‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ Writer Says ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Created Massive Problems for the Marvel Heroes

After a 2020 without Marvel, fans are getting back to back Disney+ series. WandaVision just ended March 5 and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is now on Disney+. WandaVision dealt specifically with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) coping with the death of Vision (Paul Bettany). The Falcon and the Winter Soldier finds Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) after the events of Avengers: Endgame.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.]

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier head writer Malcolm Spellman spoke at a Zoom press conference March 14. Spellman explained how the events of Avengers: Endgame left a lot for Sam and Bucky to handle.

‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ is what happens after ‘Avengers: Endgame’

Both Sam and Bucky, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, got snapped by Thanos (Josh Brolin) at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. They were among the half a universe who returned at the end of Avengers: Endgame. The Avengers defeated Thanos, but that didn’t solve everything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

“I think what worked out really nicely was that where-where Endgame leaves off, dispatching Thanos has created a situation where the entire world is dealing with one single issue,” Spellman said.

‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ gets personal

So the Falcon and the Winter Soldier helped save the universe. Now what? Sam still has financial problems and Bucky is in therapy. Spellman also suggested that defeating Thanos opened the door for new villains.

“The villains in this series are responding to that,” Spellman said. “In fact, every villain in the series would tell you he or she is a hero.  The heroes are responding to that in their personal lives. That A story plot, it’s all born from one single, organic thing and this continuum from what happens after Endgame. That sort of galvanizes and affects everybody on the planet at the same time and creates a nice cohesion, and direct lineage to the MCU.”

It will take six hours to move the Marvel Cinematic Universe forward

Avengers: Endgame was the longest Marvel movie at three hours. That’s about half of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, so they have time to explore these new issues created after Endgame.

We didn’t just tackle one episode at a time, we spent months just doing this. We refer to vertical story-telling is features, right? Features are compressed time and immediate action, they all build towards one event. A series allows horizontal story-telling. And the rhythm of the story-telling is completely different in that. Characters can befriend each other, fall out, and evolve in a much different way. So, by focusing on that horizontal story, and spreading across all those themes, spreading across where these characters’ journeys are going to be before we even know what the individual episodes do. It created that feeling where there’s almost like this fabric that’s draped over the entire series. That was born from the process.

Malcolm Spellman, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier press conference, 3/14/21