Bucky’s Winter Soldier Flashbacks Can Reveal The First Ant-Man’s Missions

One of the PTSD flashbacks Bucky has in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier could show how S.H.I.E.L.D. sent the first Ant-Man, Hank Pym, on missions to fight and sabotage HYDRA. For a long while, Thor and Captain America were thought to be the first and only existing MCU superheroes before Tony Stark became Iron Man. The MCU has expanded so much since then that it’s now common knowledge that heroes like Captain Marvel, Black Panther, and The Ancient One had been active long before the events of Iron Man.

Bucky Barnes has also been active for several decades, but as the brainwashed Winter Soldier. This started having a negative impact on Bucky once he broke out of HYDRA’s control and joined Captain America and the Avengers. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier episode 1 dived deeper into Bucky’s guilt with his recurring nightmares about his time as HYDRA’s pawn. It’s likely that one or more of those missions led him to cross paths with Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, who were the original Ant-Man and the Wasp for some time in the second half of the 20th century.

Before Hank Pym worked with Bill Foster on Project G.O.L.I.A.T.H., he went around the world doing missions for S.H.I.E.L.D., not unlike the Winter Soldier did for HYDRA. His ability to shrink to the size of an ant helped him ace stealth missions, and even when he was met with a whole troop of HYDRA goons, he could easily beat them to a pulp without them knowing what hit them. As the Winter Soldier was doing the same for the opposite side, both stealth soldiers could have met face to face, or perhaps they sabotaged each other’s efforts without the other noticing.

Since HYDRA wiped Bucky’s memory after every mission, Bucky’s most painful Winter Soldier memories are only coming back after he has found some peace in the wake of the Blip and the victory of the Avengers over Thanos. Hence why he might not have remembered the original Ant-Man when he fought alongside Scott Lang in Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame. One of those memories could also tie into Hank Pym’s most traumatic experiences, as the Winter Soldier could have had a hand in the launch of the Soviet missile against the United States in 1987, which forced Janet van Dyne to shrink to subatomic size and disappear in the Quantum Realm for decades.

Curiously enough, Hank Pym and the Winter Soldier were unknowingly working for the same side, as HYDRA had already taken over S.H.I.E.L.D. when the original Ant-Man first shrunk. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier offers the chance to explore more of these interesting details of the MCU’s history through Bucky’s traumatic flashbacks. Perhaps he could be met with a self-disclosed revelation that affects other popular MCU characters, giving the infamous Winter Soldier more guilt to redeem himself.