Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Falcon And The Winter Soldier’ On Disney+, Where An Unlikely Partnership Is Forged Between Two MCU Favorites

If you hunted through the first episodes of WandaVision trying to find how the story ties into the greater MCU, you don’t need to do that with The Falcon And The Winter Soldier. The series, where Malcolm Spellman serves as head writer and Kari Skogland is the director, is more of a straightforward continuation of what was set up during Avengers: Endgame and the last two Captain America films, The Winter Soldier and Civil War. There’s no digging for references or trying to guess where things are going; it’s all pretty much spelled out. Read on for more

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man ironing his shirt, putting on a suit, and putting Captain America’s gleaming red, white and blue shield in a bag.

The Gist: Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), still has the shield Steve Rogers gave him before his death at the end of Avengers: Endgame. He’s still busy fighting bad guys as Falcon; he couldn’t take on the mantle of Captain America because he wasn’t sure that his belief in the country he’s defending is as rock-solid as Rogers’ was. But we see just how skillful he is, we see him rescuing U.S. Army officers from the clutches of a terrorist group called LAF, fighting skydivers midair and leading heat-seeking missiles to the chopper where the captain was being held, saving him at the same time.

But Sam is also struggling on the ground. It was difficult for him to give up the shield to the Smithsonian. When he meets former Avengers colleague James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) at the ceremony where he donates the shield, Rhodes tells him “The world’s broken. Everybody’s looking for somebody to fix it.” But Sam insists that it felt like “the shield belonged to someone else. And that someone else is Steve.”

When he returns to his hometown in Louisiana, Steve is shocked to learn that his sister Sarah (Adepero Oduye) is looking to sell their parents’ boat to make ends meet; in the five years he was absent due to the Blip, a lot has changed, she tells him. But he convinces her to get a loan to renovate the boat and take it out for excursions, but is denied a loan.

In the meantime, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is in therapy, a condition of his release from the crimes he committed as the Winter Soldier; but he still has dreams about the people he’s killed while working for HYDRA. He feels so guilty over one of his last killings; an innocent businessman who just happened to be a witness, that he’s befriended the man’s father Yoni (Ken Takemoto). Yoni introduces him to noodle shop owner Leah (Miki Ishikawa), and they hit it off playing Battleship on a very casual date.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Falcon And The Winter Soldier is pretty tightly integrated with the MCU, so it’s reminiscent of the entire franchise.

Our Take: After the quirkiness of WandaVision, it’s almost refreshing to get a straight-ahead action series from Marvel Studios. But it also is a series that might not rope in the casual MCU fan, and it definitely won’t attract the non-MCU fan like WV did. There’s just too much research you have to do in order to figure out who’s who and what’s what in order to get the full impact of the story.

That being said, there’s plenty to like about the show, even though we haven’t seen Mackie and Stan get together yet (Disney only sent one episode to critics). Mackie is always a winning presence in whatever he does, and as Falcon, we see a confident guy who is still torn over not taking over from Steve Rogers and donning the Captain America suit. He’s even more torn when the government takes the suit and shield out of mothballs and gives it to a former officer named John F. Walker (Wyatt Russell).

Stan has a bit more emotional ground to cover, especially being on the dating scene as a young-looking centenarian, but mostly because he’s been a killing machine for decades and is trying to figure out how to be human again.

So there’s going to be a lot of examination of both men’s inner lives, and the whole “cost of being a hero” thing. That’s the stuff you can do when you have a few hours to explore two characters, rather than a 2-2.5 hour movie. It’ll be fun to see the two of them get together and try to figure out how to work with a Captain America that isn’t as upstanding a citizen as Steve Rogers was. We’ve yet to see Emily VanCamp as the troubled S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sharon Carter and Daniel Brühl as Helmut Zemo, who ultimately broke up the Avengers.

There’s a lot of potential there, but we’re just not sure yet if the show will be a fulfilling mix of action and emotion or just an empty CGI-fest.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Walker is introduced as the new Captain America, much to the amazement of Sam, who’s watching the press conference on TV with his sister’s family.

Sleeper Star: Danny Ramirez plays Joaquin Torres, an intelligence officer who not only helps Falcon on the ground, but was willing to get his face stomped by the masked terror group the Flag Snatchers. He’ll be one to watch going forward.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could see.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Falcon And The Winter Soldier is going to move at its own pace, even if each episode promises to have well-directed and pulse-pounding action sequences. How it handles its storytelling pace will ultimately determine whether the series works or not.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Falcon And The Winter Soldier On Disney+