What They Say:
John Walker loses patience with Sam and Bucky as they learn more about Karli Morgenthau.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After two so-so and one pretty solid episode, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier seems to have found its voice and its pace.
Thanks to Sharon Carter, Sam, Buck, and Zemo travel to Eastern Europe to follow a lead. A woman who worked tirelessly for refugees after the Snap has passed away, and there’s a good chance that Karli and the rest of the Flag Smashers will attend her secret funeral. Unfortunately, the Dora Milaje has arrived and give Buck only eight hours to get everything he needs from Zemo before they take him into custody (or perhaps kill him, it’s not quite clear). To make matters worse, Karli has escalated her tactics, bombing a GRC building and killing and injuring several people. Predictably to all but Karli, the world governments circle the wagons and work to enact measures that will re-solidify borders between nations and more than likely hurt the very people Karli hopes to protect.
Sam hopes that he can talk Karli back from this path she’s taking, and he might have a real chance to break through to her except Captain Fake-o John Walker and his partner Battlestar show up and inevitably ruin everything, turning an already high-tension situation into a bomb just waiting to explode.
And all of that pretty much covers the first twenty-five or thirty minutes. A lot of story happens here, and I’ll talk more about what happens in the third act later, but I’d rather save the spoilers for the end. It’s to the show’s credit that it finally gets the pacing right. The balance between action, exposition, and character development work much better here than in the previous episodes, and it manages to finally make it clear in text what Karli and the Flag Smashers want and why they want it. Both Karli and Walker get some solid character development here that elevates them past being one-dimensional roadblocks in Sam and Buck’s journey. We may not agree with their actions, but we understand where they’re coming from, and that’s essential to good storytelling.
Other characters also get moments to shine. Sharon shows up again to help Sam, and Emily VanCamp just owns that role. She’s been criminally underused in the MCU, and I would love to see an Agent 13 show. Hell, just her hanging out in Madripoor would be fine.
And I’m so excited to see the Dora Milaje again. Florence Kasumba, who plays Ayo, steals every scene she’s in, and the disappointment and betrayal she and Buck feel towards each other is palpable. She also beats the snot out of John Walker, and I can’t see that enough.
Speaking of Walker, I have to say that Wyatt Russell is doing a fantastic job with a very unsympathetic character. Fans of the Captain America comics know Walker to be a terrible person representative of all the United States’ worst qualifies, and I was curious how they were going to play it out in the show. Walker’s awfulness is subtler than the comics, and rooted in solid character history and motivation, so you get where he’s coming from, but you also never root for him, and that’s the key to Walker’s character. Russell brings a pathos to the role that I don’t typically see in the comics, adding another dimension to the character. He’s pathetic in so many ways, and it all believably leads to the shocking moment at the end of the episode, but I’ll get to that in just a minute.
I’m going to put my comic nerd hat on for a second here, because I want to talk about Baron Zemo. I have a real love/hate thing going on with the MCU’s version of the character. I’m a huge fan of Daniel Brühl, and none of my complaints have anything to do with his acting. It’s all in the writing.
The show presents Zemo as this ultimate anti-fascist, and that is so far from the character he might as well come from Bizarro world and be called Zaron Bemo. In the comics, Zemo’s father was an actual Nazi. In fact, he was the one responsible for Bucky’s “death” and Cap getting frozen in the ice. Zemo’s family also comes from royalty, so his history is steeped in fascism and elitism. His M.O. in the comics is that he wants to rule because he is “better.” The ego on the man is gargantuan, and that’s one of the reasons why he’s such a great Captain America villain.
Taking all that into consideration, hearing diatribes against fascism and the abuse of power coming from Zemo just doesn’t work. The only reason the man doesn’t try to take the super-soldier serum is that he doesn’t believe he needs it. He’s that conceited. This makes it hard for me to like the MCU version, because he’s so divorced from the comics. I get that this is an adaptation and changes have to be made, but they’ve jettisoned a core component to the character’s personality, and it’s a shame.
What saves Zemo from being a total wash for me is Brühl’s performance. He’s an incredibly charismatic actor, and he sells the idea that Zemo is a dangerous man. His motivations are also clear and rooted in the history of the MCU, so it’s not like he doesn’t make sense within the context of the show. This is just one of those moments where my inner comic nerd gets in the way.
Okay, nerd hat off. Let’s end this review in the most appropriate place: the ending of the episode. From here on out, there be spoilers, so if you want to avoid them, I recommend skipping down to the summary.
We good? Cool. So, the episode ends with Kari killing Battlestar in a brawl. It’s clear that Kari misjudges the strength of her punch, and does more damage than intended, but that matters little to Walker. Lemar was his best friend, and his partner for a long time. In many ways, he was the bulwark holding up Walker while feelings of inadequacy ate the man from the inside out. With Battlestar dead, Walker loses his moral compass. The Flag Smashers scatter after the fight, but Walker chases one of them down, and kills him with Cap’s shield in front of hundreds of witnesses. The last image is Walker, standing over the body, holding a bloodstained shield. It’s a powerful image, and it speaks to the episodes core concern: power.
Everything in this episode (and, this show) revolves around the question of power: who has it? Who wants it? Who doesn’t want it? What do you do with it? What does it reveal about you? Zemo talks about how super soldiers are inherently fascist. Karli talks about the failure of those in power—governments, corporations, and various power brokers—to use that power to help those in need. Hell, the shadow villain at the heart of his is literally called “The Power Broker.”
Perhaps the best example of this lies in how Sam and Walker approach apprehending Karli. Walker wants to go in guns blazing, but Sam wants to talk. He empathizes with Karli, even though he doesn’t approve of her actions, and he only resorts to violence if attacked first. Walker doesn’t care. He has a job to do, and that’s it. He displays a very narrow, black-and-white view of the world, and it’s clear that it is antiquated, rooted in fascism, and not what this situation or even the world needs from Captain America.
Karli also wrestles with power. It’s clear in the fight that she doesn’t understand how to use responsibly the power the serum gave her, and she hesitates on making more super soldiers (to her credit); however, she does bomb a building and kill people, and she threatens Sam’s sister in an attempt to broker a meeting. She’s clearly sliding down a slippery slope here, and no matter how noble her goals, she’s well on her way to becoming a monster.
All of this sets up why Sam needs to be Captain America, whether he feels like he deserves to be or not.
In Summary:
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode four fires on all cylinders, deftly juggling action, plot development, exposition, and character growth. It also finally builds up the antagonist and gives us a clearer idea in the text itself what the Flag Smashers are fighting for and why. The acting is excellent all around, and there’s a better idea of where this is all leading to. Dr. J gives this an…
Content Grade: A