The Falcon And The Winter Soldier showrunner teases Sharon Carter's evolution and Zemo's motives
TV Features Zemo
After an action-packed premiere, Marvel’s latest Disney+ series, The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, will continue to expand its world when it returns with a new episode on Friday. Ahead of the series’ second outing, we chatted with showrunner Malcolm Spellman and director Kari Skogland about what fans can expect for the rest of the six-episode season.
Those conversations are now available as part of the latest episode of The A.V. Club’s podcast Push The Envelope. You can hear the full conversation on the episode below—which also includes our thoughts on who will win the TV categories at the upcoming SAG Awards—or read a few excerpts from our chat with Spellman below.
The A.V. Club: Beyond just Falcon and Winter Soldier, the show also features some characters from previous Marvel projects, like Sharon Carter and Zemo and a few unnamed others. As a writer, who were you most excited to have come back, and to be able to investigate?
Malcom Spellman: The character that turned into the most fun was Sharon Carter, because Emily [VanCamp] has such a baby face. She looks very sweet and innocent, but Sharon Carter is going to emerge as a badass. I’d have to use far more inappropriate language to describe how awesome she is. Let’s just say this: Sharon Carter is all grown up now. I guess what made it so fun was we started getting to know Sharon in Captain America: Civil War, and you just factor in what would have naturally happened between Civil War and now and you get a whole different Sharon Carter showing up.
AVC: In some ways, the Avengers are “law enforcement.” They are, in the purest sense of the word, enforcing laws. That being said, they’re sort of the best version of law enforcement. As we’ve seen in the movies, often when too many hands get involved, the mission gets mucked up, and power corrupts. How do you view where superheroes are in terms of being the protectors of what’s right and what’s wrong?
MS:It’s funny. The Zemo character is going to lend a lot of voice to that. You can see what he thinks of it. Obviously, all of us are channeled through him a little bit in that Zemo sees all of them as supremacists, and he thinks that people who are endowed with abilities that are extraordinary—like law enforcement or in this case, heroes—are inherently going to abuse their power, and he has a damn good reason to think that. They destroyed his country by using his city as a bomb and killed his entire family along with everyone he knew.
Listen to our full conversations with Spellman and Skogland on Push The Envelope. If you’re a fan, don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe wherever you get you podcasts. Thus ends our shameless plug.
25 Comments
I truly hope what Spellman says about Sharon Carter is not just hyperbole. I’ve always been slightly miffed that Carter’s never gotten a chance to really shine in the MCU; I’m looking forward to her character getting her proper due.I always thought casting Emily Van Camp was brilliant. She’s very good at giving off girl-next-door vibes one moment and believably seeming as if she can hand someone their a ss in the next. Her show, “Revenge”, was pretty outlandish, but Van Camp’s work was the opposite. She always did a stellar job in emotionally grounding her character through all the show’s twist-and-turns.
Yeah Sharon Carter ended up being short changed as a character after Scarlett’s decision to change her mind and do Winter Soldier. I believe Sharon was supposed to get the storyline(s) that ended with Natasha in that film, meaning they had nothing for Sharon bar the undercover stuff and Steve’s neighbour and being one of the good Shield agents resisting Alexander Pierce’s Hydra crew.Granted it would have taken a degree of on the hoof rewrites, but it’s a shame the film makers couldn’t give us two female characters that both had a decent storyline in a comic book movie.
I recently just learned of the Black Widow/Agent 13 switch-out for “Winter Soldier”. That was pretty bananas, and unlike a lot of unsubstantiated BTS info, felt entirely believable via the breakdown provided in the Reddit thread I read it in.But it made total sense; while Van Camp wasn’t, fame-wise, on the level of Gwyneth Paltrow or Natalie Portman, I thought it strange that she had such a small(ish) role in that movie.
What I want to know is, is she ever going to cross paths with Star Lord in the MCU, so we can have a mini-Everwood reunion?
Speaking of being a badass…I’m wondering if Zemo is going to be doing any ass kicking himself. I mean he was an ex-special forces guy for Sokovia right? He should know some hand-to-hand combat besides using firearms.
One can hope. I liked that they gave him a militaristic background in “Civil War” and just have him be a vague araristocrat.Had you heard they plan on having him wear his famous mask/head-gear. Spellman’s claimed that they plan on leaning in towards Zemo’s more comic book aspect – with being an actual Baron.
I hope we see her suddenly realize the guy she made out with looks exactly like the one her aunt was married to.
Heh. I still wonder how they plan on making that work. Sometimes I wonder if the talk of Chris Evan’s coming back *was* accurate as they plan on bringing him back so he can Steve’s “Nomad” phase. They could easily set it in the 70s to allow the standalone story be free of Avengers ties but still feature Cap mainstays like Sharon or Howard (maybe even Maria).That would be a huge coup to have Evan’s do the miniseries and allow Evans to tackle another iconic Cap storyline.
I liked this a great deal more than Wandavision. I firmly believe historians will agree with me on that point.
Why do you expect historians to be interested in which show you liked more?
Because I’m THAT important.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s, not your misogyny therapy session.
I’ve been to a Wendy’s or two in my days and let me tell you ain’t no one who’s worked at a Wendy’s knows the meaning of half those words you just used.Also, they wouldn’t try to correct you. They’d just stare at you blank faced until you went away.
Ha! A misogynist would never go to Wendy’s!
Arby’s then…
I’m sorry but why are we not talking about how cruelly underdeveloped Batroc ze Leapair is? So far he’s only been portrayed as a generic thug. Where’s his chivalrous code of honor?
You expect me to take a supervillain dressed up like an aubergine seriously? *le slap*
I’ll turn my attention to that problem once I’ll get over captain America’s little wings.
Le bwahahaha!
Boy, that accent really comes and goes doesn’t it?
Specifically, it comes during witty entrance lines and goes when there is needed exposition.
Some writers like to phonetically add in the accent and others will just have his accent just be implied with some minor quips in French.
I’m pretty sure Stan Lee had never met a French person when he decided that this character needed to be written in dialect.
In Winter Soldier he did get Cap to put away the shield and fight him one-on-one unarmed, which was a bit chivalrous.
A hippie walks by and says:
“Hey man; there ain’t no music and your terrorist’s on fire…”
“Sharon Carter is all grown up now”When we met Sharon Carter, she was a grown-ass woman working as a secret agent for a government agency. Admittedly, her character was deeply underdeveloped in the films, but surely there was a better way to phrase this.