‘Falcon and the Winter Soldier’: Many Marvel Fans Don’t Expect to See Any Surprise Mutants
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has premiered on Disney+, and fans online have plenty to say about it. Like any Marvel property, there has been plenty of speculation about how the show will impact the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Here’s why many Marvel fans don’t expect to see any surprise mutants appear.
What is ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ about?
Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes couldn’t be any more different as characters. One is a man from another time, a man from a distant era brainwashed into becoming an assassin now attempting to return to normal life in the present day. The other is a soldier sworn who’s seen plenty of action on the battlefield in the modern-day, both against militaries and supervillains alike. What unites them is their tie to Captain America, Steve Rogers.
The show follows the two as they try to struggle with maintaining Steve’s legacy in a post-Captain America world. It looks like it will harken back to the action spy genre highlighted in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. That film not only introduced Sam to the MCU, but it also reintroduced Bucky as well. The series will take place after the events of Avengers: Endgame, now that Captain America has retired and passed on his mantle.
How the MCU is moving to Disney+
WandaVision was the first streaming series for the MCU. Even though Marvel has had plenty of TV shows before this, none of them were as closely linked to the cinematic storyline like that one. Now The Falcon and the Winter Soldier occupy the same space in the MCU. The two shows couldn’t be further apart. WandaVision was a hybrid comedy and treatise on grief whereas this show looks like a straight-up action piece. But they both represent how Marvel is evolving in the MCU’s presentation. The biggest stories are no longer relegated to the cinema. Now Disney+ is getting in on the action.
Because of this, plenty of fans treat these series as another opportunity to speculate on some major happenings within the larger MCU. Rampant online speculation followed every episode of WandaVision, with fans wondering if any major Marvel characters would make surprise appearances. Anyone looking for a surprise cameo was let down, however, as the story remained focused on its existing characters.
So now the question becomes: will Falcon and the Winter Soldier follow suit?
Many Marvel fans don’t expect to see any surprise mutants in ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’
Marvel fans took to Reddit to discuss what they might expect from this show. The original poster jokingly said they couldn’t wait to see Reed Richards and Mephisto appear, a reference to the numerous fan theories and rumors that popped up in the lead up to WandaVision. They also asked what mutants everyone thought would show up – again, a reference to many fans believing Magneto, Scarlet Witch’s father in the comics, would appear in WandaVision.
One fan summarized what to expect from Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
“Tbf, TFATWS seemed to be mostly a grounded story that doesn’t deal with mumbo jumbo cosmic magic like WandaVision, so I think the theories and speculations would probably be limited to something like “Ross forming Thunderbolts” or “Eli Bradley will be introduced”, no multiverse and mutants stuff. “
This is likely on point. This actually gives the new show an advantage over WandaVision. With WandaVision being the first Disney+ series, expectations were sky-high for fans. They expected crossovers and other Marvel characters like the mutants to appear.
But they didn’t, and now fans can enter into the next series with more reasonable expectations. They can watch the show and judge it on its own merits and how it develops the main characters, rather than speculating on other characters like the X-Men making a surprise appearance.
