

Despite his promises that he's "not trying to replace Steve," he and Wilson end the episode on unfriendly terms. Of course, Walker ultimately doesn't win that fight, and he certainly doesn't win over Sam. But that doesn't make him any less of a formidable fighter: an early action set-piece shows him and his partner-in-crimefighting, Lemar Hoskins (Clé Bennett) - better known as Battlestar in the comics - brawling with a group of Flag Smashers led by Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) after the team knocks the Falcon and the Winter Soldier out of commission. Unlike Steve and Isaiah, Walker doesn't have super soldier serum coursing through his veins. After his brief introduction last week, Walker got considerably more screentime in "The Star-Spangled Man," as viewers learned more about his background and particular skill set. We'll have to wait and see if the current Captain America, John Walker (Wyatt Russell), has a meet-and-greet with Isaiah Bradley as well. The timeliness of that scene earned praise across the board, although a few voices accused it of being too "woke." The stand-off is defused when one of the officers recognizes Sam as the Falcon, but his lame excuse - "I didn't recognize you without the goggles" - doesn't change the racially-charged nature of the situation. It wasn't lost on viewers that Sam and Bucky walked out of their meeting with Isaiah directly into an encounter with local police, who pull up while they're arguing and demand to see Wilson's ID. “What does that mean for the character? It’s a real exploration of what we have traditionally laid into with this iconic red, white and blue of it, and now we are taking it down another road." “It’s a very important conversation that we’re having all the time but in particular it’s really bubbled to the in the past year: What does it mean for a Black man to pick up such an iconically white symbol?” FAWS director, Kari Skogland, told Yahoo Entertainment recently.


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"You're telling me that there was a Black super solider decades ago and nobody knew about him?" It's safe to assume that the world is going to know all about Isaiah - and his fallen brothers - by the time the series wraps up. "How could nobody bring him up?" he asks Bucky, who tries to reassure his furious partner that Steve knew nothing about this dark chapter in the military's past. This is all news to Sam, who is shocked at what was done in Captain America's name. People running tests, taking my blood, coming into my cell." "You know what they did to me for being a hero?" he says during his brief reunion with Bucky. It appears that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is following that storyline, as well as Isaiah's post-war imprisonment. The Department of Defense covered up that grim news, and refrained from turning the survivors into celebrities in the same way that Steve's name and face were everywhere during World War II. One of three-hundred Black test subjects in Project Rebirth, he watched many of his fellow soldiers die during the experiments until only five men remained. In the comics, Isaiah's origin story is much darker than Steve's. "If by met, you mean I whupped your ass, then yeah," Isaiah quickly says, adding that he claimed half of Bucky's metal arm in their decades-old skirmish. Midway through "The Star-Spangled Man," Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) takes Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) to meet Isaiah - played by veteran character actor Carl Lumbly, who also has a role in the DC Universe as the longtime voice of Martian Manhunter - who Bucky previously encountered during the Korean War when he was still the HYDRA-controlled Winter Soldier. And now, he's officially part of MCU continuity. One of those test subjects was Isaiah Bradley, who made his comic book debut in 2003. government made other super soldiers with a variation of the serum that transformed Steve from a skinny street kid into a strapping hero. But the second episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier lifts the veil on long-held military secret: While Rogers was literally on ice between 19, the U.S. As far as the Marvel Cinematic Universe public knows, only two men have served as Captain America: Steve Rogers and now John Walker.
