Hello!
Today I’m writing about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 4, which dropped on Friday 9 April — the points worth flagging, the theories, and my predictions for where all of this goes next.
In this post I’ll briefly write up the things 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 back when it aired, are here!
Click the image below for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode reviews!
I’ve started photographing Hot Toys figures for fun recently. Camera is a ZV-1, shooting RAW and editing in Lightroom.
This time I shot in Tachikawa.
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 sweet called Turkish delight that turns up at the start is
A Turkish confection made by adding starch and nuts (walnut, pistachio, almond, hazelnut, coconut) to sugar. It is known in the Mashriq, the Balkans and Greece, and in Europe and America as well. In English it is called Turkish delight, meaning “the delight of Turkey.” The texture is soft and springy, close to Japanese yubeshi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_delight
that.
In the first Narnia story this sweet is treated as the sweet of desire, a forbidden apple of knowledge sort of thing. Second time watching — wait, I know this sweet from somewhere
As for why it was treated as the sweet of desire
In The Chronicles of Narnia it appears as what you might call the “forbidden apple,” the thing Ed, a son of Adam, gives in to. But according to one account, the original recipe for Turkish delight is said to have used cannabis, and in slang “Turkish delight” is said to mean sweets with cannabis in them. If that is true, then it really is a forbidden sweet you must not lay a hand on.
https://allabout.co.jp/gm/gc/79241/2/
is the story.
Well, I had no idea.
Nico of the Flag Smashers says
and then gets butchered by Captain America right after — the irony really landed there. He seemed like quite a decent guy, which makes it sad.
Sam and the others get their location exposed on social media, and social media is clearly a keyword in this show
On top of that, Bucky tearing up the bar in episode 3 gets filmed the way the first image above shows, and there’s a similar scene at the end of episode 4 — it really feels like the show is putting a lot of weight on this. My guess is that this social media thread is (probably) going to be what gets Sam recognised as Captain America the world over.
Zemo’s stance on the super soldier serum doesn’t waver an inch, and honestly he’s so cool for it
“Playing at revolution is over.
Give the serum back. Or I’ll kill you.”
The message Karli had been getting was from the Power Broker.
So the mystery of the message that came in episode 1 is solved right here!
Just as predicted, he went and took it after all~ lol
And it feels like it’s amplifying the worst parts of John, which is seriously bad news.
Lemaaaaaaaaaar (I cried)
After episode 3 I thought Lemar would turn superhuman too and go off the rails, and instead he dies and becomes the trigger for John going off the rails (I cried)
He went and killed an unresisting suspect with the shield, in front of a crowd
Well now — never thought I’d get to see mild splatter like that in the MCU.
Wait, am I watching The Boys?! is where my head went lol
The thing I want to flag is the contrast with Steve.
Steve actually raises the shield over Tony in Civil War exactly the way episode 4 does, but unlike John he brings it back down in order to stop the fight.
I think the closing stretch of episode 4 finally drew that decisive difference between the two men all the way out.
It’s been stated outright that episode 5 has quite a surprise in it
Well, who could it be?? The Netflix lot like Jessica Jones, the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. crowd, or Doctor Doom?? lol
Added around 15:00 on 16 April 2021
It’s started to feel to me like Sharon and Cap had a child during those five years, and that that child is Cap.
And the prediction is that that child becomes the next Cap!
Two episodes left from here, so let me predict what kind of ending this show arrives at.
For what it’s worth, I still think the show ends with Sam taking on the Captain America name after all. So I’ll write about the bits that look like setup for that along the way.
• John and Lemar take the serum if it’s there
• Sam doesn’t
That contrast is superb, but it also looks like it feeds into the question of whether what made Steve Captain America in the first place was having the super soldier serum or not.
As for Bucky’s brainwashing, the Dora Milaje stated outright at the start of episode 4 that he has overcome it, so that probably won’t be touched on again.
The problem is his past crimes. He has felt guilty about people like Yori this whole time, but as of episode 4 nothing has been resolved at all. Or rather, it doesn’t get touched on.
Zemo got away nicely lol
Any more screen time than that and the story would get muddled, so for now it looks like he won’t be involved much in the main plot.
In the comics he was a HYDRA executive, so if the finale drew something like him restoring HYDRA to power~ that would be fun!
Ah, but he might come to kill the Flag Smashers and Isaiah, who are tied to the super soldier serum.
Karli felt a connection in her conversation with Sam and looked quite likely to rethink things
But at the end of episode 4 John kills one of her crew, so from episode 5 onwards the Flag Smashers, and the people all over the world who have been swayed by their thinking, look set to spiral further and further out of control.
After episode 4 I thought John would either go on the run or end up under house arrest with the US government, but watching the trailer above, maybe the three of them work together.
Right — having rambled through all of that, my personal prediction for how this show settles is that Sam works with John and the complete inheritance of Captain America is carried out by way of social media.
What I mean by that is
All of those come together: John and Sam and the others team up and fight the Flag Smashers, footage of it goes up on social media, and people all over the world are moved. And Sam becomes a genuine hero, and decides himself to become Captain America and be the one who leads the world.
— that’s what I think happens.
• Added: Bucky also accepts who he is now and apologises to Yori face to face
— I think that happens too.
On July 24, 202…
I used to look up to Captain America too