"The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" Gets Complicated

Spoilers for the first two episodes and "Avengers: Endgame" ahead.

Of the Marvel series that were announced back when the whole Disney+ scheme was getting off the ground, "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" was the one that I was looking forward to the least.  Sam Wilson (Anthonie Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) struck me as two of the least interesting heroes in the MCU.  Bucky in particular had been so poorly handled in some of his previous outings that I had written him off as a fundamentally unsympathetic character.  

The show at least has a good jumping off point.  At the end of "Avengers: Endgame," Steve Rogers handed the Captain America shield to Sam.  But what are the ramifications of a black man becoming Captain America?  What are the ramifications of a black man fighting for America, period?  So, the series opens with Sam donating the shield to a museum, and trying to get on with his life, visiting his sister Sarah (Adepero Oduye) and her kids.  Meanwhile, Bucky is also trying to cope with the loss of Steve and living with the ghosts of his time as the Winter Soldier.  He sees a therapist, Dr. Raynor (Amy Aquino), and looks after an elderly man named Yori (Ken Takemoto).  

Very quickly, however, things heat up.  A refugee rights group, called the Flag Smashers, have gotten hold of a batch of super soldier serum.  They're lead by a passionately idealistic teenage girl named Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman), and bent on causing all sorts of trouble around the globe.  Wary of their escalating violence, the US government has commissioned a new Captain America to help deal with them - one Captain John Walker (Wyatt Russell), backed up by his black best friend, Battlestar (Cle Bennett).  Many other familiar characters end up back in the mix, including Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) and Baron Zemo (Daniel Bruhl), as well as several surprises that I won't spoil here.    

There's a lot of interesting material in this show, but the execution is very, very messy.  This is one of the most adult projects to come out of the MCU yet, looking into the effects of systemic racism, imperialism, PTSD, and the suppression and neglect of vulnerable groups.  The ambition is very commendable, and I like that it takes a sympathetic stance toward the hardships faced by refugees and  minority communities.  These are issues with no easy answers, and the show embraces the frustration of trying to make difficult judgement calls and avoid labelling people as terrorists and villains.  The trouble is, Karli and the Flag Smashers are clearly villains, even though their intentions are good.  They resort to deadly violence at the drop of a hat, and it's impossible to justify their actions.  The show doesn't try very hard anyway, having Erin Kellyman deliver impassioned speeches in the place of actually showing us the refugee crisis.  And while the idea of Karli as a sympathetic Joan of Arc figure is fine in theory, she doesn't work onscreen at all - and sticks out like a sore thumb in every scene she's in.

The arc of John Walker is more successful.  He is legitimately compelling as the guy who's been picked to be the new Captain America based on his service record.  Unfortunately, he's not up to the task, and I don't think it's much of a surprise that he also shows villainous tendencies.  However, Walker is better constructed, and thanks to Wyatt Russell he's legitimately a complicated and interesting figure.  Out of everyone in "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," he comes off the best because he's got the clearest and most complete story.  In second place is probably Zemo, because Daniel Bruhl is terribly charming, and able to give us a much better, more well-rounded picture of the character than we got in previous MCU installments.  I hope they do more with him in the future.  

As for Sam and Bucky, the series does its job of humanizing both of them.  Sam gets more of the heavy thematic stuff, working out who he really wants to fight for and why, while Bucky is still on the road to redemption.  Seeing them both interacting with normal people in normal environments helps immensely in confirming that they actually have personalities.  They're still not close to being MCU A-listers, but this is a good start.  Part of the problem is that they're obliged to spend so much time going through the expected action-adventure plot, and it's not a good one.  The story is convoluted, repetitive, badly paced, and hard to follow at times.  Sam and Bucky are billed as co-leads, but the show's not really about their friendship, and there's a disappointing lack of banter.  

I appreciate that "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" wants to be smarter and more meaningful.  However, all it can do is make these big, symbolic gestures using stand-ins for real injustice.  It has to do an awful lot of work to dance around subject matter that's too political and incendiary for the MCU.  The Flag Smashers are lame villains because they have to embody way too many vague socio-political forces and avoid offending anybody.  I wish they'd been downplayed or left out of the show entirely, since there are already stand-ins for the forces of clueless American military interventionism and past racial injustice that would have made for much better primary foes, and made for a cleaner narrative.   

Anyway, this was a noble effort at doing something different, and I'm all for seeing where this impulse leads in future installments of the MCU.  But Marvel can do better.  They should do better.  

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