Marvel released the newest series last week, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a set of six episodes surrounding the lives of returning characters Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) after the events of Avengers: Endgame.
All Marvel fans know that the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) timeline is complicated, and this series complicates it even further. As mentioned, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier takes place after the events of both Endgame and WandaVision, but before the newest Spiderman film Far from Home.
The first episode begins a few months after the Blip with Sam at Steve Rogers (Captain America’s) funeral where he has to decide whether he wants to keep the shield that Rogers gave him, fulfilling his wish for Wilson to be the next Captain America, or to turn it over to a museum or the government (I am not too sure which).
There is sadness flooding through the hearts of Marvel fans everywhere during this scene, not just due to the death of Rogers (played by Chris Evans), but also because of the death of MCU creator Stan Lee – who died in 2018 from heart failure. Stan Lee made cameos in all of his films, the reason behind this being that it was all going to tie together with him playing the old Captain America at the end of Endgame instead of Evans. This made me – and probably many others – feel the loss of Stan Lee all over again.
As far as first episodes go, this one was not too bad (apart from the ending with the reveal of the new Captain America being a complete let down), I really enjoyed seeing more about Sam’s life and his family.
Marvel’s first series WandaVision has set the bar extremely high for the fourth phase of the MCU, leaving fans wondering whether this new series can live up to it, or maybe even surpass it.
I can’t wait to see what the rest of this series brings, with Wilson and Barnes teaming up and the impact that the events of this series will have on the future of the MCU.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is available to stream on Disney Plus.
By Ellie Moylan
Feature image: The Indian Express