Hello!
Today it’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 5, which dropped on Friday 16 April — the points worth flagging, the theories, and predictions for where all of this goes next.
Quick notes on everything that caught my eye on the first watch, the Easter eggs, and the theories after that.
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 to do with films or shows at all, but I went to the Hiroshi Yoshida exhibition and the Kashiwa Sato exhibition the other day, so I tried turning that into a video.
Not the way I predicted it after episode 4 — there’s no working with John at all, and it ends in a complete break…
That face on John, the one where he’s made up his mind, is the beeeest!
It takes Bucky and Sam working together to finally put him down, so John is pretty strong.
The way Sam goes to wipe the blood off the shield, and his face while he does it — so good.
Unlike in Japan, trials involving American service members go through a military court.
But John gets let off on the strength of his record up to now.
Come to think of it, the Secretary of Defense isn’t Ross any more.
Former secretary Ross did at least attend Tony’s funeral, so he’s confirmed alive.
Maybe he’s gone up the ranks and is Vice President or something now?
Valentina Allegra de Fontaine was the big-name guest of this show!!!
So let me lay out what kind of character she is in the comics.
Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine learned the intricacies of the spy world from her parents at an early age, and later became a powerful triple agent inside the international spy and terrorist organisations S.H.I.E.L.D., Hydra and Leviathan.
Apparently she also used to be involved with Nick Fury.
Sadly there isn’t much Japanese-language material on her, so going any further than this would take a lot more time and digging — but I think she’s an important detonator for blowing the MCU’s next act wide open! What sort of explosion that turns out to be, I’ll get into in the second half of this post.
There’s one more thing she says in episode 5 that stuck with me. It’s that line about how “that’s sent your value soaring in certain circles.”
Does that mean the Power Broker and other underworld outfits want to extract the serum running through John’s body and mass-produce it all over again? But there shouldn’t be a scientist left in the world right now who can make the serum… well, if you scraped together the research data and so on it doesn’t look impossible…
After breaking out in episode 4, Zemo went to Sokovia. And it looks like he meant to be killed by Bucky there.
Zemo having this habit of trying to die every time he finishes a big job is funny lol
But Bucky isn’t just a killing machine any more, so he doesn’t do it. Zemo is on the anti-super-soldier-serum side too, and yet he says he won’t kill Bucky, so that means the two of them have made peace? Something like that. Also Zemo saying he crossed his own name off Bucky’s to-do list made me laugh lol
Being this attached to the boat felt to me like a metaphor for Sam and the shield. It gave me the sense that people need a thing, or a feeling, they must never let go of. And the scene where his sister ends up saying she can’t sell the boat after all lines up exactly with Sam realising how much the shield (Steve’s feelings) matters, which is lovely.
And it was good that repairing the boat isn’t done alone but by all the people their mother helped over the years, race no object. This boat-repair scene gives me a feeling that in episode 6 Sam gets the world to accept him as Captain America.
Feels like it’s been ageees since I saw a smile from Bucky this clean lol
Sam and Bucky both got so much more appealing this time round! Love them even more now!
John going to see the family to tell them the details of Lemar’s death was frightening. And he lies on top of it, saying he avenged Lemar — no going back for him now…
The acting from John here, and from the sister with that flicker of distrust, was superb.
The painting that shows up at the start of the scene in Sharon’s room is titled The Raft of the Medusa
The picture is built around a drifting raft, the companions who have died on it, and the survivors on top of them calling for rescue. So if it’s hinting at something about Sharon, does that mean she climbed to the top in Madripoor by paying a great many costs (killing enemies and so on) — in other words, that Sharon is the Power Broker?
Bucky’s feelings about the shield and about Steve, and his apology to Sam, were seriously good.
This show has made both of them so much more appealing. Hard to believe they were squabbling like that back in episodes 1 and 2 lol
Sam tells Bucky there’s someone he has to give closure to, talking him into settling things with Yori.
Would be lovely if Yori is saved in the finale. I cried.
Oh that’s cheatinnnnnng!!!! Not finding out about the new costume until next week… lol
Wonder what the design will be? Will it follow the comics and be mostly white? Looking forward to it. And the wings as well, right~
The Valentina who turned up in this show is absolutely going to be the way into Secret Invasion, I think!
First, let me explain what Secret Invasion is.
Secret Invasion is
A major crossover from 2008. An important story that went on to shape the Marvel world for several years afterwards.
The Skrull Empire’s invasion of Earth, prepared over a very long time, begins all at once, and war with the heroes breaks out.
The shapeshifting Skrulls had already swapped themselves in for a great many heroes before the invasion started.
With no way of knowing who to trust, the heroes are pushed to the brink.https://www33.atwiki.jp/studentx/pages/421.html
So as for what part Valentina plays in Secret Invasion: after the comics storyline called Secret War, a Skrull disguised as Valentina was spying on Nick Fury in order to learn a pile of secrets. But Fury got suspicious and killed that Valentina, and because the body reverted to its true form — a green-skinned Skrull — Fury realised that important figures all over the world had been quietly swapped out for Skrulls one by one.
Secret Invasion has also been officially announced as being in production.
Taking all of that into account, the odds that the Valentina who appeared in episode 5 is a Skrull look very high, and maybe the show version of Secret Invasion opens with Fury killing Valentina and realising the Skrulls are invading?
And if the Skrulls used their shapeshifting to imitate the friends who have left us — Iron Man and Captain America especially — and throw everyone off, that would be even hotter!!
As of episode 5, the Flag Smashers, Batroc, the Power Broker and John Walker are all still left as villains.
Leave the Power Broker aside for a moment — or rather, it feels quite possible that it ends with a bonus scene in episode 6 revealing Sharon is the Power Broker — but the rest definitely have to be cleared up in episode 6.
Beating the Flag Smashers by force doesn’t get to a fundamental solution, so how they handle it is genuinely worth watching.
Steve and Bucky handed the shield over because from the bottom of their hearts they thought Sam was the right man for it, but he turned it down because he could see the public assuming he must only have inherited it out of deference, because he’s Black.
Isaiah declares flatly that they will never let a Black man be Captain America — but I think in episode 6 Sam gets recognised as Captain America by the whole world, and I’d love for Isaiah to be saved by seeing it.
Making his own shield — John has completely lost it lol
In the comics too, John becomes an outlaw called U.S. Agent after quitting as Captain America, so you could call it a reasonable progression lol
John is supposed to want to be Captain America, and yet
“I am Captain America,” and building his own shield — it’s very Tony, which is funny
Zemo has been locked up in the Raft. He’s surely coming back at some point.
He turned into such a great character this time, comedy and all, so I want him turning up loads more from here~ Would be nice if he shows up in Black Panther 2~
The one she was talking to about having got them out of the Algerian prison looks like Batroc, going by the end of episode 5. And she’s got that same Batroc working as a hired hand for the Flag Smashers… It would be thrilling if Batroc had actually been asked by Sharon to help Sam and the others, though.
In the first half of this post I predicted that the painting in Sharon’s room is a hint at her paying a great many costs to climb her way up and become the Power Broker.
Is Sharon really the Power Broker? Or is it a misdirect and she’s on their side? Hope episode 6 makes it clear.
Torres, appearing for the first time in this show, is in the comics the one who takes on the name of the second Falcon from Sam after Sam takes on the name of Captain America.
He received the broken wings from Sam this time, so it would be thrilling if he comes to the rescue in episode 6 with the wings repaired and takes on the second Falcon name right there!
On July 24, 202…