The falcon and the winter soldier investigate the question of whether there can be a black Captain America. Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel Studios hide subtitles
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Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel Studios
The falcon and the winter soldier investigate the question of whether there can be a black Captain America.
Chuck Zlotnick / Marvel Studios
Warning: There are tons of spoilers going on here regarding the final episode in season one of Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
It’s hard to imagine a better week for TV fans to meet a Black Captain America.
Days after the world exhaled in relief as Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd. Marvel revealed Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson as the new Captain America – a poignant argument why a black hero would stand up against a defense of a country that often abuses people who look just like him.
The reveal came during the final episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a Disney + series that mixed zippy battle scenes and great cameos from underutilized Marvel movie characters with weighty conversations about the nature of heroism.
The consequence of the unveiling was underlined by a new series title that flashed at the end of the season finale: Captain America and the Winter Soldier. As any true superhero fan knows, the original Captain America – Chris Evans’ blue-eyed dreamer Steve Rogers – decided to go back to the 1940s and live his life as a normal man at the end of Avengers: Endgame. Rogers’ final act in this film was to hand over his old shield to Sam Wilson as an old man and encourage his ex-buddy to carry on his heroic legacy.
But it might not be easy to make a black man an icon of America at a time when police brutality and systemic racism are front-page topics.
Although the first season of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier focused on a complicated plot in which superpowered freedom fighters became terrorists, the real purpose was to spend six episodes transforming the Falcon. We watched him become a black hero able to shoulder Captain America’s red, white, and blue Vibranium shield, being aware of all the problems he was going to face.
“Every time I pick this thing up, I know that there are millions of people who will hate me for it,” Wilson said in a poignant speech in the season finale. “Still, I’m still here. No super serum. No blonde hair or blue eyes. The only power I have is to believe we can do better.” At a time when the average person is risking their safety to protest the brutality of the police and doing so much to make America better through the hard work of serious people, this type of speech feels like a rally.
In the comics, Marvel’s storytellers long ago realized that Captain America had the greatest impact when he challenged and defied the nation’s extraordinary propaganda rather than reflecting it. So it was especially enjoyable to see this series create a Captain America for a new age – when so much of the nation’s systemic racism is directly challenged.
This also explains why so much on this series felt so underdeveloped outside of Sam Wilson’s storylines, especially the supposed bad guys, terrorists / freedom fighters, the Flag Smashers. These were average people who had ingested a substance similar to the “super soldier serum” that gave the original Captain America his increased speed, endurance and strength. If you need to delve into the complicated backstory of the Flag Smashers, here you can Read it here.
Suffice it to say, these villains were so average they barely motivated Wilson’s Falcon and Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldiers to bond. The Flag Smashers also gave the heroes a reason to use the expertise of a villain designed to kill anyone who takes a super soldier serum, Daniel Bruhl’s Baron Zemo.
I wish the show had spent a little more time with John Walker, the PTSD-suffering ex-soldier who was originally chosen as the new Captain America by unsuspecting American officials – only to lose the title when he was one of the Flag Smashers murdered. Walker, played by blue-eyed celebrity son Wyatt Russell, starred in the final episode with another compelling character, Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a clue that we’re about to see more of the two.
Here, Walker has been primarily positioned as a nightmarish example of what happens when an insecure, damaged man chases Captain America’s coat – and super soldier serum – for the wrong reasons. (I still don’t understand why his only punishment for killing a subjugated terrorist suspect in broad daylight was losing a job. That sounds familiar to me, though.)
I’ll also be jumping into the superhero fandom rabbit hole a bit more to complain about another thing in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier: the battle scenes. Marvel’s superhero films have always paid attention to how each hero’s power compares to others, even across films. So it always irritated me a bit that these Flag Smashers, who are essentially average – albeit desperate – people given high speed and strength from a serum, could successfully take on the Winter Soldier, a highly skilled assassin with appropriate speed and strength, a vibranium arm and who fought against the original Captain America several times for a draw. OK. I feel better now.
Black characters who take on subordinate status always rub me in the wrong direction. So it was a revelation to see the argument on this series that all of the performance-enhancing serums, propaganda rallies, and traditionally white bread hiring decisions in the world cannot surpass a dedicated black man who is determined to defend his nation while he is she at the same time holds responsible.
I’ll be honest: as a black comic and superhero fan, I wasn’t always in love with Marvel’s theatrical version of Sam Wilson / The Falcon. The movies always reminded us that he was Captain America’s second fiddle – in some ways, the character himself, a proud black, was inexplicably encouraged. “I just do what he does slower,” said Wilson, nodding to white hero Steve Rogers in a memorable line from the 2014 movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Pooh.
Black characters who take on subordinate status always rub me in the wrong direction. So it was a revelation to see the argument on this series that all of the performance-enhancing serums, propaganda rallies, and traditionally white bread hiring decisions in the world cannot surpass a dedicated black man who is determined to defend his nation while he is she at the same time holds responsible.
Getting this two-step defense and accountability step in place could be the greatest feat this new Captain America accomplishes.
And this black superhero comic book nerd can’t wait to see him try.
