Things are really heating up in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and the action this week picked up right where episode 3 left off. Ayo catches up with Bucky and explains why the people of Wakanda may understandably may not be happy that Bucky and Falcon are working with Zemo, who killed King T’Chaka.
She explained that the Dora Milaje would give a limited time before they handled Zemo themselves.
Meanwhile Karli is suffering from the loss of her mother and thanks to Zemo employing the assistance of some street urchins Oliver Twist style it’s not long before our heroes are gate crashing her funeral.
Sam takes the lead here in wanting to go and speak with Karli rather than go in all guns blazing and makes some real progress in finding common ground and opening up communications. This doesn’t lady too long however as the new Captain America and Battle Star are also there and new Cap John Walker is growing increasingly impatient.
This episode really is about the transformation of John Walker from potential but improved hero into becoming a villain and the one thing that is a shame is that with only a couple of episodes left, I don’t see that this character will go on to be a larger part of the MCU. I may be wrong on this, but with Karli being shown as a somewhat sympathetic character here and Zemo feeling more and more like a new Loki who will recur later in the MCU, the series is lacking a major baddie.
The intro of Walker put him in the obvious light of an antagonist who we as audience shouldn’t be on the side of, but they were smart enough to give us some glimmer of vulnerability. There was always the chance that Walker could prove himself to be worthy of the Captain America mantel and that be his story arc. It is instead that everything that has happened since then has just been building to his eventual transformation into evil Cap.
Being a hot head, Walker got into conflict with the Dora Milaje and promptly got his ass kicked. The humiliation of being bested in combat by them when they didn’t have super powers would lead him to his opportunistic gaining of powers later in the episode.
It was also interesting to see Bucky disarmed literally. He obviously got his new arm from Wakanda and that the Dora Milaje know how to take his arm off so easily shows that Bucky is forever cursed to be somewhat under the control of others.
After Walker decides not to give Sam a full 10 minutes to speak with Karli, she runs and it is Zemo who catches up to her. Despite being enhanced with super soldier serum Zemo downs her with a bullet and proceeds to destroy the remaining serum. For a moment I genuinely thought it would be Zemo who took the serum, but then bam!
Zemo got blasted in the face by a high kick from Walker and Walker managed to pick up the final undamaged vial of serum. He speaks with Lemar Hoskins (Battlestar) about taking the serum in theory and Lemar says he would. In the continued pursuit of the Flag Smashers Sam sees that Walker is now enhanced and this moment felt a little rushed for me.
Karli accidentally kills Battlestar and this sends Walker into a rage who catches Karli’s fellow Flag Smasher Nico and he proceed to kill him. This was a shockingly brutal scene for the MCU, and the shock value is heightened by the civilians who all stand around and watch and film the kill on their smart phones.
In one sense it could be explained that new Cap killed a terrorist who killed his friend, but the damage this will do for his public image may be beyond repair.
Personally I would have had Battlestar’s death as the cause for Walker to take the Super Soldier serum and then go out for revenge, but understand that this rushed sequence of events was to get us to the point of Walker’s transformation to the dark side.
Conclusion
Overall this was another exciting episode of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier and whilst Sam and Bucky took a bit more of a back seat this week, the establishment of a strong foe in Walker will give them a dangerous threat to contend with in the remaining two episodes.
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