Let’s Talk About Sam and Bucky’s Foes on This Week’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

We got our first real look at a group of antagonists on this week’s episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and let’s talk a bit about their storyline so far.

**Spoilers for Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 2 “The Star-Spangled Man” lie within.**

All I wanted out of Bucky’s storyline in Falcon and the Winter Soldier was something from the recent Kyle Higgins comic run. In the comic, Bucky realizes that HYDRA made another super soldier who is supposed to replace him, and he all but adopts the young man to try to help him get out of that life before he does anything like Bucky has.

While Falcon and the Winter Soldier isn’t doing that exact storyline, they’re doing something close enough in concept, and I’m so excited about it. We learned more about the Flag-Smashers this week and their leader, Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman), a young woman who, as she points out, remembers what the world was like before the Avengers brought everyone back. “One world, one people,” they would say over and over again and fight to give resources to those struggling. Compared to Robin Hood, the group seems like more of a threat to the ideas of the American government than any actual threat to citizens. But, what’s interesting about this group, in particular, is that, as Bucky and Sam realize, they’re super soldiers.

Now, we don’t know whether they’re super soldiers who got the same serum that Bucky did (based on what Isaiah told him and Sam) or if the medicine they’re stealing is helping. We just know that when they fight off Sam and Bucky to steal some vaccines, they’re just as strong as Bucky is. And since John Walker isn’t really a super soldier, he struggles to take them on as Captain America.

(Granted, Sam holds his own, but Sam also has practice fighting super soldiers, so take that, John Walker and your “I’ve done the work” attitude.)

But regardless of how the Flag-Smashers got the serum, I’m here for this storyline entirely because if it is connected to HYDRA (as the end of the episode hints to when Bucky and Sam go to see Baron Zemo), that means that there is a lot that Sam and Bucky have to unpack outside of just their issues with John Walker.

“We’re not playing no more. We can’t let the same assholes who were put back in power after the Blip win. The GRC care more about the people who came back than the ones who never left. We got a glimpse of how things could be. I need to know that you’re all committed, because after tomorrow, there’s no going back,” Karli says as she rallies the rest of the Flag-Smashers in their hideout, and while we don’t know much about them, Karli is a fascinating character thus far.

She’s young, that much we can tell, but she also clearly has an idea and a mission and all of these other anarchists are ready and willing at her side. Even if it doesn’t end up being the storyline I want it to be, I’m still obsessed with Erin Kellyman’s portrayal of Karli in this episode.

The first time we fully see her, Bucky thinks she’s a hostage, and she comes sneaking out of the crates of medicine to smirk at him before just beating him up, and honestly, I’m here for it.

(image: Marvel Entertainment)

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