Re-Cap: The Falcon and The Winter Soldier - Episode 6 | Black Cap in white

I genuinely wondered if Sam would actually become Captain America in this show. But the fucking did. And y’all. It was a great moment. I was torn on it though. Not because of the way it was handled or feeling that Sam didn’t deserve it. But because of the bitter part of me feeling that America didn’t deserve Sam - something which the show is not oblivious to.

I’ve really tried to avoid comparing WandaVision to The Falcon and The Winter Soldier because there is no point. They are 2 very different shows with different approaches. But I have to say this one thing. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’s finale was as iffy as WandaVision’s. It was better. But plagued by the same issues. Most notably that it seemed to disregard key things which had occurred in earlier episodes, because...reasons. Marvel Studios still has this bad habit of giving us stories with all of this tension and mess, but then having it all tie up a little too neatly by the end, without really acknowledging the gravity of what we’d been watching prior. Marvel Studios wants a nice ending every time where the villains and the heroes' questionable actions are never questioned, and I’m tired of it.

But something that The Falcon and The Winter Soldier does with its ending over WandaVision is present situations and put characters in positions which will have a HUGE impact on not only the MCU going forward, but the legacies of characters and names that we once knew. There’s A LOT left on the table when this episode ends, and it’s easy to see why this was going to be Marvel Studios’ first show drop on Disney+. There’s a lot of setup, and I imagine there’s a connection to Black Widow too.

One setup I thought we’d get is the show ending RIGHT as Sam becomes Captain America. But nope. 2 minutes into this shit, he shield tosses and flies through a window in his new suit. This entire episode is spent with Sam as Cap, which is a huge payoff that I wasn’t expecting.

Sam becoming Captain America is a great moment. My only issue with it was everybody else’s reactions to it. I felt that the spectacle of seeing Sam in a new suit with the shield, doing all of his superhero shit was trying to distract from just how neat his transition to Captain America was.

Everybody is so accepting of Sam as Captain America from the offset, that it kind of underplays everything that happened in episodes 2 and 5, and what Sam’s entire arc for the series has been. I really feel that what we needed was perhaps one episode between between 5 and the finale where we see Sam as Captain America, but there’s some naysayers and haters, and people saying ‘Not my Cap’, to really show why Sam was hesitant to become Captain America in the first place, and to show that Isaiah wasn’t wrong. Then his heroism in episode 6 is what wins people over. I felt that just making everything hunky-dory was just such a Marvel Studios thing to do; where-as staying true to the world of this show, which was made to mirror this world that we live in, would have made more sense to me. To just shove all of the issues into some long-ass speech Sam makes at the end of the episode was lazy. And we’ll get to that speech.

The only person who isn’t impressed with Sam as Cap and seems genuinely disappointed is Karli. When Sam first sees her upon taking on the mantle, she looks at him in disgust and says ‘I can’t believe you of all people bought into that bullshit’. This is a sentiment I felt that Sharon should have shared too, because was talking about the hypocrisy of Captain America and patriotic heroes only 2 episodes prior. Yet now she’s all ‘The suit looks good on you’ - which is a whole lie, because that sut is ugly as fuck. Yes. It’s comics accurate down to the last detail. But it sho’ is ugly.

Sam being Captain America should have caused more friction than it did. Not just because I’m a piece of trash that likes mess, or because I feel there has to be Black trauma in EVERYTHING, but because the whole entire show was highlighting that Sam being Captain America would not be easy for a WHOLE bunch of reasons. Because Sam is Black. Because Sam couldn’t detach the shield from Steve. Because a whole government completely passed on Sam. Because of what happened to Isaiah. Because somebody else was adamant that they were Captain America. I like the message of taking things into your own hands and creating your own destiny. After all, this is part of the American dream. But to have every moment of struggle and resistance just conveniently no longer be an obstacle was strange to me. It was just a complete wipe of everything that happened in episode 5. Episode 6 seemed to be SOMEWHAT aware of this, which is why Sam addresses it in his speech when he speaks to the GRC senators on camera, making his first televised debut as Captain America. Speaking of that speech, let’s talk about that, because I had some issues with it.

When Sam descends like an angel with Karli’s body (a great visual and a potential metaphor for many a thing), he is then cornered by the GRC senators and a film crew, and he lays some truths bare. Sam’s speech touches on a lot of great points, and many lines in it are powerful. But as I was watching / listening to it, I couldn’t help but feel that it was at odds with what we’d seen over the course of the show, and that it was a bit of a cheap way of addressing shortcomings in the story, and leaving more of the episode free for typical MCU action, which whilst entertaining, felt relentless at at the expense of the story.

The main senator refers to the Flag-Smashers as terrorists and Sam is like ‘Don’t call them terrorists’. But...they are terrorists though. We’ve spent the past month watching them rob banks, steal medical supplies, bomb buildings and kill people. The Flag-Smashers literally just stormed a building, put people in a truck and tried to kill them all. I get that Sam is empathetic and that his whole thing from episode 4 when he spoke to Karli was being able to see her hurt and her pain and connect with her in ways nobody else cared to; but to just erase and disregard what she did!? That shit is dumb. You can be a good person and be sympathetic to somebody, whilst still acknowledging the things they did wrong and holding them accountable. There is no justifying some of what Karli and the Flag-Smashers did. It was wrong. And regardless of the speculation of the original virus outbreak plot of the show changing because that shit happened for REAL real, I can only go on what was presented to me as part of the show. And the show just depicted the Flag-Smashers as criminals and terrorists. The nuance that episode 2 seemed to put up front was just snatched away in episode 3 when Karli decided to blow up a building and kill innocent people.

Then Sam also goes on to talk about how when these Senators are making these big decisions, there should be people in the room who represent the people who will be affected by these decisions. All truth. All tea. But Sam didn’t put himself in this space and challenge the Senator when he saw the shield was given to somebody else after he handed it to the Smithsonian. Yeah, we all make mistakes. But look at all that happened because of Sam’s initial decision. There should have been an admission of accountability from Sam, to show that he made a mistake, but if there’s a chance to rectify it, you should always take it, just as he had done.

Sam’s speech also conflated Sam and Karli’s experiences. Sam understood Karli’s plight and had more sympathy for that girl than anybody else, including us viewers. But to have such a strong stance on it was weird, because his fight wasn’t exactly the same as Karli’s. A lot of the stuff that Sam said in this speech were things I think Karli should have said episodes ago. Because one of the most glaring issues with the Flag-Smashers is that they just came off like spoilt children who didn’t get their way. They said ‘One world, one people’, but that was kinda it. They became one note. There was no real sense of them hoping to achieve a bigger purpose or a goal, to actually influence change. As a result, Sam’s speech felt like one based on a different version of the show to the one we'd been watching. And it may well have been.

A better and more obvious overlap of Sam and Karli’s experiences actually would have made sense plot wise. Something the show didn’t pick up on, that I thought it might have, was that Karli was a woman of colour. Sam and Karli both found themselves pushed to the fringes, but sought about trying to make things right in different ways. But nothing in the plot really had their narratives cross in that way. But now suddenly Sam is literally like ‘One world, one people’. I found it strange.

As Sam’s speech went on, it became clear ‘Oh, they’re trying to make this a catch all moment’. Sam is directing so many pointed comments to the Senator, who I feel should have been a very clearly defined character who was causing problems. Only the eagle-eyed woulda caught that the main senator Sam is speaking to is the same guy who trialled John Walker in episode 5, who was also the same guy who told Sam ‘You made the right choice’ in episode 1 when he handed over the shield, who was also the same guy who announced John Walker as Captain America at the end of episode 1. Better signalling to viewers that this is a smarmy US politician who doesn’t care about anybody who isn’t of use to him and / or his personal and political agenda would have made Sam’s speech more poignant, and really shown how US politics is self serving - something which Sam also touches on in his speech.

As I said, Sam’s speech made some good points. But it felt like it was addressing things that didn’t make immediate sense to what we’d been witnessing for the past 5 episodes. And this was kinda the finale all over. A glossing over which seemed to just push the events of episode 5 and just about the entire show to the side.

John Walker in episodes 4 and 5 was clearly unhinged and needed therapy. That man was going through it and had many an unresolved issue which went far beyond Lemar’s death. And when he turns up in episode 6 with his hubcap shield to beat Karli’s ass, he still seems like he’s going through it. But then he just becomes the Captain America he shoulda been all along. He even does a little mission gig with Bucky and Sam, like the 3 of them weren’t fighting to the near death days before. And Bucky and Sam don’t seem to have any concerns of what John might do if he runs into Karli or another Flag-Smasher, knowing that he killed one of them a few days ago. It felt like there was a step or an episode missing between 5 and 6.

I have grown to really like John Walker. Even when he was in full on villain mode, there was a nuance to him that I found really interesting. And it’s funny how despite looking like a dickhead when he was first introduced as Captain America, that he started to look the part once he took the serum and became a menace. But I felt they did his character a slight disservice in episode 6. Him doing the right thing at the right moment was right for his character, but there should have been another step to him getting to that point. There was no remorse shown from him about the fact that he killed somebody. There was no bad blood towards Bucky and Sam for breaking his arm and taking the shield. There was nothing from the Senator about how he’s still running around and clearly on camera still wearing the damn Dollar Tree Cap outfit.

Overall, I like the arc we got with John Walker. But it was expedited as fuck. Even as cool the moment he became U.S Agent was, his character having such a funny and cool disposition felt at complete odds with the man we’d been seeing for much of this episode and also the past 2 episodes. But at least he’s not dead. Wyatt Russell is great in this role and I’m glad we’ll be seeing more of him. I just hope they keep him well layered and really keep it at the forefront that he is not level-headed and the kind of person who will make the wrong calls and act on impulse.

Then there’s Bucky, who felt completely side-lined in this episode. Whilst I feel we got a decent enough arc for Sam, I was left thinking ‘Well, what about Bucky?’. Episodes 1, 2 and 4 did such a great job of setting his character up and making Bucky confront his past as The Winter Soldier, and then it was all about Sam, as though The Winter Soldier isn’t one of the characters in the show title. Again, I felt like we probably needed one more episode to flesh Bucky out just a tad more, so we feel there was better closure on his arc. Following Sam’s tough love in episode 5, we do get a scene of Bucky breaking the news to XX, but it’s such a rushed scene, which is so awkwardly written. And despite episode 1 and 2 making such a big deal of Bucky in therapy and really highlighting how much he needs it, the show chose to have Bucky just quit therapy and tell his therapist ‘I’m fine now. I crossed off all the names in the book.’ No Bucky. That’s not how therapy works. It would have been far better and showed really growth and acknowledgment on Bucky's part if he had stayed in therapy and we got a scene of him in a session being open and communicative. Again, an instance of this episode just disregarding old shit.

Episode 6 was entertaining. The scale and the scope of the action was movie level. There is absolutely no distinguishing all of the action in this episode from a movie. But it did feel at odds with previous episodes. Cleverly, the show pretty much closed all of the main plot line in episode 5, so it could just turn around and be a 40 minute action movie. But it did so at the expense of not really fully closing all of the necessary gaps. And in some instances, logic and things which had been established in earlier episodes just went clean out of the window.

The elephant in the room being that Sam is not a super soldier. Something that I feel should have been a topic of discussion and concern on multiple occasions; especially from Bucky. And yet, we see Sam get knocked into a wall of concrete pipes, and then fly out of it like everything’s cool AND then stop an armoured vehicle from going off the edge of a building. Sam becoming Captain America suddenly makes him stronger. I guess. Despite him getting into fights in episode 2, 4 and 5, where he went down after one or two hits. Sharon said in episode 3 that she could never step foot in the US again, and yet here she is in big ass New York. She wore that nano-tech mask for all of 4 seconds, before taking it off and then just wandering around without it. Karli gets shot twice in the gut by the Power Broker and dies, despite being shot a couple of times by Zemo in episode 4 and healing fast enough to be able to parkour all about an abandoned building and then run away. Meanwhile Sharon who took a slug to the gut seems pretty much fine.

And then there’s Isaiah Bradley. Isaiah told Sam to leave his name buried, because it could put his (and his grandson’s) life in danger. And yet...Sam puts up a whole section for him in the Captain America exhibit. It was a beautiful gesture (I cried) and a great form of closure for Isaiah who was one of the best things about this show. But it goes against Isaiah’s concerns over threats to his life, which both Sam and Isaiah seemed to completely forget about.

Make it make sense.

For all of me shitting on this episode, it did wrap up all of the big arcs in mostly satisfying ways. I feel The Falcon & The Winter Soldier did a better job with its finale than WandaVision did. However, it suffers in the same way, in that the finale devolved into typical final act MCU shenanigans. The heavy lean into action worked in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier’s favour, because this is the identity of the show and the world that these characters are from - so it felt less egregious than it did in WandaVision. And props to Kari Skogland for the direction, because despite all that was happening in different places, I always felt like I had a beat on the locations in terms of what was happening and where. Not once did I feel ‘Wait a minute, where the fuck is this!?’. Thinking about it, this is something the show did really well in every episode. Whenever there was an action sequence which took place in different areas of a location, there was always a sense of the space and how the areas are connected - it’s easy to map.

But where episode 6 fell flat for me was with the characters. Everybody was just conveniently placed and slotted into roles and places to serve the action and the moment, even if it contradicted what we’d seen these characters go through for the past 5 episodes. I felt content enough, but also confused. Every character’s arc closed just a little too early and a little too neatly considering how much mess was laid out prior. I really hope wonky finale’s don’t become a trope for these Marvel shows, because it’s such a crass undoing of all the great character beats leading up to them.

Something that Marvel needs to start addressing is accountability. We saw Wanda just fly outta Westview like she didn’t ruin the lives of an entire town, and we get similar levels of this in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. Karli did some REAL bad shit, but Sam manages to paint her in the most sympathetic of lights. I’m not saying he shoulda dragged her on live television whilst her body was barely cold. But damn n***a, at least acknowledge she did make mistakes. And then there’s John Walker. It’s like everybody forgot that he killed an unarmed man a few days ago. John had pissed off every single one of the main characters in some way, shape or form; but you’d never know it from this finale, where he teams up with Bucky and Sam, and neither of them question why or show any concern; given that they have witnessed first-hand on several occasions how hot-headed John is and that his impulsive nature turns shit sideways in nanoseconds. Also, Karli didn’t think to tell Sam that Sharon is the Power Broker with her dying breath? Knowing how Sharon is so corrupt that even she had to leave the bitch!?

But hey. We’ve got a canonically Black Cap in the MCU now, and that’s awesome.