Film Theory: The 3 BIG Twists Of Falcon and The Winter Soldier! (Captain America)

look i know that disney is hyper aware these days of what the internet's going to freak out about baby yoda and mandalorian boom immediately broke the internet slow pan up on captain america holding thor's hammer and end game nothing better evan peters as quick silver and wand division big boner energy that's a boner with an h that's his real name don't hit us with that one youtube that's not on us that's a disney thing they know the theories they know the hashtags but most of all they know how to manipulate the memes but for their new series falcon and the winter soldier i've got something they'd never think of something that would be on a complete other tier of iconic ladies and gentlemen to you i present the meme kick welcome punch make him call it a falcon punch just have him say it once just once disney show me your moves [Applause] hello internet welcome to film theory the show where our national colors are red white and click bait green so let's say for a minute that you're marvel congratulations on your boatloads of money but you also have yourself a problem in avengers 3 had your big bad throw a literal moon at people and it wasn't even his finishing move in the last major film you mixed together a decade's worth of every character that has the potential to sell an action figure you killed off the guy that started it all so how do you top all of that well if the two disney plus installments that kicked off this new phase are any indication the strategy wasn't to go wider it was to go deeper sure one division on the surface was a kooky offbeat riff on sitcom tropes but underneath it was an emotionally devastating exploration of being trapped in your own personal prison of grief trauma and loss and now their newest installment the falcon and the winter soldier seems to be doing the exact same thing what on the surface appeared to be a rollicking buddy cop action movie with two relatively overlooked faces from the big team ups is in actuality a series tackling the issues that come along with a superhero wearing a national flag as a costume you know like the fact that not everyone on the planet sees that flag and immediately thinks oh hey there's the good guy aren't the stars and stripes a little old-fashioned ah nothing quite like a disney plus series that covers all those family-friendly topics like geopolitics national identity the treatment of military veterans racism and what it actually means for a superhero to also be a symbol of a country oh boy i'm gonna have to block so many uncles on facebook now that new episodes of this are coming out but true to its sister from another mr series one division you can bet that this one is also gonna have its fair share of twists and turns meaning it's time for us to do what we did with wanda and friends take a crack at breaking apart everything that's gonna happen in the show before episode 2 hits the airwaves the streaming waves it's all just the internet these are all just glorified internet videos we can agree with that right they're on the same status as this show suck it disney but just because the metaphorical bright shiny object this time is politics doesn't mean that marvel isn't gonna throw in some diabolical twists and shocking reveals and even though it's early in the series there are definitely some clues out there that made us think that we might already have this one figured out or at least we're gonna try okay so the early setup for the falcon and the winter soldier looks like this sam wilson aka the falcon starts the series off with an immediate twist despite steve rogers passing on the captain america mantle to him during the conclusion of endgame sam decides yeah you know what nah hard pass instead he decides to gift the shield to the smithsonian's captain america exhibit we need new heroes one suited for the times we're in hey i will have you know that chris evans biceps are timeless most ungrateful gift getter ever anyway instead of donning the shield sam keeps busy in two ways the first is helping his sister with her financially strapped business where he comes to realize that there are some things that not even superheroes can overcome like the bank and that's kind of a joke but also not really things tighten up funny how things always tighten around us i'm on your side after all he's a hero is there any chance and of course you could say no that i could get a selfie with your arms out are you serious yeah turns out that saving the universe doesn't pay all that well sam's storyline is rife with undercurrents about american racism economic hardship and it's a clear allegory for the unique difficulties faced by military veterans trying to return to normal society i guess we can rule out avengers 5 being called the subtlety war when he's not battling lone officers the falcon's other preoccupation is helping friends in the us army seek answers about a new group of troublemakers calling themselves the flag smashers this new group of villains wear black and red masks and claim to believe in a world without borders stating that things were better during the blip call themselves the flag smashers was that a new thing bad guys give themselves bad names basically they think that the world is better during the blip oh also one of the flag smashers seems to have super soldier strength but he's wearing a mask like the rest of them so we can't see who it is yet uh-oh who's that reveal gonna be it seems like the show wants us to wonder if bucky is being bad again and might not even know it himself but since the internet didn't learn its lesson from wand division people are already sure it must be wolverine or deadpool or daredevil heck i wouldn't even be surprised if there were still some mephisto hangers on mephisto mephistos i believe mephisto is still coming and to make everything just that much worse for sam the first episode ends with the shocking reveal that the government lied about agreeing to retire the shield instead they announced that they've selected their own new captain america and unlike the original this one is not here to be a hero for everybody while we love heroes who put their lives on the line to defend earth we also need a hero to defend this country oh and uh bucky's here too for reasons i guess honestly he can't stop having nightmares that helpfully advance the plot also his name's in the title of the show so obviously a lot is already going on but even if it's not your literal job to dig through kevin feige's recycling bin for youtube content you can probably see why some people are going to be rage posting about the show's debut episode in one episode you've already introduced bucky a disabled vet struggling with ptsd sam confronting injustice of all forms while receiving the old thank you for your service but not that much one radical organization that's against the idea of nations well the new captain america is all about murica first i mean i guess once your main character is literally wearing a country's flag as his uniform while he runs around punching people whether you intend to or not you're kind of telling a story tinged with political messaging in fact it's the whole reason the franchise exists in the first place marvel back before they were called marvel put captain america punching out hitler on the cover of their first issue what's such a big deal about that well this was before the u.s had actually entered world war ii at a point when much of the country still didn't believe we should be involved and prominent political voices like the america first movement said that we should leave those nazis alone bad take but it was a popular take at the time there's captain america being like no i'm a flag punching him in comic book form but now it's time to talk theories in much the same way that a lot of fans who knew their marvel lore were able to guess that wandavision's agnes wasn't really who she said she was before the show even started airing it'll come as no surprise to learn that the smug looking guy wearing the riot cop version of a captain america suit will turn out to be one of the big bads of the series need proof well what falcon in the winter soldier seems to be pulling heaviest from is the works of the late mark gruenwald gruenwald wrote the captain america series for 10 years from 1985 to 1995 and was dedicated to using captain america to explore real issues about patriotism politics and american values in a context that his mostly young readers could respond to gruenwald made it a point to create villains that would be specific to captain america as opposed to generic foes as such his steve rogers battled a mix of both super villains and real world evils like bigotry militant groups and political corruption also steve was a werewolf for a while they can't all be winners but gruenwald's masterpiece was the 1987 captain america no more or just the captain arc where steve refuses to follow a government directive he disagrees with and is officially stripped of his title of captain america he's replaced by his former rival a man named john walker and uh wouldn't you know it but that just so happens to also be the name of the replacement captain in falcon in the winter soldier hmm what do we know about this guy in the comics walker starts as the character super patriot a hashtag spawn version of captain america he's arrogant he's a sellout he's just an all-around not good guy for instance to boost his fame he stages a fight against a group of fake extremist supporters of captain america to make it clear that he is america's true patriot gotta say though for as obnoxious as he is he does have this iconic line of ma'am if uncle sam wanted me to be mickey mouse i'd do it anyway the tldr of this guy is that he embodies the idea of corrupt patriotism patriotism taken to dangerous extremes often resorting to using extreme force even killing people with his bare hands he's eventually booted from the captain america title and adopts the name u.s agent but his use as a symbol is pretty consistent across the franchise he's the don't version of captain america so seeing him put on camera just looks more and more like marvel building up to a bad guy avengers team something that we've talked about in a previous theory walker as the anti-cap white vision as the anti-vision evil black widow and thaddeus ross from their new movie maybe a return from agatha or wanda herself and red hulk or abomination because every team needs their hull of course that is talking a long ways out but the pieces are definitely starting to come together let's look a bit more short term though because here's the thing if there's a twist in the falcon in the winter soldier it's probably not that the new captain america is a bad dude everyone can see that coming and it's also not that zemo is going to show up because you know he's in the commercials so let's instead talk about the flag smashers in the comics flag smasher not an extremist group but rather just one dude was another mark gruenwald creation he's pretty much supposed to be a super villain anti-patriot who believes that national allegiances no matter what they are are responsible for the world's evils as such he tries to undermine all world governments through his network ultimatum which i am not kidding was an acronym for get this underground liberated totally integrated mobile army to unite mankind yeah that is some heavy aardvark right there oh you don't know aardvark aardvark that's my acronym yeah it stands for awkward and ridiculous dumb verbiage attaining real cringe you gotta spell cringe with a k to make it work also flag smasher had a mace for smashing flags i don't know maces just make everything cooler anyway it's probably for the best that the flag smasher group in the show only seems to be taking the name and the general ideology but you can immediately see how the flag smashers make sense as a villain for a series about who gets to be the new captain america they're against national symbols captain america is one of those national symbols cut and dry except there's one major problem with this the mouse think about it the mcu is all about connecting everything to everything else and not just in terms of continuity between movies characters and streaming shows this media empire is built on people from different backgrounds assembling how else could you have a norse god of thunder and an i shoot arrows good man team up connection is good in this series walls and isolationism is bad it's a confluence of corporate creative synergy so organically executed that you can feel the ghost of walt disney himself saluting from beneath the matterhorn or his cryogenic freezing tube or wherever they're preserving his body being pro-global not only delivers a progressive feel-good message it comes with the added perk that the whole globe now wants to buy your merch in this way disney's interests seem to agree with the ideology if not the methods of the flag smashers which begs the question why would a studio set up a bunch of characters who espouse pretty much a punk rock version of not only their entire franchise philosophy but also their entire business model to be the villains of their series they wouldn't unless they wanted to look like that's what they were doing to surprise the audience and deliver a pointed message about what heroes are meant to look like and as sam said embody who they are today and that my friends is why we're calling it at least one of the big secrets waiting to be unveiled in the falcon of the winter soldier is that the flag smashers are not the big bads that the show wants us to think they are after all in the comics even the original flag smasher actually turned against ultimatum when he learned that some of his then recent funding had been coming from the red skull so in a similar vein could it be that the flag smashers in the show mean well but are actually being misled by a villain manipulating them from behind the scenes maybe someone like zemo who has shown in civil war that that's exactly how he likes to operate as for what that means or how it specifically plays out well that's probably a bit too early to say especially given that both bucky and zemo being back raises the possibility that we're dealing with mind control and people being puppeteered into doing evil's bidding or maybe more likely the flag smashers don't exist at all and the government just made up a false flag threat so john walker's captain america could have an arch enemy right away my money's actually on that one that the flag smashers are actually an inside job i don't have a lot of proof to point out for that one but i like the narrative angle and it's very reminiscent of the walker origin story that i mentioned before where he attacks a fake group of extremists supporting captain america to achieve national headlines and buy in for himself or and this one is admittedly the long shot what if there was a recurring captain america franchise character who was almost always absent for long unexplained periods of time but also always happens to show up exactly where they need to direct steve or his allies in directions that move the story in necessary ways someone whose backstory is oddly piecemeal and whose interactions with steve were always a little bit uncomfortable in context someone who is scheduled to show up as a part of this series as well what if that character sharon carter has been a villain this whole time all right probably not but hey did you know that red skull has himself a daughter maybe she inherits the family business just saying they're all just theories film theories and cuts you

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 2,187,235

Rating: 4.9200268 out of 5

Keywords: the falcon and the winter soldier, falcon and the winter soldier, falcon and winter soldier, falcon, winter soldier, marvel.captain america, disney, diisney+, marvel theory, dark avengers, flag smashers, marvel agatha harknesss, the falcon and the winter soldier episode 1, falcon and winter soldier episode 1, falcon and winter soldier episode 2, falcon and winter soldier trailer, who is the new captain america, film theory, film theorists, matpat, film theory marvel, mcu, marvel

Id: jZitMleGcuc

Length: 13min 50sec (830 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021