Marvel Studios has another hit under its belt with Falcon and the Winter Soldier, as the story of Captain America’s two best friends has resulted in a compelling and thrilling ride. The show is so good, that there are a few key components unique to it that we believe should definitely be carried over into future programs.
These four things surely aren’t the only great parts of the show, but future series could be made much better and more intriguing if they adopt the listed ideas.
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Cameos
Things Falcon and The Winter Soldier Need to Continue
Right from the start, we get a cameo from a pretty important avenger in James Rhodes, aka War Machine. We don’t see him in the suit, but he’s also never involved in any fighting so that just makes sense. But still, seeing this big of an actor pop up in the first episode showed that they weren’t playing around, even with the cameos.
The introduction of Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine near the end of the series was also huge. Sure she’s not a major player in the MCU yet, but Julia Louis-Dreyfus is an extremely well-known actor. Even though this technically was her introduction to the MCU, it was intended to be a cameo since she was supposed to debut in Black Widow.
It only makes sense to keep this trend up. Even some of the lesser-known characters in the MCU would make for great cameos in future series – fingers crossed for Jeff Goldblum as The Grandmaster popping up in Loki. It’s just something for fans to look forward to and make predictions about each week while keeping fan-favorite characters feeling fresh.
Origin Stories/Rebranding
Things Falcon and The Winter Soldier Need to Continue
So far WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier have both essentially acted as a sort of rebranding for their respective leads. While they were already both established members of the Avengers, there was still a lot of room for character growth.
On top of all that, Sam and Bucky’s new roles for phase four had to be set up, as they’re set to be major players now that key members like Iron Man and Steve Rodgers are no longer around.
Besides the origin story of the new Captain America, we also got the introduction of John Walker as the U.S. Agent. While he was certainly thrust onto the scene, the show did a great job at fleshing his troubled character out across the season, thank in part to a standout performance from Wyatt Russell.
This TV format seems to be a great way to tell the origins of these already established characters and the U.S. Agent angle shows that it can even work for new characters. Instead of a single movie trying to jam a ton of story into two hours, we got six separate hour-long episodes that let each character shine on their own.
There’s no doubt that origin story movies like the upcoming Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will still have a place in the MCU. But at the same time, it’s clear that introducing new characters or old character’s new roles can be done exceptionally well over the course of a few weeks.
Deep Dives Into Personal Lives
Things Falcon and The Winter Soldier Need to Continue
One of the things that’s so great about television is that you get to spend a huge amount of time with the characters you’re watching on the screen. It’s entirely possible to build interesting and deep characters over the course of two hours with a film, but it’s much easier if you spread that out over six hours.
Some of the most intriguing and memorable scenes from Falcon and the Winter Soldier were all about Sam and Bucky’s personal lives. Bucky had his list of people to makes amends with and Sam had his family and the intense conversations with Isaiah Bradley.
Thanks to the TV format, both of their personal stories were given adequate time to breathe – a problem that often occurs in movies. And at no point did these stories ever just feel like they were only there to fill time either, as each had a purpose and gave viewers a better understanding of who these characters were and why they were fighting.
Dealing with Serious Issues
Things Falcon and The Winter Soldier Need to Continue
It’s very easy for a TV show or a movie to feel like it’s ham-fisting in or not taking topics like racial issues in America as seriously as it should. There’s a delicate balancing act that any piece of superhero media must do in order to deal with more serious topics than the latest good guy trying to stop the latest supervillain from destroying New York City.
This isn’t to say that every Marvel Studios show from now on should try to find a way to deal with some kind of social issue. That wouldn’t make sense for a handful of their shows. But Falcon and the Winter Soldier showed that superhero media can be about more than just a fantasy world about cool gadgets and super soldiers.
Isaiah Bradley’s brutally honest story about how him and his war buddies essentially being science experiments for the government was heart-breaking and instantaneously made his plight understandable. The way they addressed race in this show gives me faith that Marvel Studios can tackle these serious issues just as well as delivering awesome fight scenes.
