Falcon And The Winter Soldier “Truth” Review
Falcon And The Winter Soldier “Truth” is the fifth and penultimate episode of Marvel’s spin off series. Unlike episode 4 this is pretty much an episode of exposition. It’s 50 minutes long and almost all of that is exposition, however that’s not necessarily a bad thing in once case.
John Walker
John opens up this episode with a scene of him running to a nearby warehouse and promptly having a breakdown. He’s 100% gone full “I’m Captain America! I was chosen!” Mode. Which makes things really hard for Bucky and Sam when they catch up to him and try and force him to give up the shield. A fight ensues which leads to injuries for all three but the Shield ends up with Sam in the end so it’s all good.
Meanwhile the show takes another interesting turn as Bucky catches up to Zemo. After a tiny chat the Dora Milaje sneak up on him and take him prisoner (the same prison that Wanda was left in at the end of Civil War.) Sam is going around and helping his sister fix the boat. When Bucky shows up and helps out. Whilst John is stripped of all titles in a military hearing. He’s told the only reason he’s free is because he’s been such an upstanding citizen but he loses his mind anyway. A dodgy lady who knows far too much for anyone’s liking shows up and offers to help him.
Working Together
Whilst all this is going on Bucky and Sam are reunited for a while. Bucky helps Sam realise that the world needs him as a symbol of hope and unity, not division. And finally Sam starts training to be Captain America. He learns how to use the shield, does endurance training and finally accepts his new role. After who knows how long of having it he finally opens a gift Bucky gave him, from the Wakandans, it’s obviously going to be the new Cap suit made for him but we unfortunately don’t get to see it.
The end credit scene shows Walker making a homemade Captain America shield. Unsure of the material being used though.
First Impressions
What can I say about this episode other than it’s the only one that’s actually bored me? Every episode up to this point has been smart, subtle and important. The only word I can use to describe this is: unneeded. The whole episode felt like it was doing the usual Marvel thing of spoon feeding you information that you already know but “we’re gonna spell it out to you anyway, just in case you’re an idiot.”
Karli is as uninteresting as ever. Speaks volumes that as I was writing the overview I’d forgotten that she was in this episode at all. At this point it’s obvious she only exists to die by helping Sam and Bucky stop Walker and get a lazy redemption arc. If that doesn’t happen then there’s a massive question mark on why she exists at all. It’s almost like the writers had her originally as the big bad then realised Walker was a much more interesting character and now they’re just kinda putting her wherever they can. Unfortunate but that’s what it feels like.
Final Thoughts
The best parts of the episode were the scene with Zemo, Sam and Bucky fixing the boat and having a chat and Walker’s speech at the hearing. Him, rightfully, pointing out that he’s only ever done what they told him to do and made him for puts a whole new perspective on why he’s so obsessed with being Captain America.
Sam and Bucky work best when they’re together now. The connection is there. So having them apart for most of the episode didn’t work as it did in episode 1. In episode 1 we see two people dealing with the same trauma in their own individual ways. Not knowing how similar their lives and fears really are. That’s not there here because it’s been worked on throughout the other episodes. So separating them just made things feel confused and disjointed.
Honestly hoping for a great finale, cause this episode really seemed to drop the ball.
