The second TV show in the MCU is not nearly as ambitious or creative as Wandavision. For the most part, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier plays it safe. It does what Marvel does sufficiently; unlike the movies, however, it doesn't stand alone as well because it relies on you to remember details about two secondary characters from the Captain America series. And so there are many call-backs that went right over my head. It's par for the superhero genre. It attempts to do what Watchmen did a few years ago. It asks a serious question about what it means to be black in America. Most profoundly it questions whether America is worthy of a black Cap. But it handles this weighty theme with less deft than the masterful HBO miniseries. Maybe you need the freedom of HBO to really do it justice, to be able to cynically say no. This is too constrained by the MCU to explore it honestly. I think it actually starts out pretty well, but it lost my interest in the latter half. The Flag Smashers are an interesting enough villain group. They're not evil and they're often sympathetic.And their cause ties in sort-of to the broader theme but it's kind of forced. And I have no idea what to make of Julia Louis-Dreyfus's character.
