Sam flying in with his fancy new Captain America suit chastising a bunch of people who very nearly died moments earlier to “do better” and shame them for referring to the Flag Smashers as “terrorists” isn’t actually that awesome, cheering onlookers notwithstanding. That doesn’t mean you coddle violent extremists who blow up innocents. That’s the hard truth of actually governing, actually leading people: You can’t make everybody happy. It was hard enough to figure out what to do when everyone vanished piecing the world back together now is a monumental task and not everyone is going to be happy. The GRC has been tasked with figuring out what to do with all the newly reappeared people, long-term squatters, governments and civil society in complete disarray. In the meantime, people just sort of divided the spoils. Half the world’s population disappeared for five years and then suddenly reappeared. The GRC has been working for six months on an impossible task. It’s almost a good speech until you think about the particulars. We were already expecting Sam to become Captain America after Endgame, and nobody cared one way or another.Īfter Sam beats the Flag Smashers and saves the GRC members with his super suit, he lays into the senators and global representatives telling them to check their privilege and “do better.”ĭo better guy I don't know. If you’d just left the discussion of race out of the equation entirely, nobody would bat an eye. This despite the numerous black superheroes that nobody has a problem with. By the end, when Sam just decides to take the mantle of Captain America for himself, it’s not just the right man for the job stepping up, it’s driven home over and over again that he’s black and that this is somehow (because the show tells us, mainly) a Very Big Deal. The idea that Sam was passed over for the job of Captain America and it was given to a white dude-who is clearly the World’s Greatest Monster for taking said job-permeates the show. The heavy-handed politics just keep coming, unfortunately.
And if they weren’t, legislation would surely be passed to make it so). (Also banks would be dying to loan money to all these newcomers in need of money. He’s also clearly working on high-level missions that must pay some sort of fee-surely he’s not working for the richest, most powerful government in the world for free. But Sam is friends with powerful-and rich-people like Tony Stark’s widow, Pepper Potts. It followed the absurd bank scene in the first episode in which Sam is turned down for a loan because he was vanished in the Snappening and has no income record for five years. I wrote at the time that it felt heavy-handed and too on-the-nose. When they leave, the two start arguing in the street and moments later cops pull up and start harassing Sam (somehow not recognizing the famous Avenger). He was badly mistreated by the government following his service and is justifiably unwilling to help. Before I stopped recapping the show, I wrote about the episode where Bucky takes Sam to meet Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) a Super Soldier the US government used during Vietnam to track down the Winter Soldier. Racial politics are littered throughout the show, often in ways that are at once preachy and puzzling.
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