He’ll definitely be a major talking point going forward in the series.
If you haven’t watched the first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier yet, go ahead and do that first.
We’ll wait…
Ready? Okay, let’s go!
It doesn’t happen until the very last scene, but we’re introduced to a brand new Captain America, who appears to be holding the shield that the US government thanked Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) earlier in the episode for donating to the Smithsonian Museum.
So what do we know about this new Captain America, and why is he going to be a problem for our titular duo of heroes?
Well, that is because he is actually John Walker (played by Wyatt Russell, son of Kurt), and in the comics, he is better known as Super Patriot.
Believing that Steve Rogers’ ways were too antiquated for the modern world, the Super Patriot is a staunchly violent defender of America, his actions going down the more “blow stuff up and ask questions later” route, as opposed to the previous Captain America’s attempts at global democracy.
Considering that the other villains revealed in the first episode of FWS are the Flag-Smashers, who literally want to tear down country borders, you can imagine that their ideology won’t go down well with the new Captain.
There is plenty more history behind Super Patriot in the comics, and while right now we don’t have anything more than his chin to go on, it is probably fair to say that the new face of America being such a flag-lover that it leans into extremism… well, you can see why that might be fairly topical today.
The show was originally intended for release in August 2020, which would’ve put it right at the tail-end of Trump’s administration, but was delayed and swapped its place in the Marvel schedule with WandaVision due to Covid-related delays.
The extent of Super Patriot’s villainy is still a guessing game – it could be the kind of in-plain-sight-all-along from WandaVision, or it could be the bait-and-switch from Iron Man 3 – but either way, geopolitics and American nationalism do appear to definitely be on the table right now. So let’s see what Disney and Marvel do with him…
We go in-depth on the new Captain America and loads more from the first episode in our brand new podcast TBR Spotlight, which you can listen to right here:
The second episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will arrive on Disney+ on Friday, 26 March.
Clip via Disney Ireland
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
