Obviously, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was just the beginning.
After the miniseries came to an end last Friday with Sam (Anthony Mackie) donning a new suit, a new shield and a new pair of wings, reports quickly started surfacing that Captain America 4 was in development from Falcon showrunner Malcolm Spellman. Marvel couldn't confirm, but just based on the way The Falcon and the Winter Soldier ended, there's more than enough there for a movie that could take the MCU in a whole new direction.
Sharon Carter (Emily Van Camp) is now (or has long been) a bad guy. John Walker (Wyatt Russell) kinda sorta tried to redeem himself and now he's the U.S. Agent, with Julia Louis Dreyfus as his boss. The Flag Smashers suffered a defeat when Karli (Erin Kellyman) was killed, though their message about the mistreatment of refugees after the Blip remains. Sam's officially Captain America now, and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) has finished making his amends and is moving on from his Winter Soldier days.
Most important of all, in our eyes, is the fact that Sam and Bucky are now actual friends. That finale ending montage of Bucky arriving at Sam's family cookout? Absolute perfection. A dream scene. Give us more!
The problem with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is that it was all about that end game (pun intended). Sam became the first Black Captain America and he and Bucky became friends, but now we deserve the after. What does it mean for these men to be supportive BFFs? We wanna find out, and we've got a few very serious requests in terms of the types of additional scenes we'd like to see from this duo going forward, in addition to the ass kicking and taking names we're sure to get from any movie with the title Captain America.
More Cookouts
That cookout montage, which showed Bucky happily joining Sam and his sister at a big family cookout, spawned a thousand fanfics that could just as easily become the real movie. What kind of cake did Bucky bring? How did all of Sam and Sarah's friends and family first react to Bucky? What do they think of his metal arm? What story is he telling in that moment when he's got those kids hanging from his metal arm?
More Training Montages
In episode five, we saw Sam train to be Captain America with lots of running and jumping and pushups and shield-throwing. We're just hoping for more of that in the future, because listen, that first training montage was good. More training montages could be great.
Someone's Gotta Kiss
Marvel is weirdly lacking in the romance department, and especially in the quality romance department. Steve and Peggy's real romance is now taking place off screen 80 years ago, Vision's dead, and while they tried to heat things up between Natasha and Bruce, she's dead too. Remember when they made Steve and Sharon kiss for a second? Peter and MJ are still in their early days and they're also children, so we demand that someone in the world of TFATWS should kiss. Bucky and Sarah (Adepero Oduye) are a great option. Bucky and Sam are another option. Bring in someone new to kiss if necessary. The only option that won't work is Sam and Sarah, because they are, of course, siblings.
But seriously, imagine what fun they could have if Bucky and Sarah spend Captain America 4 building a romance, while Sam's torn between being super busy with all the Captain America stuff and being super annoyed that his best friend and his sister are hooking up when he expressly told Bucky not to flirt with his sister. Or maybe, over the course of the movie, Sam finds himself in his own unexpected romance. Has he met Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) yet? It seems like he might really like Monica Rambeau.
Just a few ideas.
He could just be Old Steve, standing in the back of one scene, smiling to himself about how well his boys are doing. He doesn't have to do anything else! Yes, we'd like a full show and/or movie about what happened after Steve went back in time, but if we can't get that, just give us a glimpse.
It's possible that what we really want here is a season two of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, now that all the stuff that we knew was going to happen finally happened. But a movie is fine too!
All of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is now streaming on Disney+. Also, keep up with all the Marvel shows coming to Disney+ with our handy gallery.