“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” had one job: make us care about a shield. It mostly does. Marvel Studios’ second Disney+ series, created by Malcolm Spellman and directed by Kari Skogland, runs six episodes and finished its only season on April 23, 2021. It is not a victory lap, and it does not try to be. It is a show about a Black man being handed the most loaded symbol in American pop culture, and it is at its best when it stays in that discomfort.
Trailer, via Marvel Entertainment.
Sam Wilson and the weight of the shield
The premise is simple. Six months after “Avengers: Endgame,” Steve Rogers has bequeathed the mantle of Captain America to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). Sam is an Avenger and a former pararescueman trained in aerial combat with a wing pack. He is also Black, and the show knows exactly what that means.
Mackie has said the story portrays the shield as a burden. He framed the character’s central question bluntly, asking how a Black man can represent a country that does not represent him. That question is the thesis of the entire season, and the series earns it more often than not.
Skogland said Wilson needed “to engage in both a public and private conversation of what it means for a Black man to pick up such an iconic historically White symbol.” The show stages that conversation in small rooms — a bank, a family boat, a government hearing — and those are its strongest scenes.
Bucky Barnes, Zemo, and the Flag Smashers
Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is the other half of the title, and the weaker one. He is an enhanced soldier, Steve Rogers’ best friend in the 1940s, presumed killed in World War II, later a brainwashed assassin whose programming was removed. Now he has an identity crisis.
Spellman noted that Barnes has done “nothing but fight” in the last 100 years, and that the series could not avoid his trauma. Stan said the character struggles with his murderous past while adjusting to the 21st century without Rogers. Co-executive producer Zoie Nagelhout said Barnes works to “unburden himself” from his life as the Winter Soldier, though the darker side still surfaces.
That is a lot of weight, and the show carries it unevenly. The therapy scenes are flat. The Zemo material is not. Daniel Brühl returns as Baron Zemo, and the series gives him a strange, dry comedy that the rest of the season lacks.
The Flag Smashers are the season’s central antagonists. They are enhanced with a recreation of the Super Soldier Serum and believe the world was better during the Blip. Erin Kellyman plays their leader, Karli Morgenthau. The group is the show’s biggest missed opportunity.
What the season gets right
Wyatt Russell as John Walker is the best addition to the cast. Marvel liked how his “unique energy” differentiated Walker from Wilson and Barnes, and that instinct paid off. Walker is a soldier handed a symbol he does not understand, and Russell plays the unraveling without asking for sympathy.
The supporting bench is deep. Emily VanCamp returns as Sharon Carter. Danny Ramirez plays Joaquin Torres. Adepero Oduye plays Sarah Wilson, Sam’s sister, and the family material grounds the show in a way the global plot never does. Georges St-Pierre, Don Cheadle, Florence Kasumba and Julia Louis-Dreyfus also appear.
Marvel Studios said the series would be more of a reflection of the real world than previous MCU projects. That is true in the broad strokes. Spellman also framed it as a progression from the themes of racial identity in “Black Panther” (2018).
The show’s best episodes are the ones that trust this. The ones that do not — the ones that turn into a globe-trotting action serial — are the ones that sag.
Where the season stumbles
The Flag Smashers do not work. Their cause is stated, not felt. Their leader is underwritten. The show wants us to see them as sympathetic and dangerous at once, and the writing never commits to either. By the finale, they are obstacles rather than people.
Mackie was initially hesitant about the series. He felt it would not match the quality of the MCU films and did not want a Black actor to lead Marvel’s first failure. He was won over by the script. His performance justifies that confidence, even when the material around him does not.
Here is how this reviewer ranks the season’s major threads, from most to least successful:
- Sam Wilson’s arc from reluctant heir to Captain America
- John Walker’s collapse and what it says about the institution
- Bucky Barnes’ reckoning with his past
- Zemo’s return and his oddball chemistry with the leads
- The Flag Smashers and their cause
That ranking is not close. The top three carry the season. The bottom two are why it never becomes great.
The show also inherits a structural problem from its format. Six episodes is not enough to service two leads, a villain, a conspiracy, a family drama and a global plot. Something has to give, and what gives is the antagonist.
The finale and what the shield costs
The season does not fully solve its own premise. It stages the question beautifully and then resolves it with a speech and a costume change. The resolution is earned emotionally, not politically. The show wants credit for asking, and it deserves some, but not all.
What works:
- Anthony Mackie’s grounded, patient lead performance
- Wyatt Russell’s John Walker as the season’s sharpest invention
- The family scenes with Adepero Oduye as Sarah Wilson
- Daniel Brühl’s Zemo, a rare tonal success
What does not:
- The Flag Smashers, who never become characters
- A finale that resolves too much with too little
- Bucky’s therapy subplot, which stalls rather than develops
The show’s real legacy may be simpler than its themes. It put a Black actor at the front of a Marvel series, and the franchise did not collapse. That should not have been a question in 2021, but it was. Mackie’s hesitation was reasonable. The answer turned out fine.
The season is worth watching for the Wilson material and for Russell. It is worth arguing about for everything else. That is a better outcome than a safe, forgettable six episodes, and it is why this one sticks.
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