The Falcon & The Winter Soldier

[Totenkindly]

I really liked it but also I am piece of shit who reads Bucky's every movement as signs of bisexuality. It's just amusing how he immediately has sexual tension with every male character he interacts with. Could be the teenage shipper in me though, I dunno.

Wow, that never even really crossed my mind. ("I'm INTP -- flirt harder.") Although to my credit I did pick up his flirting with Sam's sister Sarah.

Karli deserved better.

Yeah, wtf was all that about? The writing for her was all muddled and half-assed, and then they just threw her out with the trash. I'm kinda irked about it, the whole Flagsmasher schtick could have been far more interesting too. I think it's a HUGE deal to explore how you reintegrate people back into a situation where half were missing for 5 years, all over the world, and we only got platitudes and talking points about it without any serious delving into the whole thing. Her movement had a point. Where WAS the state of the world in that five year period and what level of unification might have already been progressing?

Anyway, yeah, they treated her as disposable.

 

[Totenkindly]

Now I feel dumb because this article summarized the biggest problem with this series: It was utterly meaningless in terms of the the overall story, it added nothing to it.

‘The Falcon and Winter Soldier’ fails to pay off on its initial promise

Basically you can entirely skip it and miss nothing. Everything (aside from Sharon Carter -- and that doesn't matter either because her change is never truly justified anyway, so everyone will still be double-taking when she shows up next time) resets back to its starting position.

When Endgame finishes, Cap has given Sam the shield. Bucky and Sam seem to be friends / on good terms. (I remember thinking in episode #1 it was odd how Bucky and Sam now seemed to be feuding just to generate drama.) The antagonists of the series are unknown to us before the series and gone by the end of it. Baron Zemo is in jail. It's a lovely play on "signifying nothing," was there really a point in terms of plotting?

The relocation bit is only ever dealt with cosmetically. At best we are told "This needs a complex solution rather than an easy one." But I'm sure we'll never see the nuts and bolts of it or the lingering effects of reintegrating 3.5 billion people.

What we do get: Setup for the new Falcon (possibly), and the introduction of US Agent (but why not just have a series about US Agent then? He would get a deeper more intense arc than he got here.) And we do get the back story of Bradley. But all of this could have occurred elsewhere in a series that actually mattered. Heck, the whole Bradley thing could have been a plot point of Captain America 4, and there Bradley's past could have been driving the plot. That is how you want to tell stories, it should be integrated into the plotting to make them compelling, just like Bucky's back story was. We didn't just sit around discussing Bucky's past for an entire movie.

 

[Totenkindly]

Marvel Reportedly Hesitant To Make Sharon Carter A Major Villain After Fan Backlash

Gee, what a surprise.

While it was guessed earlier on, emotionally it was mishandled and just wasn't compelling or believable as a character arc, nor did it consider how it meshed with her past portrayal in the films.