The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Season 1, Episodes 4-6
This came a bit late, but I didn't manage to catch the final couple of episodes until relatively a bit later after the series ended. Anyway, here you go!
I'll be taking a brief break from the MCU movies, until I have more or less drafts of the Phase Two movies. Probably not going to do the CW/DC superhero shows for a while, at least not until the mid-season break.
Episode 4: The Whole World is Watching
The previous episode was a bit more concerned about introducing guest characters in a bombastic way. And, sure, Zemo and Sharon Carter were extremely entertaining. But for the most part it really did feel like a bit of a distraction from the main plot... and, yeah, Sam and Bucky did get a lot of fun moments. Walker and Karli get slowly built up in the background. But I feel like we're perhaps missing an 'Episode 2.5' that really tries to explore the reasons why the Sam/Bucky duo needed Zemo, or to build Walker and Karli up a bit more as characters. And the show does that, certainly, but with the benefit of having watched episode 5 and 6, I really wished that they had done more with the secondary cast.
This episode tosses in yet another complication in the arrival of Ayo -- a member of the Dora Milaje that's been in the background of practically every Wakanda-relevant scene in the MCU. The first half of this episode basically just has the trio of Falcon, Winter Soldier and Baron Zemo work under a ticking time limit, while U.S. Agent and Battlestar show up and vaguely maybe-cooperate with them to hunt down the Flag Smashers. Again, some pretty great moments, like how Zemo manages to befriend the locals and withholds information from his allies, or the poignant meeting between Sam and Karli. It's not something we haven't seen before in these superhero shows, honestly, but seeing Sam as someone who's more willing to listen to the cries of these young super-soldiers forced into going into extremes? It's well done.
What's particularly impressive, I feel, is John Walker. It'd be too easy to write him as a complete tool in the way that other similar 'jackass Captain America' characters have been adapted into the screen. Supergirl's Agent Liberty and even Agents of SHIELD's Patriot both were similar characters. But unlike Liberty (who's completely unhinged) and Patriot (who is more misdirected more than anything), John Walker is written in an interesting way. He's a smarmy ass, no doubt about it, but there's a very powerful scene after the Dora Milaje beat his ass and he's just left licking his wounds muttering that he lost to people who aren't super-soldiers.
And in the hands of an inferior actor, this would just look like the big macho soldier man refusing to admit defeat out of utter ego. But the acting -- and his subsequent scene of talking to his best friend Lemar -- turns out a bit poignant as they discuss whether they would take the super soldier serum if they could. And, sure, there's perhaps just a bit of ego in Walker's decision, but you also feel that he's trying to be the symbol that America told him to be. Toss in the little character moment where Walker discusses with Lemar that his medals of honour don't mean shit to him since they just remind him of 'the worst day in his life', and suddenly U.S. Agent here ends up going from a one-note smarmy replacement into... well, perhaps not a three-dimensional character just yet, but I suddenly feel a fair bit more intrigued with him. That they're doing something different with this character trope. So when Walker actually finds the one lone super-soldier serum that escaped Zemo's smashy-smash rampage, we actually feel the frustration and temptation in him.
And yeah, this was the memetic, much-spreaded shot throughout the internet that I was actually spoiled about. I was thankfully unspoiled when WandaVision aired, but when I saw this shot circulated online I thought, 'well, they're making the fake Captain America into the Punisher, neat but unimpressive'. The fact that they actually crafted a sympathetic character out of John Walker, on the other hand, is most certainly impressive.
Of course, Walker is only a small part of the episode. Sam's the other side of the coin, where we pull on an interesting thread that draws on MCU history (I'm not as familiar with Falcon's comic counterpart) which is his past as a trauma counsellor with veterans. Which is something that he puts into good use when he finally gets face-to-face with Karli "Flag-Smasher" Morgenthau. The show is basically portraying them as sympathetic terrorists, though as the face of the organization, Karli has grown a bit more extreme in her methods, even to the horror of her fellow Flag-Smashers. The various characters converge on Karli on the funeral of Mama Donya, Karli's mother figure, and things spill out basically how you expect them to in these shows. Sam manages to talk Karli down almost to the point of understanding, but then in comes Walker all guns blazing and we get our huge action scene.
Zemo himself still mostly is left to the sidelines, alternating between delightfully fun to watch as a villain and delivering snarky one-liners, but then his big motivation -- to smash all super-soldier serums -- is on the front and center. He destroys all the serums that the Flag-Smashers have (except for the dosage that Walker takes), and gets into a pretty interesting conversation with Sam about supremacy and serums*... and then when the Dora Milaje come and get into a fun action scene with the American Heroes, Zemo exits stage left with a hidden escape route.
*I do love that Sam explicitly notes that he's someone who will always refuse to take the super-soldier serum, which is a nice contrast to everyone else in the show.
Ultimately, this is a pretty exciting and fun episode. I'm not 100% sure if the show needed to toss in the Wakandan sub-plot, though. The comic book geek within me most certainly appreciates that, and the action scene that Ayo and friends do is very badass! But considering how one of the bigger complaints that I have about this show is how truncated some of the character storylines are, I wonder if the show would've been better served scaling back the Wakandans a bit and giving the main characters a bit more time to shine? I don't know. Still, throughout these episodes, I most certainly enjoyed the character work done on the main characters if nothing else.
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Episode 5: Truth
Episode 5 opens up with the big huge action scene. After John Walker executes that one Flag-Smasher guy Nico, we get a pretty cool confrontation between him, Sam and Bucky. It's a tense action scene, and while probably not the best we get in the show (I'd say that episode 1's Falcon-vs-Batroc still trumps everything else) it's most certainly a good contender. We get a brutal arm-snap, and Cap's Boys abscond with the shield. And then what happens honestly feels more or less like a series of epilogue scenes to the second act. Sam and Torres talk about what the government is doing, and Torres gets Sam's Falcon wings. Walker is summoned before a military court and discharges him from his duties, causing him to lose his temper. Bucky hunts Zemo down to the Sokovian memorial mentioned in episode 3, has the chance to kill Zemo, but decides not to and give Zemo to the Dora Milaje... who in turn bring Zemo to the Raft.
Other than Bucky's acceptance and calmness in dealing with Zemo, though, none of these feel honestly that impactful. It felt more like we're just checking off boxes before we get to the meat of the episode... which is talking. And, again, it's surprisingly good talking! One of the big problems with Sam Wilson is that, well, he's so much of a side character in the movies. I most certainly like him, because Anthony Mackie is a wonderful actor, but he's just kind of there. He's nice and interacts well with other characters, he's got an interesting enough gimmick, but his backstory is that 'he meets Steve Rogers and they become BFFs'. Even Bucky being mind controlled for most of his appearances on-screen had a bit more of a character arc by virtue of dealing with the angst of being mind-controlled into being an assassin, something that instantly ends up being a more interesting story beat early in the show.
So the show really developing Sam a lot is most certainly welcome, especially since it's building up for Sam to become the all-new Captain America. Sam's visit with Isaiah Bradley and the long discussions about the injustices that America has done to the old soldier is amazingly well done -- and Sam's decision to bear the burden of the flag and stand up for what the symbol should be is all the more poignant because of Isaiah's initial and understandable condemnation of the nation that betrayed him. The speech from Isaiah Bradley is meant to get into Sam's (and the audience's) skin, but Sam chooses to not let the past define the future.
Meanwhile, while Zemo exits the show, we get a brief couple of scenes of John Walker apologizing to Lemar's parents and family, bending the truth a bit so that they have some sort of closure -- juxtaposed (though not explicitly) with Sam's speech to Bucky about closure. He also gets briefly met and recruited by Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who... yeah, beyond being quirky and mysterious and being a major character in the comics, she really doesn't do much and is a bit of an oddity for now. At least he's not out of the story completely, as the mid-credits scene show him creating a new shield.
Perhaps the weakest link at this point are the villains. We started off somewhat strongly with making Karli pretty sympathetic, but now she's sort of reduced to just repeating her speeches as she summons even more radicalized members of her organization. I'm really not sure why she just doesn't click for me -- she just ends up being kind of repetitive and it's a shame, because the actress they got for her is honestly pretty good; it's just the pacing of her scenes just doesn't really work. Sharon also gets shown to be shifty, freeing Batroc the Leaper out of jail and Batroc himself later shows up as an additional goon for Karli's cause, albeit there just to kill the Falcon. On paper, the GRC's Patch Act thing is kind of obviously evil and under-thought... though probably not evil enough to warrant death by planted explosives.
Anyway, a slow episode, but a mostly fun one.
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Episode 6: One World, One People
And finally, the final episode. It's mostly non-stop action that when the episode ended, I went, 'wait, that's all?' And I get it. It's a MCU show. A lot of the plot threads are being seeded for future installments. But it does make the ending feel somewhat... formulaic?
What I do know is that Sam Wilson as Captain America? That is the focus of this final episode. A huge, badass debut of a Captain America that knows more than to just lob a shield around and beat up bad guys, but also resolve conflict in a heroic way. And I do like that.
The episode itself is an extended action scene, starting off with Karli's attack on the GRC meeting hall and the arrival of the main players. Bucky and Sharon on the ground. And the once-Falcon, Sam Wilson, decked out as the new Captain America, flies in and goes straight into hand-to-hand combat with Batroc the Leaper. Sam even has a brand-new Redwing! For the most part, Sam spends a good chunk of the episode rescuing the hostages in the helicopter, and the doubling back to rescue the hostages on the truck, assisting Bucky and Walker.
(Bucky kind of got the short end of the straw here, huh? Sure, Sebastian Stan got to act the hell out in these episodes, but he really didn't do a whole ton in the final episode)
Again, it's kind of a shame that Karli ends up being so... basic as a villain. She starts off sympathetic but then ends up being kind of reduced to a ball of cliches. Her Flag Smasher buddies all get these short moments of hesitation or shock whenever Karli says something like 'murder the hostages' or whatever, but nothing really comes out of it. Interestingly, it's John Walker who ends up showing off some depth. And honestly, with what the show has presented to us? It's a bit of a 50/50 on whether Walker goes off the deep end and goes 'the shield is mine gwaaagh' like a lunatic, or if he just accepts his role as... well, kind of a vigilante, I suppose. It's a bit of a low-key ending for Walker, but it fits the character. It's just somewhat surprising.
We get a three-way confrontation between Sharon, Batroc and Karli, and in a twist that probably would've worked better if episode 5 didn't have the suspicious Sharon/Batroc phone conversation (this episode has Sharon murder a Flag Smasher with a acid gas bomb that would've worked as foreshadowing, I feel) we learn that Sharon's the enigmatic Power Broker in the background of the past couple of episode. Dun dunn dunnn, I guess? The Power Broker is kind of such a non-entity that the revelation that she's actually Sharon is kind of a shrug and a 'oh, at least it's not a new character' on my part. Ultimately, Batroc gets shot by Sharon, and so is Karli later on. The twist here, of course, is that no one else -- not Sam, not Bucky, not Walker -- know that Sharon's actually not quite a good guy.
Sam also gets a great scene as the new Captain America talking and giving the GRC guys a huge dressing-down. It's a pretty typical superhero speech... and a pretty typical Captain America speech. Again, I'm not American, and I won't pretend to know everything about the subtleties and symbolism and real-life allegories, but it sure is a huge, inspirational speech and more than the ass-kicking he does, I love that Sam is the sort of guy that will stand up for the little guy and call out the GRC's bullshit.
The rest of the episode quickly goes on to a bit of an epilogue after that. The scene that gets the longest is Sam starting to make reparations for Isaiah Bradley by showing that he's included in an exhibit in the Smithsonian next to Steve Rogers. Zemo's butler uses a bomb to kill the other Flag-Smashers before they are freed by a Flag-Smasher-loyal policeman, which is a bit bizarre -- but I kind of like that butler, so why not. The GRC plan of evil evictions is shut down. Bucky gets into an emotional moment of meeting with Mr. Nakajima and telling him about the fate of his son, and thanking Dr. Raynor for helping him. Contessa Fontaine meets up with John Walker, who now wears a new black U.S.Agent suit. All is peaceful with Sam and Bucky... while Sharon gets her pardon, only to reveal that she basically engineered all this to infiltrate the government and sell government resources to the highest bidder.
Ultimately, it's not a perfect show... but it's most certainly a fun watch and its length does mean that it doesn't overstay its welcome. If nothing else, the Sebastian Stan/Anthony Mackie/Daniel Bruhl banter will make you laugh.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- We've covered most of the stuff that needed to be covered regarding continuity or characters adapted from the comics in my review of episodes 1-3. Perhaps the only real new one here is the fact that, well, Sam Wilson's Captain America costume is a dead ringer for his comic book counterpart's Captain America outfit, complete with wings and everything.
- Walker's execution of Nico is framed similarly to the comic-book Steve Rogers killing Baron Blood, the first time in modern comics that Earth-616 Captain America kills someone explicitly.
- Sam tells Joaquin to 'keep them' regarding the damaged wings. In the comics, Joaquin became the new Falcon when Sam became the new Captain America.
- Previous Movie Continuity Nods:
- Episode 4: The idea that the Super Serum amplifies whatever was originally there is said by Erskine in Captain America: The First Avenger. Many musical cues are also taken specifically from Winter Soldier and Black Panther. Baron Zemo's role in Civil War that caused King T'Chaka's death is brought up; and Sam's old career of counseling veterans with PTSD was seen in Winter Soldier.
- Episode 5: Sharon notes that Batroc used to be in an Algerian prison, the fate that befell him after Captain America: Winter Soldier. The Raft was first seen in Civil War, and various other MCU-related shows (like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage) have mentioned it.
- Episode 6: Sharon uses the same disguise nano-mask that was used by Black Widow in Civil War, as well as Agent 33 in Agents of SHIELD. Batroc mocks Sam's Captain America outfit as a 'bird costume', which is how the government refers to it in Civil War much to Sam's chagrin.
- The only new character to be introduced in these episodes is Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine, most famously being an extremely skilled member of SHIELD and acting as Nick Fury's love interest.
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