The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and its puzzling political ideology

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Disney’s latest streaming ‘event series’ set in the MCU, is the very definition of a mixed bag. It’s a giant, flashy and occasionally ambitious blockbuster shrunk down directly to the small screen format, but it’s also a rushed, messy grab-bag of thematic and narrative threads of which almost none are brought to completion. If Wandavision was a flawed but fascinating experiment in not only bringing the Marvel Cinematic Universe to a serialized ‘TV’ format whilst also serving as a loving tribute to television as a whole, Falcon and the Winter Soldier feels more like an inter-film chore for the MCU, one which exists only to get characters where they need to be for their next film installments- it’s almost embarrassed by its format, opting instead to deliver a half-hearted imitation of some of the MCU’s highlights.

To get it out of the way immediately before delving into any readings of the show’s deeper meanings, I really wish I could see this as ‘turn your brain off’ entertainment and harmless escapism like most of the superhero genre, but Falcon and the Winter Soldier is determined not to let people see it as such. It deliberately goes out of its way to address complex social issues like police brutality, institutionalized racism, refugee crises and PTSD among veterans, an admirable and fascinating choice for one of Disney’s first forays into reaching out to a new audience, but almost none of these themes are explored to any meaningful degree, and the show’s liberal use of the superhero genre’s tropes and aesthetics directly contradict any sort of aspiration toward profoundness. You can’t analyze this series through an apolitical lens and look at it as just dumb action schlock, because the series constantly reminds you how much it resonates with the real world. Every time you try to convince yourself that it’s ‘not that deep’ or that it’s ‘just a superhero show’, the series deliberately reminds you that it’s aspiring to be more than that. Whilst it’s maybe not totally fair to compare any series to HBO’s Watchmen in its attempt to address complex political issues through the lens of superhero media, there’s a stark comparison between that show’s tight, confined narrative of generational trauma and violence, and this show’s grab-bag of under-baked ideology.

One of the very first scenes of the series sees Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson directly engaging in a US military conflict on foreign soil, in Tunisia. We don’t know why the US military is there, nor is it questioned, and Sam gleefully embarks on a rescue mission of US troops, all the while making sure to respect the borders and air space of the surrounding territories (something the US military is obviously famous for). Upon his return, civilians go out of their way to thank Sam and his partner (in full US army uniform) for their continued help and presence in the region. To be fair, the rest of the series certainly isn’t as bafflingly propagandistic as its opening, even featuring some veiled criticism at the past and present misdeeds of the US government and military, but the tone and standards for the series were immediately set at a pretty low bar. Mind you, a Marvel property being a hub for US Military propaganda isn’t exactly unprecedented, but for a show that explicitly acknowledges discrimination and corruption within government and military bodies, opening with one of the most blatant examples of propaganda in the franchise is a little embarrassing.

Before jumping into some more plot (and spoiler)-heavy details, the positives should at least be acknowledged- as expected for a show of this scale and budget, the effects and production design are great and it never once feels ‘downgraded’. The show also continues the MCU’s (belated) increasingly diverse slate of creatives behind the camera, with Kari Skogland being the first (solo) female director to tackle the MCU, and writers like Josef Sawyer and showrunner Malcolm Spellman serving as some of the first non-white voices behind the franchise. The cast is also stellar, bringing some really charming actors back into the fold and giving them far more to work with than they ever had in their film appearances- after twenty-odd films with only a single black lead, Anthony Mackie was absolutely overdue a starring role, and he’s probably the highlight here.

Stylistically, the series worships at the altar of the Russo Bros’ two Captain America installments, which shouldn’t be surprising considering almost every character featured originated in either The Winter Soldier or Civil War, but the show struggles to find an identity of its own amongst all its imitations. The action is choppy and hard to follow, and whilst I’d hardly call the Russos’ action directing virtuosic, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s set pieces are pale imitations of the Greengrass/Bourne-esque intensity they pulled off in their film installments. It also apes the muted and lifeless colour palette of those films in the majority of its scenes, making the impressively high budget feel just a little bit ‘cheaper’ and less pleasing to look at for the sake of ‘realism’. Henry Jackman returns to score the show with some memorable motifs and themes of its own, but relies far too heavily on callbacks to his two MCU film scores- I’ve long been an advocate for the MCU to have some more musical consistency and callbacks to earlier projects, but Jackman’s over-use of his own tracks is often distracting and occasionally comes across as desperate to extract some emotion from more impactful scenes in more coherent projects. Marvel has acknowledged that the main inspiration for Bucky and Sam’s dynamic comes from a quaint moment of levity between them in Civil War, and it shows- for the majority of the show’s runtime, their odd-couple banter feels like its treading over familiar territory, but without the chemistry and sharpness that made their brief interactions in Civil War stand out.

Mackie and Stan do a commendable job, to their credit, and both are at least given some meat to chew on in the realm of character development, even if the exploration of Bucky’s PTSD and trauma very much takes a back seat and skips a few steps to get to its resolution, in a surprisingly touching scene between the two leads towards the end of the series. Sam’s character arc instead focuses on his journey to accepting the role of Captain America. At the very start of the series, he gives up Steve Roger’s shield, a symbol of hope and patriotism, putting it back in the hands of the government that created it. For the rest of the show, he wrestles with the consequences that decision made, and prepares to take up the mantle for himself and become what his friend believed he could be. It’s a compelling arc that retroactively fixes the passing of the mantle that felt a little hasty in Steve Rogers’ final appearance, and it wrestles with some heavy opposition to that succession. Ultimately, it’s Sam’s character that’s the heart of the series, and its because of him that it doesn’t fall completely flat by the end. For a character that didn’t really have much depth in his numerous brief film appearances, his charm and optimism shine through and make it very clear why he’s the one to take up the mantle of Captain America, thanks in large part to Mackie’s magnetic charisma. The rest of the cast often isn’t quite as lucky, with more than one talented actor delivering pretty underwhelming performances, thanks in part to a script with fairly inconsistent characterizations.

There are a lot of recurring characters and new introductions that will likely make fans pretty happy, but some of them felt more than a little bit forced, laying the groundwork for future Young Avengers and other projects. In many ways the series feels like little more than a stepping stone for Sam’s upcoming Captain America movie (and presumably its sequels), and by the time the credits roll, little has changed or been achieved outside of Sam’s acceptance of the mantle. Whilst it’s terrific news that he’s getting even more time in the spotlight, hopefully alongside the rest of the show’s cast for a little bit more development on the dynamics laid out here, I hope Spellman can do something a little bit more coherent with the format, alongside maybe a more experienced director.

Opposite Mackie and Stan is a pretty mixed bag of villains and anti-heroes, of whom the show is unclear about which is which. Daniel Bruhl returns as Baron Zemo, portrayed here as more of a quirky, lovable scamp than the cold-hearted murderer pulling the strings behind Civil War- he chews up every bit of scenery he can find and he’s delightful. The show is hilariously unsubtle and up-front in his introduction, wherein this overtly and obviously Machiavellian figure is asked what he’s reading, only to confirm aloud that it’s Machiavelli, before the camera slowly zooms into the book to confirm that yes, it is indeed Machiavelli. I’d love to give the series the benefit of the doubt and assume that scenes like this were satirical and self-aware, but plenty of the rest of the show’s dialogue drives me away from that conclusion. Nonetheless, Bruhl’s portrayal of Zemo is a bright spot, despite the narrative’s treatment of him- his character’s inclusion never feels fully justified from a narrative perspective, nor does it seem consistent with the ideals of the other characters that they’d break him out of prison to help them track (at that point) a somewhat harmless group of villains.

Wyatt Russell also does a commendable job as John Walker, a US military veteran chosen to take up the mantle of Captain America when Sam returns the shield, and a somewhat muddled portrait of the show’s view on the military. Walker is referred to as the perfect soldier, with three medals of honour from Afghanistan that he later admits felt ‘wrong’ for the acts he needed to commit to earn them. He’s a much less pragmatic Captain America, one far less fond of empathy and negotiation, and much more likely to enter a delicate situation guns-blazing (literally in this case, pairing Cap’s shield with a pistol just like Steve in 1945). He’s a compelling inversion of Steve Roger’s character, very similar on the surface level but slowly unravelled to be far less pure of heart, but overall Walker’s character arc is somewhat of a puzzle. At one point, when he struggles with the dilemma of whether he should take Cap’s super serum to better match up to his opponents, his partner suggests (among several others in the show) that the serum only makes someone the strongest version of themselves, it doesn’t corrupt ones’ character. So when Walker takes the serum and turns into a murderous psychopath (lending the series one of its strongest images and cliffhangers when, in broad daylight and on foreign soil, we see Captain America’s shield dripping with the blood of an unarmed combatant he just decapitated) is the show telling us that this is what’s at the heart of today’s military’s ‘perfect soldier’? Walker is set up as a villain for the show after this act, but is instead offered redemption, teaming up with Sam and Bucky at the final hour to save the day, and is presumably pardoned of all ill-intentions. He’s also recruited by an incredibly strange Julia Louis-Dreyfus cameo, a character who’s seemingly intended to be a recognizable re-appearance from a character supposedly introduced in this year’s Black Widow, but left unchanged in the series as a tonally bizarre anomaly.

So, if neither the cold-hearted assassin who killed King T’Chaka and pitted the Avengers against each other, nor the psychopathic murderous anti-Captain America are the show’s final villains, who is? The answer to that is one of the show’s most baffling decisions, choosing instead to demonize a young girl named Karli (played somewhat loosely by the usually-great Erin Kellyman) at the head of a group of radical left-wing activists known as the Flag-Smashers (yes, really). It wouldn’t be all that productive to read too far into the fact that any left-wing political figures or activists Disney’s franchises always end up snapping and resorting to violence against civilians, but it’s at least worth acknowledging in a show as intentionally political as this one. If it portrayed a compelling portrait of an activist who becomes broken down by the unrepentance of a corrupt system only to slowly resort to violence, then it’d at least have something to say (though I’m not sure I’d trust the intentions of such a story coming from the Disney corporation), but Karli’s heel-turn from peaceful activist to murderer comes at the snap of a finger without any exploration. Plus, long before the Flag-Smashers become even remotely violent, both Sam Wilson and the US Government prioritize them as incredibly important targets to be stopped, even using them as the debut deployment of their new Captain America. The Flag-Smashers and Karli are eventually said to be ‘radicalized beyond salvation’, but why were they such a threat to the US Government when they were just stealing from banks and pharmaceutical companies to save the lives of refugees in Europe? Is the message here to be cautious of the inevitable radicalization of any left-wing political group? In a show with so many other villains, including even institutionalized racism in the US government and corrupt cabals of evil politicians, it speaks volumes that this pro-refugee activist group becomes the main source of evil, and goes from completely peaceful and empathetic to comically evil without any justification.

Maybe the most damning glimpse into the show’s political ideology is in the finale’s closing scenes. The final battle goes through the usual set pieces without much elaboration or development on the part of the villains, and ends with the killing of Karli, who at this point is portrayed as clearly irredeemable. In a show filled to the brim with characters who’ve done far worse than Karli for far less noble deeds, almost all of whom are offered their redemption, it speaks volumes that the only character’s blood that needed to be spilled was hers. The Flag-Smashers’ final goal was to kidnap and intimidate the politicians behind an initiative put forward to re-close international borders and deport the displaced victims of Thanos’ ‘snap’ who re-appeared after five years of absence following the last two Avengers films. These ideals of the Flag-Smashers are affirmed and echoed by both Sam and Bucky at various points, only decrying their means of achieving them, so to some extent, the show does directly condemn the actions of these politicians. When the Flag-Smashers are defeated, Sam speaks directly to the bullish US senators strong-arming the initiative, who brush him off as ‘not understanding’ such a ‘complicated matter’. Through sheer plucky optimism and rhetoric about shedding the labels of ‘terrorist’ or ‘refugee’, Sam Wilson manages to un-corrupt career politicians, putting forth the final message of there being no need to change or revolutionize the broken system of US governance; if the right person simply gives them a sufficiently optimistic speech they’ll suddenly forget their decades of hateful ideology and intentionally harmful policies. The show can’t decide whether it’s a damning indictment of our own world’s military and police injustices within the context of the MCU, or if it’s a fantasy land wherein superheroes are friends of all police and military figures, and can save the day and redeem any amount of evil with an inspiring speech. If it were simply the latter, it’d be so easy to look past the implications of the real-world parallels you might find, and to enjoy the spectacle and heroism for what they are, but when you present those parallels of real-world issues, you need to follow through with the consequences with some level of moral consistency.

Possibly the most compelling, fascinating and tragically underexplored inclusion in the series is that of Isaiah Bradley, a black veteran who was one of the test subjects for a new super serum after Steve Rogers was lost during the Second World War. Bradley was unwillingly and unknowingly experimented on, and then sent into battle likely to die. He’s in many ways the exact opposite of John Walker; a hero unknowingly given the serum and using it only for good, just to be locked up and hidden from the world by the US Government, tortured and experimented upon for decades, rather than paraded around football stadiums as a hero, because he was a black man and not the blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan model for Captain America. His inclusion is a damning indictment of the MCU’s US government that’s for once even more twisted than the reality, and he tells Sam at one point that were he to show his face in public, he’d be killed. So when the series ends with a poignant moment of Sam unveiling to Isaiah his own section of the Captain America exhibit in the Smithsonian and a statue of his likeness, how has that fact changed? None of the people responsible for Bradley’s suffering have faced justice, and the government’s institutional racism is clearly still in place- the show makes a profound and deeply troubling insight of the army and government’s historic mistreatment of black soldiers, only to walk it back completely for the sake of an otherwise-effective emotional reveal.

Regardless, Bradley is a fascinating foil to Sam Wilson’s ever-shining optimism and relative naivety to the world- he’s a cynic, and tells Sam that the world would never accept a black Captain America, and that even if they would, no self-respecting black man would accept the mantle. Sam clearly struggles with this idea, with even his own sister saying that Cap’s stars and stripes don’t represent her, and acknowledges in his final speech that he knows there are millions who will hate him for it. In the end, he proves Bradley wrong through sheer heroism and optimism, just as he proves his sister, Bucky, and the rest of the world wrong. Sam is a black man with no superpowers, stepping pretty effortlessly into the role of a super soldier and an idealized symbol of American values, whatever those are in today’s world. The series closes with the flickering of its title from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to Captain America and the Winter Soldier, a cheap but effective tug at the heart strings to affirm Sam’s worthiness of the title, and for the most part, it feels pretty well-earned.