He successfully convinces the leaders not to vote to send millions of refugees back to their countries of origin - but nothing else actually seems to change or improve for these displaced millions, who still live in camps, whose resources the GRC still controls, and for whom Morgenthau was fighting to provide food and vaccines.
In the finale, he does so to a group of world leaders on the GRC, while draped in a winged, updated version of the Captain America costume. Wilson often appeals to other characters to understand where Morgenthau is coming from. (And of course, Wilson’s fellow Avengers have been known to kill as well, from Steve Rogers to Tony Stark to Thor and beyond.) When Morgenthau’s murders come to light, Wilson empathizes with her plight but derides her methods, which feels especially strange since Wilson himself isn’t opposed to killing to achieve his objectives. These are largely fantasy plots after all, about alien invasions and magic apocalypses, but this framing becomes especially questionably in a show like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, wherein the debate about how best to improve the status quo is central to the story. This function can vary from morally rancid to simply value neutral, depending on what you want out of superheroes. The MCU never seeks to portray what its heroes would actually do to solve the world’s existing problems. Their dramatic function is to thwart threats to the status quo, rather than to improve it. The Avengers are right to stop Thanos’ genocide, just as Spider-Man is right to stop The Vulture from selling weapons, but the MCU never seeks to portray what these heroes would actually do to solve the world’s existing problems. These also happen to be two of the issues at the heart of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Take, for instance, The Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming, a blue collar villain who rails against class inequality after being put out of business by billionaire Tony Stark, or Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, whose methods are indisputably genocidal, but who makes a salient point about people dying of hunger. It’s also the closest Marvel has come to any of its heroes actually working for the betterment its villains claim to care about. This was also the case in Black Panther, where Killmonger’s fight for global Black liberation - even if he was wrapping his need for familial vengeance in the language of that fight - opened the Black Panther’s eyes to the plight of Black people in other nations. It’s another example of Marvel imbuing its villains with noble end goals (in this case, feeding and re-housing displaced peoples), only to paint their methods as too extreme. A few of her fellow Flag Smashers give her disapproving looks throughout the series, but none of them go as far as opposing her. The third episode, “Power Broker,” introduces the thorny element of Morgenthau being an unapologetic killer after she murders a group of already incapacitated guards for the Global Repatriation Council (the GRC). But what is The Falcon actually fighting for? After all, it’s a show about people draped in the colours of the American flag, and the differing domestic and international relationships to that idea. When watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it’s impossible, and perhaps even inadvisable, to separate characters from the politics they represent. Ultimately, it’s uncertain of what it wants to say. But between Wilson’s half-baked politics, and the way Morgenthau and the Flag Smashers are framed, the result is a show that buckles under its own weight by the time it reaches its scattered finale. This, in theory, leads Wilson and company to reassess their own outlooks and methods when it comes to the world’s refugees. Morgenthau is the most frequent subject of conversation for the other characters, who all end up in debates over the Super Soldier Serum and the dynamic between political end goals and the actions used to achieve them. The show’s supporting characters are all meant to reflect its heroes in some way, especially Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly), a Black Super-Soldier hidden from history, and Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman), leader of revolutionary group the Flag Smashers, who the series’ plot and themes revolve around. However, his struggles to reconcile Black American-ness with American anti-blackness, and to reconcile actions with ideals, feel nominal at best. The six-episode season exists in the shadow of Steve Rogers’ Captain America (Chris Evans), whose specter helps shape the in-world parameters for these questions of symbolic and physical might.At its center, The Falcon/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) journeys towards taking up the Captain America mantle as a Black man in the public eye. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a politically-loaded story about power, who wields it, and who has the right to wield it.
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