Hello!
Today I’m writing about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 1, which dropped on Friday 19 March — the points worth flagging, the theories, and predictions for where all of this goes next.
In this post I’ll write up, briefly, everything that caught my eye on the first watch and the Easter eggs, and then get into the theories.
Spoilers ahead
The WandaVision episode reviews from the previous run are here!
For The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode reviews, click the image below!
I’ve started photographing Hot Toys figures for fun recently. Camera is a ZV-1, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.
What I shot this time was
That one.
Hot Toys really is the good stuff.
The quality is absurdly high, and I’ve got about six of them now.
Nothing whatsoever to do with films or TV, but I went to the Hiroshi Yoshida exhibition and the Kashiwa Sato exhibition the other day, so I turned that into a video.
The music for this show comes from Henry Jackman, the same composer as Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
You can probably hear it best in Lemurian Star and Fury on the Winter Soldier soundtrack below. He’s written a stack of seriously cool tracks as far as I’m concerned, so I’m excited lol
Looked like a criminal organisation that only exists for episode 1.
The one on the plane and the helicopter who seems to be the boss is a character called Batroc. Batroc is a mercenary, so presumably LAF hired him.
The terrorist early on is Batroc, the man who fought Captain America on the ship at the start of The Winter Soldier! Never expected him back in this shape lol
Just in case anyone can’t place him, I’m putting up the Batroc who appeared in The Winter Soldier.
In this scene someone says Stark technology is more than the military can handle, so does that mean Sam’s wings are made by Stark Industries? And who is the main engineer at Stark Industries right now, anyway? Riri Williams, the one who goes on to be Ironheart?
The Flag Smashers, who worship the world the snap made. They look likely to be the main villain organisation of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. There are a few mysteries around them, so I’ll get into those in the theory section of this post.
For what it’s worth, the Flag Smashers appear in the comics as well
The impression is a terrorist group out to wipe out nationalism and the like.
Rhodes turns up as a guest, of all people! He was the only one who came to the ceremony where Captain America’s shield is donated, which makes me wonder whether it was a military-only event?
Bucky was pardoned on the condition that he live as an ordinary civilian. He’s already caught up in a fight in the trailer, so you can guess how that goes lol
On that list are the people who gave him his orders back in his Winter Soldier days, looking after Yori Nakajima, and so on.
The fact that he can put together a to-do list this specific suggests he’s completely recovered his memories from the Winter Soldier days?
Like Captain America, Bucky has a gap of around seventy years between himself and the world, so he was feeling lonely.
A really good scene, and it shows the two of them are cut from the same cloth. And it’s probably a coincidence, but the place where Bucky and Mr Nakajima were is Brooklyn, the hometown of Cap and Bucky.
It’d be nice if this show clears Bucky’s loneliness up. Cap could never forget Carter right up to Endgame and decided at the end to walk through life with her, whereas Bucky, as the contrast to that, looks like he’ll make up his mind to live in the present.
In the wake of everything that has happened
Americans are gripped by anxiety day after day
We revere the heroes who protect the Earth
but we also need a hero who protects this country
We need someone who embodies the great values of America
Someone to lift us up once more…
Someone who can be our symbol
The US government has gone and appointed a new Captain America on the grounds that they need a hero who protects the “country.”
Is he the right man to handle that shield… or is he a villain…?
There’s a scene in the trailer where Bucky and the others have the shield, so maybe the new Captain America gets written out straight away
Now for the theory section!
Torres, appearing for the first time in this show, is the character who in the comics takes over as the second Falcon from Sam after Sam takes over as Captain America. But Bucky has taken over as Captain America in the comics too, so there’s no predicting who becomes the second Captain America.
About the scene where Dr. Raynor and Bucky are talking — going by common sense, surely it should be Bucky, the patient, who gets to look at the forest view. Which makes me think Dr. Raynor might not actually be a real doctor lol
Really curious about the relationship between Mr Nakajima and Bucky
I imagine being forgiven by him would take the weight off Bucky’s heart too
The Flag Smashers’ strength was no joke.
Seeing that, Torres and Sam both thought of Bucky, the only person right now who has been given the super soldier serum
In Civil War, the five men and women who used the last of the super soldier serum the Starks had were killed by Zemo. So why it turns up again here is a mystery. Maybe Zemo has managed to replicate it somehow and is feeding it to the Flag Smashers?
Is the new Captain America who shows up at the end of episode 1 an enemy? Or does he turn out to be a coward and get written out? Or does he simply keep the title as the second Captain America? Either way, the comics have given us a Captain America who became a member of HYDRA (it turned out to be a lie), so this new Cap might well be built on top of that setup
Zemo, the man who brought the Avengers down in Civil War, becomes the main villain of this show.
That purple mask is the one
He was a villain called Baron Zemo in the comics to begin with, so it’s very much a case of, finally, the comic-accurate look! Lovely~ lol
Here’s his background in the comics.
A former Nazi scientist, and the man responsible for Captain America’s long spell frozen in ice.
Under the Nazis he developed any number of weapons, a death ray among them.
But the public hated him, so he always worked wearing a mask that hid his face.
Late in the Second World War, while developing a weapon that used a powerful instant adhesive called “Adhesive X,” he came under attack from Captain America, who destroyed the container with his shield. The Adhesive X poured over his head, and the mask could never be peeled off again.https://www33.atwiki.jp/studentx/pages/816.html
Tony is dead, so I’m curious what happens to Zemo’s motive!
And is HYDRA finished for good? Or do they turn up again? Really looking forward to episode 2!
The episode 2 review is here!
On July 24, 202…
But they say
the world the snap made was better