“It’s that warped aspiration that led to Nazis, to Ultron, to the Avengers.” “The very concept of a Super Soldier will always trouble people,” says Zemo, no upstanding moral philosopher himself. The Flag Smashers are trying to help people who have been displaced after the Blip returned half the world’s population to the living, and Sam tells Karli that he agrees with her fight, just not the way she’s fighting it. The episode spends time engaging in a not-so-subtle conversation about power and inequity, and the irony in assuming power in order to democratize the playing field. All the existing Super Soldiers - Bucky, the Flag Smashers, John Walker - have blood on their hands. Not taking the serum, like Lady Galadriel declining the power of the One Ring in “Lord of the Rings,” is positioned as the right thing to do. When Zemo asks Sam if he would have taken the serum, he doesn’t hesitate in his response.
Sam Wilson is undoubtedly the moral center of the show, now that Steve Rogers is gone. government consider taking back the shield, or will it condone such acts in the name of fighting terrorism? Will it serve to further alienate the new Cap with the public? And what does this government-controlled, funhouse mirror version of Captain America even mean anymore?Īs Sam’s sister Sarah (Adepero Oduye) tells Karli during a separate conversation, “My world doesn’t matter to America, so why should I care about its mascot?” Should John Walker have taken the Super Serum? The Afghanistan vets are no strangers to tough choices, and Walker admits, “Being Cap is the first time I’ve had the chance to do something that actually feels right.”īut as Walker hovers menacingly over a Flag Smasher at the end of the episode - having decided to infuse himself with Super Serum and feeling vengeful after Karli unintentionally kills Lemar - he makes a shocking, irreversible choice, violently murdering (and possibly decapitating?) a man with the shield in view of dozens of passersby watching in horror, no doubt leading to viral videos of Captain America killing a man with a symbol of hope and honor. “You consistently make the right decisions in the heat of battle.” “Power just makes a person more of themselves, right?” Lemar Hoskins, aka Battlestar (Clé Bennett), tells Walker. Steve Rogers’ shadow looms large.Īfter he, Sam and Bucky clash with Flag Smasher leader Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman), and Zemo takes the opportunity to destroy the remaining vials of Super Serum, Walker spots one on the ground and pockets it. He signs postcards of his face for passing fans but feels powerless and perhaps a bit like a fraud, lacking the Super Soldier strength to do what his predecessor could. When the Dora Milaje show up from Wakanda to arrest Zemo, he can’t hold his own in a fight. Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky refuse to team up with him.
Walker is feeling the pressure to perform. Here are Variety’s biggest questions after watching Episode 4: Did Captain America really just kill a man in broad daylight?
And what Walker chooses to do with the shield in the last few minutes of this week’s installation runs counter to everything we’ve been conditioned to think that circle of vibranium stands for. But this is a post-Blip, post-Steve Rogers world - one without the original Cap’s lofty moral absolutism. “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” Episode 4 raises the question again, this time with Captain America’s shield in John Walker’s (Wyatt Russell) hands. Erskine would tap on Steve’s chest and say - to bring the shield down on Tony’s face instead he uses it to lights-out Iron Man’s suit and end the fight. As Marvel’s most upstanding character, he is too pure, too solidly a “good man” - as Super Serum inventor Dr. Rogers was frozen for nearly seventy years and awoke in the twenty-first century, where he joined The Avengers as their team leader and is an Agent of SHIELD.The answer in the movie, of course, is no - despite the momentary terror we see on Tony Stark’s face at the possibility, Steve Rogers would never. Transformed into the embodiment of human physiological perfection, the patriotic super-soldier was given the title of Captain America and fought against the Nazis and their associated terror group HYDRA. Captain Steven Grant "Steve" Rogers is the only living, successful test subject of the Super Soldier Serum developed by Abraham Erskine during the World War II.