Falcon and The Winter Soldier: These Turkish Delights Have Violent Ends (Spoilers)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, RumHam said:

Get some pym particles and go back and fix it!

Time travel doesn’t work that way in the Marvel Universe.

[Kalbear]

And the worst part is that this appeared to placate Isaiah. A fucking statue without any news and any acknowledgment of the wrong and thats enough to erase all that?

Oh fuck that. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Karlbear said:

The country talking about it, potus addressing it, having it in its own museum, talking about ensuring it or something like it doesn't happen again, criminal charges for those who did it, full restoration of his rank and pension, naming things after him, having a special holiday or day of remembrance for him and the other soldiers....

 

Do you need more?

It’s a new exhibit at the Smithsonian I think the first three points and the final two points are at least implied.  

As to criminal charges how likely is it that the people who ordered him experimented upon are still alive to be charged?

[RumHam]

15 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Time travel doesn’t work that way in the Marvel Universe.

Yeah, except when the plot requires it to like when you have to return stones without just creating a new timeline when you travel back to do so. I was just fucking around. 

Edit: it's also a little weird that the time-stone travel in Doctor Strange does work that way. But they do say that by using the stone strange is breaking the universe or time stream or whatever. 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It’s a new exhibit at the Smithsonian I think the first three points and the final two points are at least implied.  

As to criminal charges how likely is it that the people who ordered him experimented upon are still alive to be charged?

It was a surprise to Isaiah that it existed. The news can't have been that much. And we didn't see it either. They needed to show a whole lot more to do that storyline and Isaiah justice. And...they didn't.

 But we got a cool montage with a great song at the end!

As to criminal charges against people who are alive- they experimented on him for thirty years. Meaning as recently as 1980. I think those people are almost certainly alive and likely a lot younger than Isaiah is. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

6 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

It was a surprise to Isaiah that it existed. The news can't have been that much. And we didn't see it either. They needed to show a whole lot more to do that storyline and Isaiah justice. And...they didn't.

 But we got a cool montage with a great song at the end!

It would be interesting if they did a series about Isaiah’s experience specifically.  Without pulling any punches about how he was treated.  

Then showing us how what Sam does for him impacts Isaiah’s later life.  

[sifth]

Man they really gave Bucky nothing to do in this final. I get that they wanted Sam’s reveal as the new Cap to be the focus, but at the same time they reduced Bucky’s importance to struggling to get people out of a van. 

[Knight of Ashes]

Well, if nothing else, at least there was an effort to show there were more consequences to the Snap & Blip other than coming back to find your schoolmate has become a real hunk and is now threatening to disrupt your high-school romance.

I just had to get that out of my system.

[john]

So everything packed away very nicely in a little box. No blowback whatsoever from Isaiah or from Bucky’s old pal, Walker’s a good guy, the GRC reverse their decision (what’s their new solution, nobody knows, maybe the Wakandans flew in and built a bunch of prefab vibranium houses, I hope they added a few strips of raw vibranium to Sam’s super suit so he can finally buy his dad’s fishing boat). The only slightly interesting finishing point was Sharon’s resolute turn to the dark side, which still barely makes sense because it’s so difficult to believe she was abandoned in the first place.

It remains ridiculous how much Sam is invested in Karli, dude her cause is just but the woman is clearly evil no matter how much her mouth quirks when she is forced to burn people alive for said cause.

Action scenes were quite good.

[Rhom]

4 minutes ago, Knight of Ashes said:

Well, if nothing else, at least there was an effort to show there were more consequences to the Snap & Blip other than coming back to find your schoolmate has become a real hunk and is now threatening to disrupt your high-school romance.

I just had to get that out of my system.

As a high schooler, that likely would have been the end of the world though.  Spiderman is still told from the perspective of high schoolers.  This was from the adult view.

[Rhom]

3 minutes ago, john said:

It remains ridiculous how much Sam is invested in Karli, dude her cause is just but the woman is clearly evil no matter how much her mouth quirks when she is forced to burn people alive for said cause.

Karli was a bit of a sticking point to me from the get go.  Who is she?  My impression is that she is just some quasi European college student of no importance pre-blip.  She comes back and now she's equipped to run an entire worldwide organization of counter insurgents?  What makes her uniquely qualified to do that?  She doesn't have some sort of magical charisma that would draw people in.  She isn't some sort of ex-special forces with military background.  She's no tech wizard capable of designing the Uber of terrorist organizing.   

Speaking of the Terrorist Uber app... how the hell is Apple gonna allow that on the App Store?!!?

[Kalbear]

Just now, Rhom said:

Speaking of the Terrorist Uber app... how the hell is Apple gonna allow that on the App Store?!!?

Are you kidding? As long as they pay their 30% they'll allow anything

[Rhom]

15 minutes ago, Karlbear said:

Are you kidding? As long as they pay their 30% they'll allow anything

Wonder if it’s free but includes In App Purchases...

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Wonder if it’s free but includes In App Purchases...

That, and every 15 seconds it shows you an add for Clash of Clans

[Corvinus85]

I think it could be fair to assume this Sharon is a Skrull. Whoever she was speaking to on the phone, it sounded like she has at least one partner, which is not the impression you get from the persona of the Power Broker. 

[Rhom]

8 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I think it could be fair to assume this Sharon is a Skrull. Whoever she was speaking to on the phone, it sounded like she has at least one partner, which is not the impression you get from the persona of the Power Broker. 

I pictured it being the gal in the car she talked to right after the raid went down in Madripoor.  Her executive assistant if you will.

Speaking of... now that we confirm Sharon as Power Broker.  Does the hit on Bucky/Sam make as much sense now?  When it first happened, the assumption is Power Broker kills the dealer then puts out hit on Buddy Cops.  Sharon heroically takes out the assassins looking for profit.

But if she's Power Broker... why put out the hit in the first place?  Why take them to the Golden Goose if all she's really looking for is to get back the golden eggs?  

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, john said:

So everything packed away very nicely in a little box. No blowback whatsoever from Isaiah or from Bucky’s old pal, Walker’s a good guy, the GRC reverse their decision (what’s their new solution, nobody knows, maybe the Wakandans flew in and built a bunch of prefab vibranium houses, I hope they added a few strips of raw vibranium to Sam’s super suit so he can finally buy his dad’s fishing boat). The only slightly interesting finishing point was Sharon’s resolute turn to the dark side, which still barely makes sense because it’s so difficult to believe she was abandoned in the first place.

It remains ridiculous how much Sam is invested in Karli, dude her cause is just but the woman is clearly evil no matter how much her mouth quirks when she is forced to burn people alive for said cause.

Action scenes were quite good.

Walker's very clearly "not a good guy," even if you don't have the out-of-show knowledge that JLD's character is traditionally a villain, and I think Sharon being a bad guy is a potentially major thing. I get the impression that Marvel have learned that having a crap one-story villain and killing them isn't working any more, so they're doing a more interesting thing of developing multiple villains, having some of them be once-good guys and setting up a more interesting villain's roster. Zemo is also clearly being set up for a return later on.

[RumHam]

I always liked the "bird costume" joke in Civil War so I appreciated the callback to that.

Not much else to add other than if you can just shoot the super-soldiers why were they such a big deal? I get that it's a comic book thing but like if Walker just had a gun like a normal soldier he wouldn't even have needed the serum. It makes me wonder why is Zemo so afraid of these people. 

[Poobah]

This episode was a bit of a mixed bag.

I liked seeing Sam being a Big Damn Hero. Really I did. There was some great shot framing of him, some big angelic energy there. He's a meaningful symbol, and he kicks ass. And as cynical as I am I really like to see some noblebright in my characters and much live Steve before him Sam is a true paragon hero, honest and good, true to his ideals and endeavouring to make the world a better place. I'm totally behind that.

On the other hand Bucky was mostly wasted, this episode really was the Falcon Captain America show, and Bucky barely even got to play sidekick.

Killing off Karli was a total waste of an interesting character too, and... I thought she was a super soldier? What's the big deal about the magic serum if it leaves you with the same crippling weakness to bullets that regular people have. I know we're fighting in a universe where many people arbitrarily prefer hand-to-hand combat over far more effective weapons but come on, even a normal vanilla human could probably get away with surviving a couple of torso bullets in this genre when a bona-fide Hero is nearby if it isn't a plot mandated death.

I really didn't really like the way Walker an avatar of the military industrial complex was framed as having redeemed himself and come back to being somewhat of a hero, while Karli and the Flagsmashers - a bunch of displaced people fighting for the rights of impoverished and oppressed refugees - are presented as true villains who must die. I feel like there was some real character assassination going on in general with her and her group in the back half of the show, like they realised they wrote their designated villains way too sympathetic and gave them an actually reasonable cause so if the plot was gonna work they'd have to have them do a bit of moustache twirling so we'd understand that it was ok for them to all get killed in the finale.

And the ending from Sam's speech through to the statue of Isaiah was all fucking bullshit, I mean I know this is Disney but it's such a saccharine whitewashed mockery of reality. Sam talks to power with an impassioned speech and the actual true villains of this whole scenario suddenly see the light and understand that being oppressive fascists is bad and maybe they should try something else? Really? That was the solution all along? Explain to the people in power that they're doing bad and they'll understand and stop? I feel like it renders the whole plot meaningless, but I guess they were afraid to allow the Flagsmashers to actually have any semblance of achieving anything at all because someone would read it as an endorsement of political violence or negotiating with terrorists or whatever so Sam has to come in after they're all dealt with and roll a 20 on his persuasion check with the world government. Isaiah gets to be a footnote in the Captain America exhibit and in history and that makes up for 30 years of imprisonment and medical experimentation? Where's the accountability? Where're the reparations? What about all the other black men in his unit that were experimented on, suffered various side-effects and eventually died or were killed? Is the US government getting him a magic portal so he can go see his wife in the past?

[john]

26 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Walker's very clearly "not a good guy," even if you don't have the out-of-show knowledge that JLD's character is traditionally a villain

Very clearly? He made the right decision in the right moment, fought the bad guys, didn’t let revenge lead him away from heroism, got the nod from Sam. We have no reason to believe Valentina’s leading him down a wrong path atm. Judging from the show only he’s at most potentially a bad guy based on past behaviour.