‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Sends the Wrong Message About Being Black in America
The Marvel series finale undermines its own bold stab at systemic racism
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Marvel’s series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was doing just fine.
Its initial episodes were action-packed, mature, and solid applications of a couple second-tier characters. The series largely exists because of one funny scene in a car in Captain America: Civil War, and the show has taken great pains to make Sam Wilson/Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) totally worth getting to know. Alas, the series, now concluded at six episodes and available on Disney+, didn’t stick the landing in its finale.
There are a lot of reasons why this is true. FWS features a lot of characters — five proper villains by my count — meaning there are a lot of narrative threads, which the show sloppily resolves in its finale by reverting to being a springboard for future Marvel projects. Technically speaking, as much as I loved every second of the Dora Milaje cameos, there’s no reason for the Dora Milaje to be there. Their presence is explained, but it serves no point in the FWS…
