The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s actual big baddie has only begun to make trouble in the MCU

This either came as a total shock, or you guessed it AGES ago.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was not exactly lacking in the baddies department, was it? Straight from the beginning of the first episode, we were re-introduced to Georges Batroc, who we first met way back in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Throughout the rest of the season, we got to meet villains old and new, including Baron Zemo, Countessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, as well as Karli Morgenthau and the rest of her Flag Smashers, as well as Madripoor locals Selby and Doctor Wilfred Nagel. In the final episode of TBR Spotlight: The Falcon and the Winter Solider [LISTEN from 33.43 below], Eoghan and Rory specifically discuss Fontaine's potential bigger plan outside of this series. But, in reality, none of these proved to be The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's big baddie. We've heard of the Power Broker since early in the season, a puppet master pulling all of the strings but who very few people seemed to actually know the identity of. The final episode finally pulled back that curtain, and you were either totally shocked, or seen it coming from the second Sharon Carter appeared on screen back in the third episode. While the actual overarching plot of Sharon is still a bit of a mystery to us - did she always plan on helping Sam and Bucky defeat the Flag Smashers, specifically to get the pardon from the government, in order to be re-instated as an agent? And even the senator's offer - "There may be an opening in your old division." - doesn't make a HUGE amount of sense, because didn't she work for SHIELD? As a secret agent/neighbour for Steve Rogers in Captain America: The Winter Soldier? And wasn't SHIELD effectively destroyed at the end of that movie when it was discovered it had been infiltrated by HYDRA? Well, what was old is new again, as whatever job she's going back to, she's returning as the double agent herself, barely two steps out of the government building before she's offering weapons and technology and secrets to the highest bidder. Having proved to be obviously adept at this world of dangerous duplicity, Agent Carter is going to be a major problem within the MCU going forward, especially if she finds herself having to choose between the greater good and her own growing bank account. Quite why Carter is feeling this need to, as Karli put it, "Control the world that hurt you", is still a bit of a mystery. Is it really entirely down to not receiving an immediate pardon following the events of Captain America: Civil War? Surely, considering half of the planet had been blipped out of existence, the American government had bigger fish to fry than the woman who gave the shield to Captain America? It would stand to reason that Carter has actually be the Power Broker for quite some time, maybe even before we met her in The Winter Soldier, and has maintained that anonymity for years. And as much as we don't fully understand what it was that got her here, we're even less sure of what she's going to do next. But whatever it is, it won't be good news for the remaining Avengers.