My expectations were relatively mellow going into The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. While a big fan of Steve Rogers’ noble heroics as Captain America, I’d never really ever connected to Sam or Bucky as people, respectively, only harboring a mild respect for each sidekick based on their own unique cool factors. But with Steve out of the picture and his shield in Sam’s hands alongside a certain precedent in the comics, I knew something was coming for the future of the Captain America mantle. And while I wanted something big, something meaningful and for the zeitgeist, I honestly wasn’t expecting to get it. Holy smokes, did Marvel Studios go above and beyond answering my call, because The Falcon and the Winter Soldier just might be the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most important and culturally valuable entry to date! TFatWS is all about Captain America and the legacy Steve Rogers has left behind after his retirement in Avengers: Endgame. Sam Wilson AKA the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) is reluctant to take up the onus Steve passed onto him, doubting his ability to fill the massive shoes left behind by the First Avenger. To the disappointment of Steve’s other former bestie, a Bucky (Sebastian Stan) now free from his Winter Soldier brainwashing, Sam relinquishes the star-spangled shield to the government, believing the heroic relic to be in better hands there. The two men promptly return to their duties in a post-Blip world, but no sooner do they head out to apprehend a rising international freedom terrorist cell, the Flag Smashers, than does the US government appoint another man to fill the position of Captain America. Wyatt Russell does a thanklessly great job taking one for the team as this new, shit-eating Cap, John Walker, a decorated Army veteran with good intentions, questionable leadership, and slimy morals. Moments after they meet, Sam and Bucky are immediately antagonistic towards Walker (along with, probably, the audience) and vice versa, and in this power struggle for the role of Captain America is where showrunner Malcolm Spellman cranks Marvel’s material and characters up a few notches to create something truly compelling. After over a decade of pumping out movies, it’s noteworthy that Marvel’s latest project forays the studio’s established streak of military brown-nosing in favor of addressing the very real concerns America’s imperialistic encroachments have created around the world. Russell embodies the United States’ ongoing legacy of self interest and aggression as Walker in the Captain America suit, bombing potentially peaceful compromises with other parties to bits with his narcissistic arrogance and self importance. As a former soldier trained to only follow orders, Walker is, at the end of the day, a simple goon, and as the greater burdens and expectations left behind by Steve Rogers inch their way towards the veteran’s dangerous ego, a complex and conflicted monster begins to emerge. On that note, one of the best things about TFatWS is that it isn’t afraid to sully the Captain America iconography established over the last decade. Rather brilliantly, the series’ directors have recreated and reframed certain lines of dialogue, action tableaux, and even musical motifs from The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier, Civil War, and the Avengers movies into hideously twisted versions of themselves, driving home the point that Steve Rogers’ idealistic virtues are no longer what Captain America represents. Episode 4, aptly named “The Whole World Is Watching,” is a particularly bone-chilling twist of the knife, fully miring itself in the pitch-black darkness of what Cap’s lineage has become. Or perhaps it just uncovers the buried history of what the red, white, and blue always represented as Episode 2, “The Star-Spangled