Phase 4 Is Exploring Sam Wilson’s Captain America 2 Villain Problem

The MCU is currently exploring a complex idea about morality and recognizing who the villains really are that goes all the way back to a clever Sam Wilson line in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. One of the biggest problems in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier up to the controversial John Walker twist was that the show was simply too vague about who the villains were supposed to be. But that has been a big part of how the show has played with audience expectations and how the impact of John Walker’s “heel turn” played out at the end of episode 4.

In the post-Endgame world, morality has become a sliding scale with more grey areas than discernible stability: the Flag-Smashers are classed as terrorists, but they’re also freedom fighters; John Walker is the “evil” Captain America, but he’s pursuing moral integrity in his own way; Sam and Bucky are heroes but one was the instrument of a corrupt system that cast aside Isaiah Bradley and the other is a reformed assassin. Add in Zemo, arguably the MCU’s most complex villain and how he’s been rebranded as an antihero committed to his goals that may be difficult to understand but which are shaped by the unspeakable trauma of his past. Good and bad are no longer a binary in the MCU, which was already explored in WandaVision, and while that’s good for narrative depth, it’s a challenge for narrative clarity.

The point, however, is that this has all been by design. The introduction of Isaiah Bradley was consciously designed to destabilize even the most dependable moral truth in the MCU: that Captain America was good in a pure way. The fact that he could be part of a system that could dehumanize, imprison and hide a victim of the same process he volunteered for adds an uncomfortable blemish that brings into question the integrity of his famous shield. But this is something Sam Wilson foreshadowed way back in his own debut in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a film entwined in the idea of duplicity and complex issues of morality. When faced with the uncovered corruption of SHIELD, Cap and Falcon are faced with the problem of not recognizing their enemies and Sam says “Cap, how do we know the good guys from the bad guys?” Cap’s answer is as simple as it is loaded:”If they’re shooting at you they’re bad.” And therein lies the complex narrative that The Falcon & The Winter Soldier has been embracing as an extrapolation of what The Winter Soldier explored.

Villainy in the MCU now is a matter of perception. While former foes like Darren Cross in Ant-Man or Emil Blonsky in The Incredible Hulk or Ultron in Joss Whedon’s Avengers sequel were one-dimensional in a sort of pantomime villain way, the villains in The Falcon & The Winter Soldier shift depending on whose eyes the story is playing out through. Sam Wilson is a rogue compared to the government’s continued desire for regulated superheroes; Bucky is still The Winter Soldier to his victims or those who know his reputation; the government is villainous to Isaiah Bradley; Zemo is a villain to Wakanda; the Flag-Smashers are to those they seek to wrestle control from. But each has their own opinions on heroism and morality and the audience is invited to decide who they sympathize with as more of the narrative is revealed. John Walker is now arguably the most easily recognized “bad guy” because he killed a Flag Smasher brutally in public, but he did so in response to the murder of Battlestar, having expressed his willingness to do what was needed to win.

Elsewhere in the MCU, that conviction – to do whatever it takes – was been seen before. Nick Fury talked about his brutal reputation with Alexander Pierce in The Winter Soldier in the same terms: he was SHIELD’s most ruthless man but did what he did to protect people. In the same movie Steve Rogers responds to Fury’s accusation that the SSR did some morally questionable things by admitting: “Yeah, we compromised. Sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well. But we did it so the people could be free.” Captain America himself did what he needed to do for the greater good, but so too did John Walker, albeit more colored by emotion. The audience are pushed into the position of being hypocrites for judging the New Captain America for something the original was heralded for. As Sam Wilson said in the heat of the moment in The Winter Soldier, villainy is a matter of who is shooting at who you identify with as the hero even more than who is doing unquestionable good. And The Falcon & The Winter Soldier has explored this in a way that has been both counter-productive and enriching.