Wednesday 16 June 2021

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: New World Order

 "Every time something gets better for one group, it gets bad for another."

This may not be as high concept as Wandaision and, I'm guessing, won't have been as popular. From this first episode is looks like fairly standard Marvel superheroics fearuring several Captain America supporting characters in Stee's absence with a few nice fan touches- it's nice to see Georges Batroc, although sadly there's neither any leaping nor any facial hair on this upper lip. We'll have to satisfy ourselves with the outrageous accent.

I haven't read a Captain America comic since 1994, so there may be allusions to more recent runs that go above my head, but so far it looks as though there's going to be an exciting amount of linkage with the late Mark Gruenwald's seminal yet underappreciated run on Captain America from 1985 to '94. We have Flag Smasher, presumably (so far shown as a group, although perhaps with a super strong leader) and we end with a new Captain America- presumably John Walker?

This is a good first episode, though, giving us a lot of introductory exposition and showing us Sam (with his nifty robotic Redwing) and a pardoned Bucky in a world six months after the "blip". Sam is clearly the star, bequested the shield by Steve: we begin the episode (after an awesome Falcon action set piece) with his declining to be Cap and returning the shield to the US government- only for th episode to end with someone ese being appointed Cap. But we also get to see his family, and his sister's financial struggles, as well as facing both the question of just how Avengers support themselves and what dying in the "blip" does to one's credit rating.

For Bucky we get both his coming to terms with his past actions and the weirdness of living in the present day at the age of 106 with a young body: his only apparent friend is a man close to his own generation, and he struggles with both relationships and friendships. But Sam is very much the focus.

It's a promising start, although this was pretty much a busy first episode full of exposition. But I bet the series ends with John Walker anding over the shield to Sam after failing in a similar way to Cap #350?

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