‘Falcon and Winter Soldier’ Episode 1 Recap: Wingmen

I have a confession to make: I have been known, from time to time, to make mine Marvel. I’ve read hundreds of their comics over the years (and even wrote one once myself). I enjoyed the Marvel/Netflix shows Daredevil and The Punisher, as I’ve chronicled at length on this very site. As for the movies…well, Robert Downey Jr. as Tony “Iron Man” Stark was casting so strong it essentially made superheroes the dominant genre nearly singlehandedly (give or take a Hugh Jackman or a Heath Ledger), and the fight scene that opened Captain America: The Winter Soldier however many years back was a pip.

The rest I can take or leave. Mostly leave.

I say all this in the interest of full disclosure. But if I’m gonna cop to being indifferent to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, I also want to state for the record that I’m in the liking-things business, and I go into every new series I watch hoping to enjoy what I see. It’s true that I may not have caught a new Marvel movie since the underbaked and overrated Guardians of the Galaxy—after a dozen servings of pistachio ice cream, it’s okay to decide pistachio ice cream isn’t for you and stop eating each new serving just in case this one’s the good one. But I was certainly prepared to enjoy The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the latest series to take characters from the blockbuster movies and plop them down on the small screen for several extra hours of screentime. It shares half a title with the one Marvel movie I can actually remember anything about—that’s promising, right?

Turns out it is promising, in one extremely and unexpectedly specific way: The show begins with an extended action sequence co-starring Batroc (Georges St-Pierre), the limber French mercenary who also kicked off that movie. And that’s about where it ends. “New World Order,” the show’s premiere episode, is serviceable television at best, dependent on countless hours of previous material to make its heroes and their somewhat melancholy, very militaristic misadventures click.

The bulk of the hour focuses on the Falcon, aka Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the high-flying friend of Captain America. When the show begins it’s been weeks since Cap and company brought billions of people back into existence after a five-year disappearance event called “the Blip.” (Like virtually all problems in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was caused by someone’s misguided attempt to make the world a better place.) Sam, like Marvel Studios, has been working closely with the Air Force, in his case rescuing hostages from hang-gliding Frenchmen thousands of feet in the air in a fast-moving but forgettable fight sequence. He’s doing this in lieu of what both the now-retired Cap and James “War Machine” Rhodes (a Don Cheadle cameo) want him to do, which is take up his iconic shield and become the new Captain America.

Sam’s recent mission fighting the French guys in North Africa (“You’re about to fly into Libyan airspace” is the new “With great power comes great responsibility”) has brought a new group of terrorists or activists or something called the Flag-Smashers onto his radar. According to his military liaison Torres (Danny Ramirez), these sinister figures want a unified world without borders, “so you could see why a lot of people are into that.” For the crime of kind of sort of momentarily seeing the value of a borderless world, Torres gets his head stomped by the Flag-Smashers’ ringleader. That’ll learn him.

Sam, meanwhile, heads back to his hometown of New Orleans, where his sister Sarah (Adepero Oduye) is struggling to keep the family fishing business afloat, both literally and figuratively. She wants to sell their parents’ old boat to make ends meet; Sam believes, incorrectly as it turns out, that his status as the Falcon will help them secure a loan instead. (It’s a little hard to swallow that the incredibly good-looking super-people who saved the world aren’t all filthy rich with endorsement deals and speaking gigs, but okay.)

That the Falcon has the cheerier plotline of the two heroes says a lot about how poorly things are going for James “Bucky” Barnes (a glowering Sebastian Stan), aka the Winter Soldier. Formerly a brainwashed assassin for the evil conspiracy group HYDRA, Bucky turned face a dozen or so movies ago and redeemed many of his old misdeeds alongside the Avengers and his former partner and best friend Steve “Captain America” Rogers. Now that the dust has settled from their latest world-saving adventure—one that saw Steve ride off into the sunset—the seemingly ageless 106-year-old is spending his time rather pointedly alone.

He ignores Sam’s texts. His therapist makes fun of him for not placing a single phonecall in a week. Just because he’s a glutton for punishment I guess, his only friend is an old man named Yori (Ken Takemoto) who’s the father of an innocent bystander Bucky secretly murdered during his Winter Soldier days. Yori’s on a list Bucky maintains of people he needs to make amends to; sometimes this entails wiretapping a crooked senator, other times it means befriending a senior citizen because you shot his son in the face. The poor oblivious old-timer sets Barnes up on a date with Leah (Miki Ishikawa), a barkeep at their favorite Japanese restaurant, but when she too brings up the murdered son, Bucky bails.

Nothing brings the two heroes together in this episode, and nothing ties together their two storylines. That said, it seems like a safe bet that the “new” Captain America (Wyatt Russell) unveiled by the government at the end of the episode will be on both their agendas moving forward. He certainly wound up at the top of mine, i.e. I had to google him to find out who the hell he was supposed to be. No one we’ve seen before, it turns out!

Sure, if you search around the pop-culture internet you can find out that Russell is playing John “US Agent” Walker, one of many Cap knock-offs the United States government has trotted out over the years within the world of Marvel’s comics. But should you need to consult a wiki for a reveal beat this big, or a reaction from Sam as dismayed as his slow-motion grimace when he sees the ceremony on TV? All this fuss for a complete unknown, at least as far as what’s seen and heard on screen goes, feels completely unearned, even confusing.

And, unfortunately, largely predictable at that point in what is at times a shockingly wobbly script, from series creator Malcolm Spellman. Torres’s exchange with Sam during the big episode-opening action sequences is comprised almost solely of clichés, from clunky videogame-cutscene military speak like “I’ll be your boots on the ground, sir” to a literal fists-in-the-air victory cheer at battle’s end. Yori tells Bucky he’s haunted by the mysterious circumstances of his son’s death—from so far out of the blue it’s almost comedic at that—only for Leah to repeat all of this to Sam virtually verbatim two scenes later. Billions of people have suddenly reappeared after five years, but the banker Sam and Sarah go to acts like the Falcon’s the first one of those billions to apply for a loan with a five-year gap in their financials.

I’m sure this all reads different if you’re already invested in these characters. I’m sure you’re no more supposed to watch The Falcon and the Winter Soldier without having watched every one of the dozens and dozens of hours of screentime the Marvel Cinematic Universe has pumped out than you are to jump aboard Game of Thrones with Season Eight. I’m less sure that I care. Good TV is good TV, and years of allegiance to a particular franchise don’t suddenly grant that franchise license to half-ass its attempt to make some of it.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Watch The Falcon and The Winter Soldier Episode 1 ("New World Order") on Disney+