TV Review: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” successfully spread its wings, soared, and stuck the landing with style
78/100 “sweet”
By Quinn Marcus
After the impressive popularity explosion of the MCUs first Disney+ series, WandaVision, and having witnessed the unfortunately dissatisfying conclusion to an otherwise solid story, I was very excited to see what more The Falcon and the Winter Soldier would bring to the MCUs ever-changing canon. Overall, I wasn’t disappointed in any way, shape, or form, in fact, I enjoyed this show more than WandaVision itself. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier takes place sometime after the events of Avengers: Endgame, Steve Rogers (a.k.a. Captain America) has died of old age, and the world governments are scrambling to piece their Earth back together after “the blip.” Sam gives up the role of Captain America, handing over the shield to the Smithsonian, but things take a dramatic turn when the government approves a new Captain America, a U.S. agent by the name of John Walker. Meanwhile, Bucky (the Winter Soldier) is haunted by nightmares of his past and struggles to maintain a social life.
That’s where I’ll leave the plot explanation because if you’re one of those guys who likes to binge after all the episodes have come out, you should experience the show for yourself. So, what did I think? There was never a bad episode, not even a mediocre one, all of them were consistently decent-excellent. Unlike WandaVision, whose once fascinating story kinda fell apart towards the end, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier managed to keep itself afloat largely with the help of Bucky and Sam’s entertaining character dynamic. My main issues reside with the fact that the show tended to pander quite a bit on its very obvious themes, and it shows, especially in the finale, but all of the messages were relevant, so I gave them a pass. Also, the show struggled to keep my interest in the first half of the series, it felt like it was resorting to the good ol’ buddy comedy style where there’s a lot of fighting, they crack jokes and head home.
However, the second episode four rolled along, I was thrown back in. The show took an unexpectedly dark turn, asking the question, what does Captain America even mean, what does he represent, and most importantly, who can ever replace Steve Rogers? All these fascinating questions were handled extremely well with the use of visual parallels to older films, and just a really committed cast. Anthony Mackie’s acting and character developed a whole lot more with this series. I’ve always been more of a Bucky fan, and Sebastian Stan also killed it, reprising his role as the conflicted Winter Soldier. Wyatt Russell tended to be a little over-the-top for my tastes, but I think he handled his character mostly pretty well. Erin Kellyman played Karli Morgenthau, leader of the terrorist group known as the Flag Smashers, she and everybody in the group did a really good job, but I wasn’t all too interested in their plot-line. In fact, I didn’t think the villains (if you can call them that) were quite as well-realized as they could have been, their motivations didn’t move anything past: “government bad, there should be no borders in the world because why not.” The action sequences were another aspect that delivered spectacularly. The stunt work put into this film was a true marvel, and some fights really got the adrenaline pumping, particularly towards the end of the series. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ticked off all the expectation boxes in my opinion, if not always surpassing them. This was a really fun action series that frankly never disappointed me, and the MCUs still got my full attention for any future projects.