This week’s episode of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier took us to the half way point of this story and things are really starting to ramp up as Sam and Bucky had to enlist an old enemy and another old face returned to the MCU.
Episode 3 started with what felt like a call back to WandaVision as the episode began with an in universe commercial. The commercial was for the Global Repatriation Council, which is a group that have been deals with the issues surrounding the changes in the world since the blip. I still think Marvel should have called the Thanos event the snap rather then the blip, but oh well.
After last week’s ending which gave us the return of Baron Zemo, this week was straight into the action with Bucky laying out a plan with how Zemo could escape prison. Rather than his escape being the subject of the whole episode we are surprised with the reveal that Bucky’s description of the plan was a plan that had already happened and Zemo was already free.
Within this one episode we were also able to get more out of Zemo then we previously got from him in Captain America Civil War. It’s explained that Zemo may have leads to the person responsible for recreating the super soldier serum and although Sam in particular has reservations we quickly find the unlikely trio on a plane with a plan to track down the source.
The plan is a little dodgy which has been an unfortunate theme in this series. There have been a few plot points or actions that characters have taken which don’t feel the most logical or natural and this week we get that Sam has to pretend to be some criminal he just so happens to look exactly like.
Zemo meanwhile is being himself and Bucky has to act like the Winter Soldier again, so it’s just Sam who has to actually fake who he is. This doesn’t really add anything to their mission goals, but we do get a gross out scene where Sam is served a drink which is made from a gutted snake. Sam unfortunately has another mishap as his phone rings and it’s his sister and this blows their cover.
The very idea that an Avenger would carry their personal cell phone with a direct link to their family on whilst on a deadly mission is just silly. Still this didn’t drag on too long as the return of Sharon Carter interrupts the situation and Sharon makes the save.
From here Bucky, Sam, Sharon and Zemo head to meet the scientist creating the super serum. We learn that the scientist was blipped with half of all life by Thanos and only when he came back did he continue his work.
In another gap of story logic, Sharon stayed outside and took on 5-10 bad guys single handedly which was super cool, but made no sense. This display of bad assedry was cool but why she stayed outside made little sense. Unlike Sam or Bucky she has no advanced tech or super powers and her being out there just flagged their presence to the villains.
When things really hit the fan Zemo took the opportunity to kill the scientist and whilst it looked like he was going to escape Zemo instead had the opportunity to kick some butt himself and then continued to help Bucky and Sam.
Sharon who unlike Bucky and Sam, has continued to be on the run since Civil War didn’t join the heroes on their continued mission and I’m sure she’ll be back this series, but for now she’s taken herself out the picture.
Whilst all this is going on we see that the new Captain America John Walker is getting increasingly frustrated at people not seeing him as the true successor to Steve Rogers and that he plans to take things into his own hands outside the rules or law. This will probably lead to him becoming a villain for Sam and Bucky to defeat, and it’ll probably be Walker who is the main villain of the series rather than Zemo.
The episode ended with Bucky becoming aware of tech from Wakanda and a surprise visit from Ayo from Black Panther. This follows the trend of the last two episodes of the series which ended with reveals of John Walker and Zemo. It does make me wonder who will be the surprise to show up at the end of next week’s show.
Conclusion
After 3 episodes of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, this was another solid episode of action and returns of Zemo and Sharon Carter upped things a lot. Gaps in logic and a feeling that this is just Marvel action by the numbers rather than this adding lots to the MCU saga do let this down. Let’s just hope we get some big reveals to add to the MCU story over all in the next three weeks.
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