The Falcon and The Winter Soldier – One World, One People Review

In the end, the grand message of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier was a simple one – With great power comes great responsibility. Some of our characters learned it for themselves, some failed to learn it and paid the ultimate price, and some had to be taught it by our new Captain America in a stirring speech worthy that felt strangely out of place coming from the Sam we spent the past six weeks watch struggle with so much of his identity. Taken as a single entity, it all felt like the perfect end to a competent but narratively thin MCU film. Which, ultimately, is exactly what TFATWS will likely be remembered as: A perfectly average MCU outting. And that’s a real shame, considering the key moves that happened over the course of its six episode were designed to shake things up in the MCU from here on out. Unfortunately, while the writers were making sure their characters learned the value of wielding power responsibly (or, in the case of Sharon Carter, manipulating your way into even more power), the writers didn’t take that lesson on for themselves.

One of the key tenets of writing is that your characters need motivation for making key choices throughout their arc. And you need to make it clear to your audience just what those trigger points are. Why is the Falcon so reluctant to accept the mantle of Captain America? Is it because he’s still mourning the loss of his friend? Is it because he doesn’t feel he has the skill set? Is he scared he might fail? Is it because the systemic racism in America has made him wary of not only the US government but also of how the country at large will respond to him in the role? Well, in the series, it turned out it was a little bit of everything – with each piece given precious little time within the wider story, creating a jumble of a character arc that never really got ironed out in the end. Why did Karli want to stop the GRC, and ultimately resort to murder as a tactic? Well, she didn’t like how the GRC was failing those in their camps . . . but I still have no idea why she escalated to violent bombings, outside of the fact the story needed to make her into a clear-cut baddie. Why were Bucky and Sam content to fight side by side with John Walker this week when they were declaring him to be a loose cannon and dangerous in the last episode? Is he forgiven for his actions already – since the MCU has a policy of no consequences for characters when it needs them to be useful as a key character in the future? The ball was really dropped there – was killing the Flag Smasher really bad, or was it only bad insomuch as that it was seen by the whole world? And then there’s Sharon Carter. Why did she become the Power Broker, and why is she planning to continue her work as an underworld kingpin with governmental clearance? If I thought the show failed at fully developing the character of Karli and her motivations, boy, did they absolutely punt when it came to fleshing out Sharon’s heel turn.

With Karli, the writers failed to lay out the path to explain how she went from a vigilante with a worthy cause to a murderous, violent bad guy (something, something, Super Serum makes you bad, something, seemed to be the general thought process there). But with Sharon, a character who was burned by the US government – like Sam and Bucky – but who opted for taking the morally gray path, we absolutely needed more runway to build up the reveal of her as the Power Broker. And I get that the writers likely thought this would be a huge revelation so they wanted to wait until the end to make it . . . but myself, every critic I know, and most of the normal fans of the MCU had her clocked as the Power Broker several episodes ago. A reveal only works if you’ve done the work leading up to it. In this case, as with the heel turn of Karli, TFATWS failed to do the work. We need to understand more about Sharon’s disillusionment with her past work, why she’s willing to take the risks she is taking, and how she had the skill set to amass the level of power she has attained. After all, she was so good in her past, limited, MCU outtings that Steve Rogers entertained romancing her. How did we get from there to here? Sure, it’s possible this is all going to be revealed to us at some point down the road (much like how the Dark Avengers are in their early stages at this point and their full impact will appear later), but – and I feel like a broken record here – you only do a TV show to have the time to delve into characters on a deeper level than you can in a film. This was the chance to spend some time untangling Sharon’s arc, but nope, we had to spend precious time failing to provide character development for all the other characters within the series.

And that’s the biggest disappointment of the show for me. With WandaVision, I walked away knowing more about Wanda and Vision than I did when the show began. With TFATWS, I don’t know anything more about Sam or Bucky. The arc for each was completed by the end of the finale – Sam put on the suit and is content with his new role and Bucky is now apparently cured of his multiple layers of PTSD and guilt (which, ugh, such a waste of time and a complete failure to really let us see Bucky do the hard work he needed to get himself out of his rut – particularly glaring when Sam specifically told him to “Do the work,” and then we didn’t get to see any of his conversations showing him doing it – the MCU is going to MCU) – but there was no actual character development. We learned nothing new about what makes these men tick, we just learned who they were and how they can fight without their fellow Avengers around to help out. Six hours and we’re no closer to understanding Bucky’s thought process than we were when it began. What a shame. And then there’s John Walker who is good? Bad? Whatever the story calls for him to be? Again, we’ll see him down the road, but I can’t tell if he’s a ticking emotionally stunted time bomb ready to go off at the slightest provocation or if we’re supposed to believe he’s really a good guy who was just blinded by rage this one time.

Now, I’m not a monster. I teared up when Sam showed Isaiah his portion of the Captain America exhibit (and boy, do I wish the series had spent more time on Isaiah’s history, as that story was deeply impactful and would have made a great comparison to Sam’s personal struggles, rather than offering us a brief expositional piece that was neatly “wrapped up” by the finale – there’s so much packed into his experience with the government and the Super Soldier program that correlates to real world history that the series could have capitalized on, and that could have made some of Sam’s own struggles with being a Black man and taking on the role of Captain America more potent and clear). I think Sam will be an interesting and fun Captain America. I’d love to see Bucky smile more. Sharon Carter as a villain, at least on paper, has potential – assuming they are willing to do the work with the character and not just turn her into another Karli, a two-dimensional bad guy who only does bad things when the heroes need someone to kill. And I’m very excited to see what Julia Louis-Dreyfus does in the MCU (again, her scene was a breath of fresh air in an overwrought episode). But I can’t help wishing the series had done for Sam and Bucky what WandaVision did for its titular characters. TV is such a great medium because it allows for long-form storytelling that films can’t provide. When you use TV to tell a stretched out film arc, you rob your audience of the nuance and character beats that TV provides for writers to work with. We could have had so much more than what we were ultimately provided with in TFATWS. It’s a real bummer that we didn’t get the chance to know Bucky and Sam better.