• Before, Falcon and the Winter Soldier have both been sidekick characters to Steve Rogers (Captain America)
• Surprising how head-on the story is on confronting racism
• Theme of tradition vs change
  • Captain America’s shield, what it symbolizes, and what it means to different people plays heavily into this theme
• When Sam (Falcon) comes face to face with Isaiah Bradley we come face to face with what the shield can mean
  • His backstory eerily familiar, mirroring Steve’s
    • He defied his higher ups to go save his comrades
    • But unlike Steve, who was heralded as a war hero and went on to fight in World War II, Isaiah was thrown into jail and experimented on for 30 years, before a nurse took pity on him and he escaped, being pronounced and thought dead, his story long forgotten and never told
      • A prime example of black erasure
  • Isaiah believes racism is systemic and there is not much that can be done, and asks why should someone become a symbol for a country that has never done anything for them
    • “They will never let a black man become Captain America, and even if they did, no self-respecting black man would ever want to be.”
      • Note: To me watching this series, I really loved this quote and what I saw in it was a good reflection of the real world. Police brutality is still rampant in America, and this echoes how you don’t want to support a corrupt institution. Sure, as a black person, you can become a cop and be a “good cop” yourself, but you are supporting a bad institution that allows brutality to happen, and you can’t change it all by yourself. We have seen black police chiefs step down when their officers commit police brutality, because they know as a police chief they must defend them, but as a human being with their own morals, they can’t defend them with a good conscience, and that’s not what they believe, so stepping down is the only option.
        • I believe this show avoided that controversy a bit by having Sam be a self-proclaimed Captain America, the government did not appoint him, and he still has his falcon wings and is doing it his own way. We even see him get Isaiah’s approval.
        • Disclaimer: this is not to say that no black person should ever become a police officer, and there’s no easy answer to a lot of these questions. I’m just stating what I’ve seen and how this show reflects that
    • Sam resonates with what Isaiah is saying, and recognizes if he went through what Isaiah went through, he may feel the same, but chooses to have a hopeful optimism about the future.
• At the beginning, after debating what to do with the shield, Sam gives it to the museum of Captain America and gives a speech
  • “Symbols are nothing without the women and men that give them meaning, and this thing…(picks up the shield) I don’t know if there’s ever been a greater symbol.”
  • Sam is having his own internal battle with what the shield represents to him
    • To him, Steve was the symbol, not the shield
      • Shield was simply branding for a man who gave it meaning with his ideals and heroism and genuine caring for every life, not just his own
    • He knows what the the shield represents to African Americans like Isaiah and is scared of changing this symbol, taking it up himself, and giving it new meaning
      • Without Steve, the shield means something completely different until someone takes it up and puts their own ideals into it, like him
• The government decides they have other plans for the shield than a museum and quickly appoints a new Captain America: John Walker
  • Sam serves as an idea of change throughout the show, John Walker serves a symbol of tradition, the blond haired, blue-eyed Captain America the world is used to, just maybe lacking in the morals department a little
  • John serves as an anti-Steve, he has won medals of honor but lacks the morals Steve had
    • “Steve stood for always doing the morally right thing, but now that the ideals behind the shield are no longer present, the morals held by the country the shield represents are less clear-cut, and often more violent, not to mention the obvious lack of white in his costume.”
      • White in the american flag (and often in general) is symbolic of purity and innocence
      • Red and blue symbolize valor and justice
      • This color choice hints that John Walker will do whatever it takes to achieve “peace” and justice even through compromising means
      • This is furthered when he gets his new costume at the end which is the same but black, furthering the idea of tradition
        • But, in doing so, they have not only lost all purity and innocence (white), they have turned it into a symbol of despair and darkness (black)
    • Walker is so far integrated with the government that his ideals are non-existent
      • The flag smashers represent globalization of the world, Walker represents pro-nationalism, being used as a publicity stunt to channel the thoughts of the leaders in control of him
      • When Walker literally gets blood on the shield by bludgeoning a man to death, the US strips him of his title
        •  The question remains whether he would have been punished if the incident didn’t happen in broad daylight
          • Note: in the courtroom scene where they are stripping him of his title and he is trying to defend himself, he tells them that they made him, which I think furthers this point, and I really appreciated that one line. The government shaped John Walker to be who he was, they gave medals of honor for doing horrific things in war, they exposed him to brutality and let it happen. He is a product of his environment, the environment that the US government brought him into and cultivated. Then, they selected him as the new Captain America because he was a poster child for the US, and they could control him as the new symbol.
        • Interestingly enough, when John is under no-one’s control, this is when we see him choose to save a truck of people instead of going after Carly (who killed his friend earlier in the series)
          • This furthers the idea that Steve was the morals behind the shield, the man making the decisions for the most part for John is the government, who only seem to be working for their own self interest
          • Left to his own devices, John makes a better decision (saving the truck)
        • At the end, we see Walker end up in the hands of yet another crook leader, as his desire to be recognized and be greater takes over
    • Walker represents exactly what Zemo feared; a morally corrupt man who has a complete desire for power, wherever it takes him
      • Zemo: “a desire to become a superhuman cannot be separated from supremacist ideals”
  • Interesting to re-contextualize John as symbolizing white supremacy/racial supremacist ideals up until he takes the serum
    • John is surrounded by supportive people of color in his life, his wife and his best friend both supportive his uptake of the mantle of Captain America
      • Yet, especially with Lamar, the best friend, he is there as a sidekick to John’s story, there to motivate John’s actions
        • Even Lamar’s death is the reason John is provoked into brutality publicly murdering someone
    • John becoming Captain America and getting the serum is also the result of two black men
      • Sam giving the shield to a museum, which eventually makes it into his hands
      • The serum is a direct result of the testing done on Isaiah
  • This is why it means so much for Sam to take up the mantle of Captain America, to be a symbol of change, to take up a piece of imagery that is so saturated with history, and to be giving it a new definition
  • Sam’s whole arc through the show is his philosophy that things can get better, and will get better, and he can be a positive force of change to help that
    • Sam hasn’t had the serum, and represents the ordinary man, but someone who chooses to stand up and fight for what is right

There is one shot I would like to talk about, that I can’t seem to find or get into this post, but it is Falcon, the new new Captain America in his new hybrid costume, descending from the sky like an angel carrying Carly’s body. Sam didn’t want Carly to die, and he wasn’t who killed her. This shot evokes a sadness that we feel from him, that she had to die. It also frames him like an angel, which is symbolic for how he tried to guide Carly, and talk to her, and sway her away from the path of killing people to get what she wanted. This also furthers the point of purity and innocence, with the comparison to an angel, the majority of Sam’s costume being white, and his sadness for Carly, who wasn’t a full grown adult, the purity and innocence of children.

• The most interesting part of it is the topics that it deals with like power and accountability
• Good things the show does
  • Places emphasis on the shield as a symbol and who could be the next Captain America
  • John Walker creates the potential for the deconstruction of a superhero
• Bad things
  • Plot points left unexplained, felt like they tried to fit a 6-hour movie into TV episodes
  • Good ideas but bad execution
    • John Walker slowly eroded into a villain, good chance to have a dark Steve Rogers and critique the idea of a military-backed superhero
      • But he is redeemed in the finale and becomes a sort of anti-hero
    • A lot of promises and references with no payoff
      • Sharon is now a villain, the power broker, and it isn’t really explained at all besides her being left adrift by the US government
  • The lost development means we don’t care enough about Falcon or The Winter Soldier
    • It is the same for Zemo and the flagsmashers/Carly
• Thematically, it is high-reaching but doesn’t deliver

• Most prominent theme refugees
  • Carly is the culmination of this
• Carly and the flagsmashers are refugees from the blip
  • While they have a lot in common with many other refugees, we can compare them specifically to the refugees from World War I
    • In history, these people found themselves stripped of legal protection in their own homes, while also being denied protections in their new homes
      • Some were literally better off committing crimes because a criminal had some rights where a stateless person had none
      • The French migrant workers were relied on for crops and other things, but kicked out and mixed with refugees once they were no longer needed
        • This is spot on, as countries welcomed everyone to come together and help rebuild during the blip and then forced them out
• The show wants us to examine the law, and what it means for Americans to be running around as world police
  • John Walker and his partner essentially spy on falcon using his tech as his tech is government property and they are the government
  • Even though John Walker and his partner are literally military, the fights they have are not considered war and considered more like policing
  • John Walker decided Bucky doesn’t need court-mandated therapy and gets him out of it
  • John Walker kills the refugee civilian and the whole theme of the state of exception is that he shouldn’t have the power to do that
  • The difference between good Captain America and bad Captain America is the ethics behind the person who holds the shield
  • John Walker is punished for killing that person but his argument is that he is no different from the larger organization
    • “I only ever did what you asked of me, what you told me to be, and trained me to do, and I did it, and I did it well”
      • The question is posed of whether John lost his job because he actually did what he did, or because it became a PR nightmare
  • Connection to Nazi Germany
    • Their philosophy is that the law is suspended so anything goes
    • Prominent scenes take place in front of stained glass windows in the shape of stars of David
    • One of the flagsmashers mentions his family’s connection to being Jews in Nazi Germany
    • Zemo links super soldier ideology to supremacy
      • “that warped aspiration that lead to Nazis”
  • This vaguely defined supremacist idealogy is the creation of a being to lord over other beings, to enforce the law, or suspend it based on their own judgment
    • Very related to Isaiah, who is an African American super-soldier who was stripped of his rights and experimented on
      • He comes to learn what violence outside the law means in the figure of the KKK
        • “The famous 332 fight for this country only to come home to find crosses burn on their lawn”
      • The government erases his story once he becomes a problem
        • Isaiah talking to Sam: “You want to believe jail was my fault because you got that white man’s shield. They were worried my story might get out, so they erased me. My history. But they been doing that for 500 years.”
• By the end of the series, Sam accepts the mantle of Captain America and tries to distance himself from some of the symbols troubled history
  • He even speaks up on behalf of refugees
    • Sam speaking to the GRC: “You have to stop calling them terrorists.”
      • GRC: “What else would we call them?”
      • Sam: “Your peacekeeping troops carrying weapons are forcing millions of people into settlements around the world, right? What do you think those people are going to call you?”
  • The show is trying to tell us that things are different and that Sam is a more compassionate Captain America
    • But, is the question really us doing better? Or is it the very system where the exception has become the rule, where anything is possible outside the law? And that does not seem to have changed.