The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – Episode 01

WARNING: This review contains SPOILERS.

In previous op-eds on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I’ve discussed both the franchise’s risk-aversion and moral dissonance, and how it functioned as a virtual arm of the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus—mirroring these institutions’ imperialist-interventionist thinking.  The pieces also touched upon the Disney’s superficial use of diverse representation, hiding their traditionalist and libertarian-conservative ideals behind a patina of progressivism.  The new streaming series THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER fails to break free of these troubling patterns.

Left in the lurch by AVENGERS: ENDGAME, we catch up with Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the Falcon,  and James “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan), the Winter Soldier, several months later.  The first episode of the Disney+ series immediately throws us into the heat of an expensive and flashy battle sequence with film-quality special effects.

Sam deftly swoops through the airspace over Tunisia on a hostage rescue mission, intercepting a military flight hijacked by French-Algerian mercenaries-turned-terrorists calling themselves L.A.F., led by Batroc The Leaper (Georges St. Pierre).  Aside from its unintentionally-funny acronym and the entertaining antics of the former MMA fighter, we learn nothing about L.A.F.   Completely disconnected from the rest of the epsiode, the expensive action sequence whets our appetite for… what?

Falcon’s cheered on from the ground by Torres, who follows his movements, providing eyes on the ground from a military vehicle.  When Sam flies too close to Libyan airspace, he’s told to turn back: mere months after The Blip—the return of half of mankind, wished out of existence by the villain Thanos—the American government wasted no time inserting itself into the Maghreb region.  It’s an action tableau that Hollywood knows by rote, and a large reason why the entire exercise feels so inert.

The tone-deafness continues from here.  Sam and Torres sit at a Tunisian marketplace, bathed in yellow filter—a technique stereotyping developing countries, particularly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa (See: EXTRACTION, SICARIO).  A civilian recognizes Sam as an Avenger and excitedly acknowledges him in a mix of Arabic and broken English, as if rubber-stamping the American military and superhero (read: vigilantes without jurisdiction per the Sokovia Accords) presence.  Apparently there’s no lingering global animus that the Avengers alone decided on a method to manage the Snap without consulting anyone else on earth, or even the wider universe outside of it.

Torres tells Sam about a new terrorist organization called the Flag Smashers.  The U.S. military keeps a close eye on them: the group prefers the world before reversing The Blip, and “want a world that’s unified and without borders”—terrifying to an institution that exists to impose itself within them.  

Living in a world still bowed under the weight of COVID-19 and its devastation, it’s crystal clear how disasters disproportionately affect marginalized communities.  An issue that’s multi-layered and systemic, it involves myriad variables like access to medical care, racism within the medical community, and the fact that many essential workers are minorities.  Devastating and impossible to ignore, the effect compounds.  But in Marvel’s post-Blip world, there’s no sign that a (presumably) collapsed global economy had a disproportionate effect on any one segment of the population.  

Sam responds to Torres: “as soon as something gets better for one group it gets worse for another”.  I hope we get clarification of this statement in future episodes; in this one, few indications exist that there are any systemic inequities in the society they inhabit, either pre or post-Thanos.  Are the Flag Smashers systemically oppressed men and women fighting for what they think will result in a more equatable playing field?  Do they share the mad Titan’s fatally flawed philosophy?  For now the answer is nebulous. 

Back stateside, Sam addresses an audience as massive banners of Captain America’s stoic face looms behind him.  He extols Steve Rogers’ bravery and greatness and other towering virtues.  Here the writers use a Black character to validate Steve’s poorly-conceived ENDGAME bow by-proxy.  Never mind that he left without saying goodbye to Sam, then unceremoniously dumped the shield in his lap after returning from “a life well-lived” in the Jim Crow era with the director of an intelligence agency during the height of surveillance programs like COINTELPRO.  Presumably the world doesn’t know Steve’s whereabouts: Sam speaks of him as if he were MIA, presumed dead.  There are conspiracy theories online that he’s living off-earth.

It’s an elephant in the room that I don’t envy the show’s writers having to dance around; to acknowledge what Steve did would acknowledge that he used Tony’s technology in a way it never intended.  The entire philosophical premise of ENDGAME posits that reversing time to 2018 to prevent the Snap from ever happening would be wrong.  Longing to spare his mother from impending murder, Thor is told the past can’t change.  To prevent time-interference or creating a branching reality, the Avengers must return the Infinity Stones to the exact moment of their displacement.  Only Steve is permitted to rewind a dead woman’s life (and the fabric of spacetime along with her) to live his picket fence fantasy.  Marvel predictably deals with this the way they always do with plot-points that no longer suit them, by sweeping it under the rug, and using the other characters to validate their story choices.

Sam donates the shield to the Smithsonian, thus refusing the mantle.  “It feels like it belongs to someone else; that someone else is Steve”, Sam tells James Rhodes (Don Cheedle, in a welcome but brief cameo) as the two men men observe an exhibit of Captain America-themed WWII propaganda.  Rhodes intuits that people look toward heroes to “fix the world”—too bad the hero they’re honoring abandoned a world freshly recovering from a cataclysmic event.  Perhaps he assuaged his guilt by creating a new sandbox timeline to play in and used his god-like knowledge of the future to “fix” it.

Unsurprisingly, Bucky Barnes doesn’t mention Steve’s name or acknowledge his existence.  We see how he’s adapting to being left alone as a “man out of time” in a future that reviles him.  He experiences a flashback-nightmare of his time as the Winter Soldier, wherein he utters a familiar phrase that will infuriate anyone with a basic understanding of personal agency.

The government conditions a pardon on Bucky’s help hunting down Hydra sleeper agents who fell through the cracks.  This, again, predictably nods to another one of Marvel’s favorite ideas, the “bad apple” in lieu of institutional corruption.  After all, Secretary Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) of the World Security Council who commanded the Winter Soldier.  Neither the Council nor the U.S. Department of Defense takes ownership of Secretary Pierce’s actions.    Stripped of all memories, repeatedly tortured, programmed with trigger words, any competent trial attorney could have easily shot down mens rea, as Bucky’s mind was not his own—rendering a pardon entirely moot.

In court-mandated therapy, the scene erratically, constantly switches between camera angles, perhaps in an attempt to convey Bucky’s brewing agitation and the aggressive prodding of his therapist.  She’s so overtly bad at her job, at one point telling him outright that his desire to live a peaceful life is a foolish pipe dream, I’m convinced she’s a mole or sleeper agent.  Why is it so difficult for Marvel to depict a character receiving healthy and compassionate professional help for their mental health issues?

Bucky’s masculine stoicism extends beyond his tense therapy session.  Everyone can relax now: Bucky Barnes is canonically Straight!  Marvel wants us to know this so badly, he bags himself a date with a sweet waitress less than 10 minutes into his on-screen introduction!  Dating apps confuse him, despite spending his convalescence in Wakanda—a civilization with technology centuries beyond ours.

In interviews Malcolm Spellman, the show’s head-writer/runner, cites the “buddy cop” genre—particularly LETHAL WEAPON—as a key influence on his series.  It’s a shame that Bucky’s  a mere fraction of Martin Riggs’ emotional vulnerability in the face of lingering, life-altering PTSD.  We see moments peaking through; Bucky approaches the father of an innocent witness he killed as the Winter Soldier, driven by a desire to come clean and make amends.

The scene, lasting only moments, wastes so much potential for deeper exploration.  He’s not allowed to cry.  He’s not given any catharsis, not even a meaningful conversation with his elderly acquaintance.  I can only hope the writers genuinely explore Bucky’s guilt and trauma in future episodes.  But how deep can they dig into his past when his childhood best friend ditched him for someone who worked for decades with the recruited Nazi scientist who was his personal torturer?

It seems that Bucky is always in limbo with Marvel. One minute a villain, the next a victim, worthy of the forgiveness of a King and the healing peace of rest, and now again, a villain who must make amends. It’s a confusing whiplash on an otherwise clear fact: Bucky had no control over his actions. It’s fascinating to see the show reject this, and to again, imagine the idea that Steve Rogers willingly left, resigning Bucky to a new kind of servitude. (Almost certainly to a fresh set of “bad apples.”)

As Bucky kind-of wrestles with his demons, Sam goes on a road trip to visit his sister, Sarah (Adepero Oduye).  We learn details about his Louisiana-based family.  Sarah and her two young sons survived the Snap; she took out large loans at high interest rates to get her shrimping business off the ground.  I was excited that we’d finally get an idea of the consequences of the Blip, an event that would be just as devastating to the world economy as the Snap.  Imagine the implications billions of people suddenly wished back into existence! Imagine the psychological and existential effects of being legally dead for five years! Did life insurance policies deny all claims the un-dusted to avoid bankruptcy?  Were the second marriages of widowers and widows who moved on annulled at the reappearance of their first spouse?  What about all the people now homeless because their abandoned houses were purchased by new owners?

Unfortunately, all of these questions are left on the table.  Hopefully they’ll return to the subject later, since the Blip’s inevitable consequences were treated flippantly in both SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME and WANDAVISION.

Sam offers to use his clout as an Avenger to help Sarah secure a new loan.  We learn that Sam didn’t make a salary as an Avenger, not even from billionaire Tony Stark or other wealthy friends and allies.  He explains that they all lived off the contributions of generous members of the public.  There are so many layers to unpack here, particularly in regards to broken system that asks the marginalized to crowdfund their own survival, but none are.

Because Sam continues the fight to prove his legal personhood post-Blip and has no dependable source of income (apparently the military isn’t paying him, either), his loan request is denied.  This is the only tangible proof we’re shown of the life-altering consequences of the Blip and it comes in the form of a bad credit rating; instead the loan officer wants a selfie.  There was an opportunity to explore both the cataclysmic effect of billions instantly returning and the racism embedded within the banking system.  We get a wishy-washy suggestion of both, and acknowledgment of neither.

This shallow treatment serves as a summary for the episode at large.  Anyone expecting to see a Black Captain America will find themselves disappointed; Sam relinquishes the shield almost as soon as he receives it.  He’s introduced by way of less-than-subtle military propaganda, and then recedes into a tepid subplot that only scratches the surface of relevant social commentary; Sam deserved so much more.  Sarah mentions that he left his family to join the Air Force at a relatively young age; I can only hope they’ll eventually comment on the military’s predatory recruitment tactics in low-income, high-minority population areas.

Bucky’s trauma receives similar superficial attention, sidelined for the sake of asserting his gruff heterosexuality.  There’s so much room for the story to grow, but in a show with six episodes, one empty outing feels like wasted opportunity.  This one ends on the revelation that the leader of the Flag Smashers has super strength, and that, much to Sam’s chagrin, the shield passes to a new (white) Captain America (Wyatt Russell) thanks to the intervention of the DoD.  Sam watches the announcement on live television, as shocked and dismayed as we are.  Shouldn’t we have seen all of this coming?  Some of us did.