Issue 1

September 27th, 2019

Writer expands on past review of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”

THURS. | 05-20-21 | ENT

On Friday, Apr. 23, the final episode of the new hit Marvel show, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, was released on Disney Plus. This episode was the finale of the six-episode series and it was quite a conclusion.

The show has been building up the plot over the last five episodes of a new league of villains called the Flag Smashers. This group’s goal was to bring things back to the way they were before half of the world’s population was destroyed by Thanos. In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the Flag Smashers were being forced out of their homes by the government and wanted equality. However, their methods were not the best and they quickly resorted to extreme violence.

The most interesting part of this new villain group is the way Marvel made the viewers sympathize with them. They showed us their soft sides and put us through loops to confuse the viewers who was truly good and who was bad. The show was very unique with the way it portrayed the conflict and made viewers question the heroes. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a great new edition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and has brought many new questions to the minds of the audience and some answers to their old ones.

This series, and specifically the final episode, does a great job of addressing problems in modern society while staying in the Marvel universe. It strongly addresses racism with controversy behind Sam (played by Anthony Mackie), a black man, being the new Captain America and him speaking up about it by confronting government officials at the end of the final episode. There was also a new character introduced in the series named Isaiah. He was also a super soldier similar to Captain America.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier FINALE

Graphic by Jake Bradsher

However, he wasn’t given any of the recognition and in fact was thrown in jail because he was a black man. This show had a huge impact on the MCU community and it’s obvious that Marvel stepped out of their comfort zone to make it the best they could. Near the end of the final episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Sam Wilson AKA The Falcon gave a speech to government officials addressing both the aforementioned race issues and the immigration issues that started the Flag Smashers’ anger. I was very impressed with Marvel for addressing these real-world issues in their new show and it makes me even more excited to see what they have coming next.

Marvel has quite an impressive legacy with millions of fans and a full cinematic universe they have single-handedly created. The expectations for Marvel are set very high and they did amazing with this new journey and the characters it introduces. It is always interesting to predict what Marvel could possibly pull next out of their bag of tricks. They are constantly doing what we least expect and I think it’s wonderful.

There are multiple new additions to the MCU that have been recently announced like new movies about Black Widow, Spiderman and Thor. There have also been a few things we haven’t even heard of yet in the movies like Shang-Chi, a movie set to release on Sept. 3, 2021. Fans have been discussing what these new movies will be and how they will work into the MCU canon. No matter what we predict, I’m sure Marvel will have some sort of trick up their sleeve.

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