Beware, contains minor spoilers.
Wow. I don’t know where to start. The newest addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I loved this show; it was amazing. In this review, I will be going through some of my favourite moments of the show, summarising the plot of the show and explain why this show means so much to so many people.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier takes place approximately six months after the award winning 3 hour long movie: Avengers Endgame. It is about the Falcon, Sam Wilson (played by Anthony Mackie), the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes (played by Sebastian Stan) and 4 billion other people returning from dust after the events of Avengers Endgame, also known as the blip. Sam continues his duties as Falcon after the blip, helping out those who need it, and Bucky is trying to make amends with people he had wronged when he served Hydra as the Winter Soldier.
As well as this show being about people trying to cope with life after the blip, this show is also about Sam trying to deal with Steve Rogers handing down the mantle of Captain America to him; at end of Endgame, we saw Steve Rogers, old and grey, returning to the present after returning the infinity stones back to the points in time they were taken from. As Steve sits on a bench overlooking a lake, Sam walks up to him and he passes Sam his shield. And now we’re here, six months later, and Sam is overwhelmed with the same question: ‘Why did he give it to me?’ He believed the right thing to do was to put it away, as a museum exhibit. But what he didn’t know was that the government would give the shield to John Walker, who they would call: the New Captain America. Essentially, the show is about Sam coming to accept that the shield was given to him, not because the community wanted it to be, but because Steve saw a leader, someone who could make a difference and someone who people could look up to.
One of my favourite quotes in the show was spoken when Bucky came looking for Sam to ask him why he gave up the shield; Bucky said to Sam: ‘you shouldn’t have given up the shield’, which Sam replied with: ‘Don’t come here in your over extended life and tell me about my rights’. I loved this quote because it sets up a wider struggle in this show which is also a massive problem in the real world: racism. In the show, Sam and Bucky meet a black super soldier named Isaiah Bradley, who was imprisoned, tortured and experimented on for 30 years for rescuing some of his soldiers; during Isaiah’s time in prison, he was declared dead. When Sam takes the shield from John, he goes to Isaiah for advice, which Isaiah finishes the conversation with: ‘They will never let a black man be Captain America’. This is another one of my favourite quotes because of what that shield represents; it doesn’t represent a single race, no blonde hair or blue eyes. It represents someone who can do the right thing, someone who has guts, someone who is willing to fight for their country and the world, you don’t need a super soldier serum to be Captain America; all you need is belief in yourself that you can be that beacon of hope that people can look to in life threatening situations. What I love about this scene is that Sam walks away thinking to himself: ‘What would be the point in all the pain and sacrifice if I wasn’t willing to stand up and keep fighting’.
Overall, this show tackles real world issues really well and I feel like the fact that such a big problem is being put out in a comic book show means that if people aren’t aware of how bad things are, they can look at Isaiah, who was tortured and experimented on in captivity for 30 years, compared to someone like George Floyd, who was murdered by cops just because of the colour of his skin. I just love that Marvel has brought awareness to such a massive problem and I am so grateful. As I said earlier, the shield isn’t donned by a single race, it is donned by whoever is willing to fight for the greater good. Sam says in the final episode that whenever he picks up the shield, he knows that millions of people are going to hate him for it, but that doesn’t matter to him, because he still keeps fighting for what he believes in: that anyone can make a difference, no matter their background, no matter the colour of their skin.
So just remember this. You can be inspired by a comic book character, and you can be inspired by someone from our world; you could be black, you could be white; you could be rich, or you could be poor. You could come from the harshest of circumstances and keep fighting, keep surviving so you can make a difference in the world. Don’t live in someone else's shadow, take a step into the light and make your own future; we don’t live forever, so make the most of the time you have. We all have power, no matter how little; the question is: what are you going to do with it?
By Trey Mitchell-Andrews
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