as a character, the plot didn’t always make sense and so on. This show clearly could have benefitted from being eight episodes instead of six.And yet-Everything that Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan and Carl Lumbly did in the series was so excellent that it all worked for me anyway and covered a lot of the problems. Weeks from now I am not going to remember how paper thin the Flag Smashers are. I am going to remember Sam’s speech, and his bringing Isaiah to the Smithsonian, and the conversation Sam and Bucky had in Episode 5.Again, I know this is lazy criticism, and the AV Club writers are doing excellent work doing their job examining this in more depth. But as a fan, it just felt to me like the leads did such a good job with the material that it really covered the obvious flaws and made Season 1 a success. Sam’s arc in particular was just so well done, a testiment to Mr. Mackie’s fine work.
While its highs don’t reach those of WandaVision, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier is more consistent. It’s not as high concept so its tepid ending is less underwhelming.I wanted more Baron Zemo & Flag Smasher.https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2021/04/23/does-the-falcon-the-winter-soldier-soar-or-freeze/
Shocked that the entire roundtable didn’t discussed the significant rumor that part of the plot was cut because of reshoots/COVID19. According to the rumor the Flag Smashers goal was to release a virus that killed the people who got snapped away and came back.I’ve seen this specific rumor more than enough to think that this was probably legit, and led to a clunkier narrative.
I thought it was the GRC that released the virus, which is why the Flag Smashers were stealing vaccines.
the show looks boring and predictable. neither of those characters are interesting. it will just be buckey trying not to be “bad” and falcon trying to be Cap. no thanks.
the tv show should have been released as a 6hr movie instead of weekly. Disney/Marvel need to vary their release strategies.
Bravo for Sulagna Misra’s coverage, which I thought was fair even when I didn’t agree. Boo to these hot takes, which in some cases seem to be driven by the reviewers “watching” the show while tweeting or doomscrolling or otherwise not paying full attention. tFatWS had some subtle subtext and a lot of cues that were purely visual, and looking away from the screen even for a moment means you missed something.It was for sure overambitious and tried to do too much in too little time, and that’s without factoring in any production issues caused by COVID. But I’d rather see a show try to do too much and land only part of it than show no ambition at all.The introductory summary to this roundtable mentioned race and how this show tackled the issue in a way Marvel has really not managed very well in the past. That none of the participants had a word to say about that, about Sam as a Black man, and about should-be-breakout-star Isaiah, I find very telling. This was Sam’s journey, and he took it stoically, quietly, calmly, and courageously. He didn’t have to be some grandstanding superstar sitting for interviews and signing autographs; he did the work. And all these reviewers want to talk about is the grandstanding superstars the show deliberately contrasted with Sam?
I would have cut the Flagsmashers for sure. The GRC and refugee camps and Flagsmashers had the potential to be a series all their own. Instead they were background noise and flat characters.But John Walker? No. He’s a huge part of Sam’s journey to becoming Captain America because he is a foil for Sam. He, also, can be (and was, at times) a critique of American imperialism—Walker’s speech at his hearing was 100% dead on, as were Val’s remarks to him afterwards. He is exactly what he was made to be by the U.S. government/military, and he only got in trouble because he decapitated that man on camera. We, as fans of the MCU, have only ever seen Steve Rogers as Captain America. So we can sympathize with Sam when he expresses reluctance to try and fill those boots. We, like Sam, have no other point of comparison.
I’m just dropping by to express my disappointment that Marvel didn’t think enough of the Isaiah Bradley / TRUTH graphic novel to reprint it, even in light of the character being heavily featured in their newest high-profile television series. I went out looking for the book and found, without fail, that the least expensive option for me to acquire it was $150 from a third-party seller. Short-sighted to say the least.
“and then ultimately deciding to peace out and stay back in time with
Peggy and presumably poof her previous husband and family out of
existence”In the movie, it clearly stated that you can’t go into the past to change the future, you simply create a new branch of the timeline. Peggy’s previous family still exists, but just in a different timeline. Peggy and Steve branched off to create a new, separate one.
I’ll just try to bulletpoint my thoughts.- The “This Is Why I Am Watching This” Good: Sam. Bucky. Isaiah. The Wakandan involvement was a nice shot in the arm when the series needed it. JLD and her character’s appearance was a welcomed surprise.- The “Ehh Sure Why Not, Put ‘Em In” So-So: Zemo. Walker. Sam’s comic book accurate Cap outfit. Too loud for my liking, though. They need to tone the white pieces down for its next appearance.- The “What Are They Doing With These Characters” Bad: Sharon. Karli.As others have occasionally noted over the years, the MCU films seem to work best when characters are driving the plot, and not the other way around. This series, while it wasn’t all the time, seemed to fall victim to turning the characters into chess pieces too often.
I have my criticisms too, but not enough to say that WandaVision was the better show. Walker and Karli may have been uneven, but I’ll take what nuance they have over the cartoonishness of Hayward, or how “Agatha All Along” didn’t really mean anything. If I’m comparing how the show handled their perceived “villains”, this round goes to Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
And that’s what it looks like across the board. I know the shows are two different things with two different styles, but even narratively, WandaVision doesn’t really start telling a cohesive story until around episode 3 or 4, whereas Falcon and the Winter Soldier is up and running from the start. It’s curious to criticize one show for spending parts of its plot setting up Easter Eggs, when that was virtually the only appeal in analyzing the other, (since everyone knew what the big mystery was anyway).
WandaVision was more watercooler buzz-worthy, sure, but not really substantial, thematically, since it’s more about being impressed at how well it could imitate sitcoms we
recognize. Wanda’s grief was powerful, but also simplistic- She created an escapist fantasy. The moral of the story is clear: Don’t do that. Meanwhile FATWS is thematically examining complicated issues about race, with a moral to the story that rightfully acknowledges there are no easy answers.
And which of the shows is more fullfilling when it comes to the conclusion of their arcs, and the accountability of their actions? I’d argue Sam earning his title of Captain America and living up to the mantle is more satisfying than finally hearing Wanda be called the Scarlet Witch simply because they just hadn’t used the term before in all these movies. Bucky gets the moment where he has to reckon with his sins, but Wanda is let off the hook without there being much reckoning over what she did to an entire town.
Both shows had weak finales, but my takeaway impressions from FATWS as a series are more positive. Overall I’m just glad these Disney+ shows are off to a solid start. WandaVision was fun, but it’s a gimmick. Falcon and the Winter Soldier had some clunky threads, but overall I thought was stronger.
yeah, Val was so obviously like, the biggest villain ever.
Walker wasn’t redeemed at all. The whole point was that he’s an asshole and is now in a position to be a practical tool and has no scruples about it. In case you missed it, he didn’t save the people, Cap Wilson did. He showed up to pick a fight with a new shield pretending to be Captain America still.I really think Americans (and I am one) struggle to differentiate the point of what US Agent represents: now say it with me, ‘HE ISN’T A GOOD GUY,’ he is the embodiment of jingoism. The whole point of Rogers/Wilson as Cap v. Walker as US Agent is that if you really do believe in the shining city on the hill you can embody the good of American ideals, if you think might makes right, support blind militarism, and basically are a fascist you’re in Walker’s camp. They went extra far to strip away the inherent racism built into the fascism and jingoism so you don’t just loathe him from the outset and US Agent was always written as non-racist/casually racist (depending on how you relate to him and his positions) but he wasn’t anti-racist, he was gung ho about American imperialism and it was his whole character base. Him being hired by Val who is on/off a member of Hydra but for the sake of this appears to be Fury’s defacto replacement for American black ops (since nobody would just let her roam an US Court House and give him a new black suit if she was truly Hydra) basically creates a natural rival antagonist against Cap Wilson who isn’t explicitly evil like Zemo. He’s a caustic ally who’s not to be trusted but isn’t out to bring down America or kill people out of spite or power…except as an extension of imperialism.
How about neither?Not everything needs to be bound with hyperbolic binary line drawing.And that’s without even addressing the things you got plain wrong.
I still want to know why the AVclub couldn’t spare someone to cover the 5th season of the Expanse when the entire staff has been pumping out endless articles on the last 2 Marvel series.
Honestly, they should have just left John Walker sit out the entire last episode. Then, some years hence, he shows up in some series or movie as US Agent and there’s a big question whether or not he has changed for the better. The time between appearances will go a lot further to advance the case that he may be ready for a redemption.
I think it reached new sames? I accept these shows for what they are and appreciate what is done well. They did international spy thriller with buddy banter, as with most movies of that type the thriller part and motivations made no fucking sense, but they stuck the banter and the action was okay (more hand to hand like Daredevil and less thuddingly overwhelmingly dulling than the last 30 minutes of Winter Soldier, Wonder Woman, etc.)They need to have somebody forcibly inject Sam with serum or he will be severely underpowered in the future, but I now want a series that explores his holistic Captain America approach…like…who even is IN the Avengers at this point? I think we are all guessing it’s Scarlet Witch if she’s not insane, bloodless Vision eventually, new Hawkeye lady, new Black Widow Pugh, new Thor lady, unpowered Sam, Bucky, am I missing someone? It sounds like we are quite a while away from hearing “assemble”! Who is paying for them? Maybe Reed Richards eventually?