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Submit ReviewThings get real dark, real quick as John Walker comes for the Flag-Smashers on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 4, “The Whole World is Watching.” With the Dora Milaje on the hunt for Zemo, the pressure is on for Sam and Bucky to try to turn Karli Morganthau, or take her down. And once the new Captain America and Battlestar get into the mix, things get complicated — and tragic. Let’s break down all the Turkish delight — sorry, Easter eggs, Marvel comic book references and much more.
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Full Episode Transcript
Alex: Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about Marvel, the MCU, and right now, Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I’m Alex.
Justin: I’m Justin.
Pete: I’m Pete.
Alex: And we are going to be talking about the fourth episode of the series, The Whole World is Watching. And it is true, this is a big show, lots of people watching, the whole world in fact, has been tuning in for every episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And that’s what the title is mostly about, is the ratings for the show, which we know of course are through the roof. So that’s very exciting.
Justin: That’s right. Anytime you can just guess about your ratings and throw that in the title.
Pete: It’s a boss move, it’s a boss move for sure.
Justin: It’s a baller move. Like of shows are like, “Whoops, no one watched and we’re canceled. Episode four.”
Alex: That was my favorite show for a really long time. I wish they hadn’t titled it that because I feel like more people have watched and it wouldn’t have gotten cancelled.
Justin: Anytime you can throw a “Whoops” in there at the beginning of anything, you’re really speaking to the people.
Alex: It was actually originally called, “Whoops Friends.”
Justin: Whoops, we’re friends. I mean that’s sort of what it was about.
Alex: Kind of, they just met. They were on a break.
Justin: Whoops, we’re podcasters. That’s us. That’s what this is.
Alex: Now requisite spoiler warning here. If you haven’t watched the fourth episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier please go do that because we’re going to spoil the heck out of it. But first a little pluggy poo over here of this-
Justin: Pluggy poo? We have not vetted that term.
Pete: And what just happened?
Alex: I’m just playing around with some stuff.
Justin: Sorry, Alex its just son who’s talking right now?
Alex: If you haven’t checked it out already, we did an interview with Olli Haaskivi, who is the actor who played Dr. Wilfred Nagel on the last episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Now, if you’re only subscribed, we rolled this out a bunch of different places. We usually roll these episodes out in the Comic Book Club feed and then the Marvel Vision feed. The Olli Haaskivi episode is exclusive to the Marvel Vision feed. So if you’re listening on Podcasts, go check it out over there. It was super fun. And I think we got a lot of interesting information about how it works, particularly for one scene or slightly more than one scene actor on a Marvel show. I thought it was-
Pete: It was really cool to talk to him. And after talking to him and then kind of re-watching his stuff, he’s a really good actor, like what he is and then what he became. Wow. Pretty awesome.
Alex: I mean, I’ll tell you when I was putting together the thumbnail for the episode and grabbed the still of Dr. Wilfred Nagel, I looked at it and there was a brief moment of like, “Is this not the guy? Would somebody do a weird prank to get us interview somebody as a fake Dr. Wilfred Nagel?”
Justin: But honestly, I think a lot of the interview really lets us in on the acting process.
Alex: Yeah, you were very excited to talk acting with somebody.
Justin: As a classically trained actor. I’ve talked to YouTube bozos.
Alex: You were like, “Ooh! Yeah, I know what you’re talking about!”
Justin: I was not woo-hooing.
Alex: You were like a little boy jumping up and down talking to him.
Justin: Sure, I was jumping up and down a little bit and going like this.
Alex: “I know what you’re talking about!”
Justin: Definitely. And getting into this episode, we’re talking about today, our guy was in the Previously On just dominating.
Alex: He was. I was like, “That’s our best friend right there.”
Justin: That’s exactly what I said.
Alex: Whoops! Friends.
Justin: Whoops, we’re friends.
Alex: So, let’s talk about this episode. Lots of stuff going on in this one. Interestingly, not a lot of Easter eggs necessarily. You know, we’ve been talking about the Easter eggs, the Marvel comics references. There were a couple there, but it wasn’t the speculation, a million thing that we’ve expected from Wanda Vision, not even the level of the last couple of episodes of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, though, there are a couple of things. Pete, what did you want to call out? What’s the Easter Egg? [crosstalk 00:04:01] that they went to Wakanda? That was a good Easter egg.
Pete: But don’t spoil all the things I want to talk about at once you fucking dick, but I was going to say Zemo was hiding candy like it was Easter. So come on. [crosstalk 00:04:13].
Alex: Well, that actually was the one thing that I felt like was a weird little Easter egg there. I don’t know about you guys, but I associate Turkish Delight most with the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And I think if you’ve read the book or you’ve seen the movie, you know what it is, it’s this candy that he has there, but it’s one of those things that I think everybody that I’ve ever talked to have the same experience reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, because you hear about the White Queen gives Turkish Delight to this character, Edmund and tempts him and brings him over to her side and you hear about it, but they don’t describe it. And it’s this mysterious thing from childs that have- it’s clearly the most delicious candy of all time, but you have no idea what it is.
Justin: And honestly, in reading the book, I imagined it as sort of like a brownie because I love brownies. And I feel like it’s the kind of thing at that age where it’s like, what would tempt you to go with the bad guy? And I was like, “Well, brownies would, that’s for sure.”
Pete: At one point I was like, “Are we just in a giant ad for Turkish Delight right now? Like, this show is basically hinging on how great Turkish Delight is.”
Alex: So I’ll tell you what, it’s not great.
Justin: The actual candy Turkish Delight, it’s like a Jolly Rancher, basically.
Pete: Hey, Jolly Ranchers aren’t bad.
Alex: No, it’s fine. [crosstalk 00:05:29]
Justin: You’re not going evil for a Jolly Rancher.
Alex: If someone like Baron Zemo would take a bunch of Turkish Delights, throw it at me, I would be like, “All right. I’ll tell you literally whatever you want.”
Justin: I’ll invite you to my friend’s secret funeral.
Alex: Depending on how hungry I am, I might.
Justin: Hungry? For a Jolly Rancher? That’s not a meal. Jolly Rancher’s an anti-meal.
Alex: I’ll tell you what, we’re getting wildly off track here. But I have one cavity that I’ve gotten filled in, in my entire life. That was because there was a period of time I had a sack of Jolly Ranchers and I was like, “Well, I could just have these instead of-“
Pete: A sack? Are you Santa Claus? Who walks around with a sack?
Alex: I got a huge variety pack of Jolly Ranchers. And I was home and instead of brushing my teeth, I was like, “I’ll just pop a Jolly Rancher.”
Pete: How is that instead of brushing your teeth?
Alex: In my head it was like gum or mints, but instead I was having a Jolly Rancher and it just didn’t occur to me and I got a cavity.
Pete: You went to Cornell. How are you this dumb?
Justin: And you used to floss with Twizzlers, right?
Alex: Big gaps in my teeth.
Justin: Wow. Only one cavity. I’ve had way more cavities. And I always blame it on, I grew up on well water, which doesn’t have fluoride, which strengthens your teeth. I just add old dirt in there now. But last I went to the dentist, I went to the dentist recently cause true fans of the show will know that I had a broken tooth that had dropped off on this very podcast. And like our second episode, went to the dentist, no cavities.
Alex: Wow. Good for you. Also, no teeth.
Justin: Also no teeth. I’m out of teeth. That’s a big factor. It’s just one big cavity.
Pete: That was a real scary moment for me. When I was talking to you and your tooth was missing, I had to talk to a bunch of people about it. Like, cause I really questioned my beliefs and stuff like that because it was like, I have trusted the words that come out of your mouth for years. And then when you had just a tooth missing, I all of a sudden didn’t trust who you were or what you were about. It was a real thing.
Justin: The importance of a full set of teeth cannot be overstated.
Pete: I didn’t know I would be so shook. Yeah. But then, reverse-
Alex: Sorry, not to get back to Falcon and the Winter Soldier or anything, but actually to revisit the Turkish Delight. I think Baron Zemo is kind of getting, pulling the most focus in this show right now. Who knows if he’s going to show up going beyond this because he escapes at the end of the episode, but it’s wild to me how much he more is getting out of these episodes and out of these arcs than even Sam and Bucky are.
Pete: And the choices that he’s making and like the way he interacts with people. It’s not the Zemo that I know. It’s been very kind of cool to see this other side of Zemo, and when he crushed up the serum, I was like, “Oh, shit, look at this guy doing the right thing.”
Justin: I think for me, the main reason why Zemo is sort of having the most interest and focus is because he has a plan and we don’t know what it is. And the rest of the characters don’t have a plan and seem sort of lost. And the dialogue they have, it’s very obvious what they’re just like, they’re doing a lot of exposition. So it feels like, ah, where’s the fun here? And then Zemo’s just wandering around, being weird with candy, breaking the serum.
Pete: Don’t mind me, I’m just going to escape through the bathroom.
Alex: Well, this gets to a bigger thing. And I really didn’t want Pete to yell at me in this episode, but it struck me with this episode in particular that this is going to come out much stronger than I mean it. If this wasn’t a Marvel show, I don’t think this would be good at this point. It has a chance to turn it around in the last two episodes. But particularly this episode felt very messy to me. There were a lot of things that I liked in individual moments, but just to talk about the arc of the episode, you start off with this great flashback scene of Bucky in Wakanda, getting his [crosstalk 00:09:24] hold on, hold on. This is exactly getting to the point. You’re actually getting to the point of what I’m saying. I love it, we get to see him breaking his programming, but the episode isn’t about Bucky.
Alex: So just from a structural perspective, we get this thing that follows up on the scene from the last episode. But Sam pulls a little more focus, which is good, mind you, Zemo pulls a little more focus, which as we talked about is fun, but structurally it’s kind of all over the place. There’s nothing, like you were saying, Justin, everybody’s sort of wandering everywhere. So you get this endorphin rush of, Oh, shit, we got to see Wakanda of these big fights of John Walker going bad by the end of the episode. And these are all good things from a Marvel fan perspective, but they’re not really amounting too much in terms of the show yet.
Justin: I mean, I agree. It’s sort of what we talked about in the previous episodes where it’s like, they’re putting so much on the table and it’s not about this. And they said it a ton in this episode.
Justin: Where you don’t have black and white, good guys, bad guys here. It’s all this gray area, verbatim said in this episode. And the only issue with that is it makes it much harder to explain the motivations of everyone. Cause you have to literally go through and be like, well, he’s doing this because of this. She’s doing this because of this, because we don’t have the classic hero-villain back and forth. This episode, I think was the hard one because it was the one where we’re starting to see our sides and it was confusing here. And you see in the characters like Bucky and Falcon, I spent a lot of the episode being like, “Okay, so, oh, okay, good, good. I’ll watch. Oh no. He’s okay. Good. Okay. Now.” And by the end of it, it’s like I see.
Pete: To talk a little bit about that gray area and the black and white, there was this amazing shot from above of Ayo and a Falcon kind of meeting. And it was like this right in the middle of the road, like white stone pebbles versus black stone pebbles.
Alex: I think you mean Bucky.
Pete: Bucky, sorry.
Alex: Bucky’s the one with the metal arm. Falcon is the one with the wings. It’s confusing.
Pete: Not that confusing. Anyways, sorry I mixed it up. But I’m just saying that like that to me, like this whole like line in the ground, like all these different perspectives and in a superhero movie, or whatever, like Marvel kind of thing, you don’t get to stop and talk about consequences and what it means to be a hero and like these icons and how they can mean more and mean different things to different people. So the fact that like they do have those discussions and Falcon is flexing a little bit of his background of like talking to people who’ve been through shit was awesome.
Pete: It was this thing of like, we’re not going to just punch people in the face. We’re going to try to talk. We’re going to try to do the right thing here. The fact that Zemo isn’t justice. We want to kill him. We need him. We’re doing stuff with him. Like we’re trying to do it for a greater good, like it’s interesting. And I don’t, don’t throw this structural shit around solves, like this is some interesting shit where unlike an action movie, with the move things forward. We can sit and have little moments like this and they’re powerful and great.
Speaker 4: I agree that scene was that for me, it was one of my favorite scenes in the episode. I just want more of that focus back on Bucky and Sam, because like, we are going to get it, but that made this episode harder to enjoy because it was them sort of at the mercy of the plot when really like the idea of like Bucky being deprogrammed by Ayo. And that scene we got was awesome. I want to see a little more like repercussions of better, what that means to him and Sam. We touched it a little bit where he was sort of like trying to philosophize with Carly before he was interrupted by a Walker. That was cool. And then he had the sister thing felt a little bit out of nowhere, but like they were getting to something there that I think we’re going to pay off later, but it just felt like, and this is a term that I know Pete uses a lot. It felt like more of a middling episode.
Pete: Oh my God. First off, don’t put words to my mouth. I’ve never said that in my life. But I think that I can understand what you’re saying, but I completely disagreed because we had a lot of like reveals of who people are moving forward and how things are going to work. And some very interesting, powerful conversations that you don’t get a lot. So I ate the ship up and the Dora Milaje is showing up and just wracking shit. And the fact that fake Captain America was like, they weren’t even Schumer showed yours was really awesome. You know, like handled his shield that he used temporarily holding on to, in a way that he didn’t even know how to do. I mean, dismantled, where two soldiers armed that he didn’t even know was a thing. It was so powerful in many different ways. I had a great time.
Justin: I agree. That was badass. And honestly, the Walker stuff in this episode was really good. And I feel like this was sort of his episode putting him in a spot where he needs to be sort of the villain for the rest of the series.
Alex: Well, let me throw something out at you guys that in all honesty confused me, and maybe there is a straightforward explanation here, but I think to the point Justin was saying earlier, there’s a lot of back and forth. And this is what I’m getting at, not to harp on it too much with the structural thing, because I agree with you. There are fun sequences in here. There are things that I am enjoying. I am a Marvel fan. I am a sucker for this my entire life. So I’m never going to stop watching this forever. That’s fine. No, it’s true though. I feel like I needed to bed myself from feed who is like, how dare you? How dare you in kind of a joy, but not particularly loved this thing. Thor: the Dark World is not a good movie. I’ve still watched it several times.
Justin: That’s the ultimate credit you can drop. Hey bro, I’ve seen Thor: the Dark World more than once. So I get darkness.
Alex: No, that’s not what I’m saying. My point being like, I am a sucker for this stuff. It is fine. I’m not going to give up even if I don’t think it necessarily makes sense. And I honestly want to know if there’s an explanation here, because I was very confused by what was going on towards the end of the episode, where Karli came out and said, “Okay, our plan is we’re going to kill Captain America.” Right? And the Flag Smashers like, eh, that seems like maybe a little bit of a chess step too far. But it seems like by the point they got to that big fight where everybody going nuts towards the end that they were on board with it, at least in a certain sense, then add in that Falcon and Bucky come to talk to Karli in full costume.
Alex: Sharon is clearly tracking John Walker for them. So they must realize on some level that the flags bachelors are going for John Walker, not for them. I think though that it was never clearly established. So they’ll go after John Walker, we ended up in this fight. Karli comes out kills Battlestar, which is a whole separate thing that we definitely need to talk about here because that’s messed up. And that everybody who is onboard with the plan to kill Captain America is like, “Whoa, you killed Battlestar.” That’s a step too far and runs away. What’s going on there.
Pete: All right. There’s a lot to unpack there.
Alex: There is, this is true.
Pete: But I think Karli…
Alex: Explain it to me Pete.
Pete: Okay. So Karli didn’t know that the sidekick wasn’t powered up, she thought she was in like a super power kind of like fight. And they’re all like, okay, we’re going to follow Karli, but this is kind things you’re getting crazy right now. And I think once they see a normal person die that’s like them and who they’re fighting for, they all kind of stop and question their shit. And like, Yeah, I can see what you’re trying to say. But when you see that it does kind of be like “Whoa, whose side are we on?” because they had a lot of discussions leading up to this. And people were kind of backing away from Karli as the kind of shows this episode was going on because she was talking about like, “Oh she did kill that person.” “Oh she has gone too far.” Or maybe these ideas, so like, I think that’s why that moment kind of stopped people. And I couldn’t understand that wasn’t the original objective but when they saw that, that’s why there was pause.
Justin: Well, I think two things were happening there to echo what Pete’s saying. There’s the conversation that Sam has with Karli about supremacy. She sort of steps into saying some pretty supremacist things. And then she’s like catches herself, “Actually I’m not.” And then in that moment, when she may be at like violently strikes Battlestar and ends up maybe accidentally killing him, that’s her supremacy. She was not aware of what she’s wielding and she kills a person. And I think that’s when everyone was like, ah. Like a lot of political violence, terrorism, when you’re doing it from a distance like they did in last episode and killed those people remotely, it’s one thing. It feels like you’re supporting your cause when you’re in the room and your compatriot, your leader kills someone, it’s like, I don’t want this. I didn’t sign up for this.
Justin: I actually liked that moment because I thought it used a gray area of the Flag Smashers as like, “we feel we are now.” But then Captain America at the end, Walker kills one of their own. And you see the escalation happening here and you see they’re going to be hardened. When they were sort of soft and sort of regretting their violence for a second there, instantly they’re hardened by what, violence begets violence and Walker escalates that. I appreciate that moment. The other Walker stuff and like all the tracking, what you’re doing, I agree is a little confusing. I think Bucky and Sam are tracking Walker because they knew he was going to be a problem to them. Not because they thought he was a bad guy. It was just more like he’s the cop who’s watching us.
Pete: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:19:20] so they kind of want it… We’re talking about something that I want to back up the track a little bit. Falcon calls Sharon and Sharon’s like, “Yeah, I got a couple satellites under”. I don’t know who they think Sharon is, but I can not wait for the reveal of who Sharon is because she is running shit and like knows a lot, a little bit too much for maybe what’s going on. So I’m excited to see like a real Sharon reveal.
Justin: Get that SAT flex.
Pete: Yeah. I also think this episode was the king of small moments and I want to go back to the beginning like seeing the winter soldier cry when he’s like being said those words are loud was like really powerful and very, very cool.
Alex: And I was mostly surprised that when he cried, his tear didn’t turn to ice because of his ice powers. He’s the winter soldier, right?
Pete: That’s not a funny joke.
Speaker 4: Yeah. When Disney bought Marvel, I think he became Elsa from Frozen’s brother?
Pete: But also like he…
Alex: He want’s us to let it go.
Pete: We also saw that like he speaks Wakanda. I was so excited to get the Dora Milaje and see Wakanda and hear the music. It was really, really fantastic to kind of have those really just kind of small, amazing moments, very happy about it.
Alex: It was very nice. I did want to jump back to two things that you were talking about earlier. One, I wanted to talk about Sharon Carter. I know I threw out a speculation or just a thought about is she the power broker in the last episode. This episode, they keep doubling down on the Power Broker is upset without bringing the Power Broker on screen. So obviously that’s going to send theory mind into overtime. It’s entirely possible. It could just be a guy named the Power Broker and the should be going, but it feels like that has to be somebody right?
Justin: It has to be at this point especially this episode, the buildup of like, got an email from the Power Broker. It’s like too much hype to. And the email from that pic Karli got from the power brokers like, “Hey, I was serious about my last email”. So like, “Please give me back the serum.” They’re clearly keeping that going because they’re going to reveal. Do we have any guests?
Alex: Well I just want to mention that he definitely has read receipts on his emails? Right? That’s a Power Broker.
Justin: I know you read this, just please respond. Even if it’s just a no, just a quick no is all I want, just to know that you got it. Please confirm.
Alex: So I want to throw a theory out to you that I don’t know that necessarily makes sense. I don’t know where this rumor started from, but everybody seems very convinced that William Hurt’s Thunderbolt Ross is in this show somehow. I don’t know if somebody saw him on set or something like that. Here’s my thought, this is putting together a bunch of random things. But what if the PowerBroker is Thunderbolt Ross, right? Sharon is working for him. She was not ex-communicated at all. She in fact is double agenting it up for the US government at this point working for Thunderbolt as the Power Broker. And we end with some sort of reveal here where they capture Zemo make him work for them and they have a whole flip of the Thunderbolts thing where they’re good guys pretending to be bad guys.
Justin: I mean that would be cool. That feels a little wild to go that way. It feels like-
Pete: Two episodes left.
Justin: We need one more set up moment and another show or a movie to get to Thunderbolts I feel like? What about this? This feels the most obvious, it’s a Power Brokers Al Pacino as Mephisto.
Alex: That seems possible to me.
Justin: No.
Alex: I know there was a rumor that Kevin Feigi had a meeting with Al Pacino and he played the devil on One Division I think. [crosstalk 00:23:27] I didn’t watch all episodes of One Division. So I just kind of read the rumors and theories.
Justin: It makes sense to tie him into every Marvel series in a lot of ways. And I hear that AL Pacino’s playing Loki in the Loki show. What if it’s Nick Fury?
Pete: Could be Nick Fury.
Justin: Because I do think that he feels more like a reveal that fits in this side of the Marvel universe. William Hurt feels a little distant.
Alex: Right, I also don’t know, other than hardcore Marvel fans would be “Oh man, it’s William Hurt I love that guy.” But to be fair and I think this is part of the reason the rumors started. He has been very heavily tied to the Super Soldier Serum throughout the history of the MCU from Incredible Hulk to, that’s it.
Justin: I was going to say where is he going with this? From Incredible Hulk under William Hurt.
Alex: I also think it’s entirely possible it is Sharon Carter. She’s just like created this false identity to run shit in Madripore. The other thing that I wanted to talk to you guys about though that I do think is important to address is the death of Battlestar and specifically using the death of a black man to power the ark of a white man is pretty messed up.
Justin: I agree. I was very surprised when Battlestar, right before the scene when he died, they were doing some things. I was like, this feels like they’re setting him up to die. They wouldn’t do that. And then when they did, I was very surprised.
Pete: Also like it really drove me nuts that like when they went into the building, the fake Captain America like stopped at the stairs and just started looking up for some reason. Went about as he was going to sweep the place, you went in to sweep a place, you don’t stop and look up at the ceiling and just kind of pause. You’re supposed to be a team, you’re supposed to work together. You can’t just leave your wing man. I was just so upset that the fact that like he was so dumb.
Justin: For showbiz, it that feels like they want to talk about race in a real way. For this to happen, I got to think it has to be something they will reckon with going forward because otherwise, I don’t get it. So I don’t want to trust that things they’ve referenced go in the first three episodes leading us up to this, give me confidence they will reckon with this going forward.
Alex: I hope so. I definitely. I’m putting an asterisk on it to your point until the next episode to see how they follow up. But just on the surface, it definitely made me recoil quite a bit and not just because it was a dark moment for the show, but because of a greater world things. So we’ll revisit this discussion next episode and see what happens. A couple of other things I wanted to throw out on the same note with the end of the episode, in the comics, John Walker’s breaking point was his parents getting killed. He goes apeshit after that. He does the same thing here in this episode leading up to… I do think the best image in the entire episode was that last one of John Walker with the blood at the bottom of the shield, that was really, really well-framed and really well done.
Pete: It was so creepy in all the right ways, the way kind of hung on it. And then also he was just kind of tweaking out there. I was just like, it’s very powerful and very upsetting.
Justin: Yeah. To use Pete’s line of like this was an episode about the King of small moments, I think you said? Like the sequence that was great. The moment where like you see him bend the gun, I think and seems like, “Oh, shit”. He’s juiced up and then from that moment onto the last sequence, when you see him raise the shield and that moment. You actually get to see and make the choice to kill him, to kill the Black Smasher. That to me, I was like, Oh, very smartly done, very tense. And then to end it with that blood on the shield thing where it’s like, yes, that is and it really reflects on another great moment. The line, there’s never been another Steve Rogers. And that I thought was very cool and the conversation sort of midway through the episode with battle between Battlestar and Walker where they were like, “Hey, would you take the serum?” I thought that was really cool and it’s like, it doesn’t turn you, it doesn’t make you bad, it just heightens your qualities.
Justin: And then you hear their conversation, you’re like, “Oh, you don’t know that you have these bad qualities that it’s going to heighten when you inevitably take.”
Pete: Yeah and that’s a good question. Would you guys take the serum?
Alex: Well, actually I have a question before that question, because one of my huge bummers of the episode even beyond everything we’ve talked about is we didn’t get to see him take the serum. And I want to know how you take the serum?
Justin: I think it’s rectal insertion.
Alex: I was thinking either you drink it or maybe you eat the whole bottle and crunch it. I’m not 100% sure.
Justin: Yes like a gusher, you put the whole thing.
Pete: It seems like you would inject it.
Alex: But it didn’t have like an injecting thing. Was it just a bottle of Serum and then I guess you have to use a separate hypodermic with the doctor.
Justin: It comes with Turkey Baster and you just blast it into your…
Pete: In you’re what? I’m sorry.
Alex: [crosstalk 00:28:53] just like Fruit Gushers.
Justin: Exactly.
Pete: Just like Fruit Gushers.
Justin: You guys get the anal Gushers, right?
Pete: But regardless of how you take it, how would you guys take it?
Alex: Absolutely. No hesitation. I don’t know. That’s the long answer, if you had a chance to take a super soldier syrum that would make you super strong and extend your life, why would you not take it?
Pete: Oh my God. You would be so evil and so fucked up immediately.
Alex: It would just make me more me whatever I was.
Pete: I would just run away taking the seekers.
Justin: Super podcast. It wouldn’t be a super soldier serum would be super podcast or serum.
Alex: Wow, that guy would be talking for 24 hours. I can podcast this all day.
Pete: Oh boy.
Justin: Pete, would you take it?
Pete: I don’t know. And that’s the thing even Zemo paused. Like that’s how crazy question it is. And I appreciate the fact that I don’t think I could have made that decision like that, you know what I mean. Like I don’t know if I would have jumped on one of the vials and just immediately drank it. I like how they’re playing with the power of it a little bit.
Alex: Justin, you didn’t answer the question.
Justin: I just took it. You guys talking about it. I was like, wow, I’ve been holding onto this for awhile.
Pete: And I guess the second biggest question is, do you call your parents or anything kind of cute and adorable? Like TT, do you have a GAM GAM or anything like that in your family?
Justin: Never did growing up but now my mom insists that her grandchildren call her Meema. And I always say MIMA, and she’s like, “it’s not MIMA MEEMA.” And I’m like, “okay, it’s a child’s word. Tell me how to say it. Like, it’s your name.”
Alex: One last little Easter egg thing that I wanted to mention that is definitely not an Easter egg, but it perked up my ears nonetheless is when they were talking about the Global Repatriation Council and they were passing this at GRC. They called it the patch act at given that we have Madripoor and Wolverine’s code name and Madripoor patch. I was like, Oh, it’s definitely named after him and that I pause for a second. I was like, no, it is too early in the morning.
Justin: Oh yeah, Kevin Feige sitting in the master headquarters of the Marvel cinematic universe. He’s like, “how should we introduce Wolverine?” Like, let’s do it as the name of it and act in a small seated Falcon in the Winter Soldier.
Alex: Any other final thoughts before we start to wrap this up here, Pete?
Pete: Yeah. I can’t say enough about how crazy kind of things escalated in this episode and how interesting the addition to the Dora Milaje was such a fun escalation and all the right ways. I thought that it was just so great and I can’t get enough of it and I am hopefully for more, but I don’t know if we’ll get more,
Justin: I guess just two things I did like the joke about Zemo, do the stupid head tilt thing. That was a fun.
Pete: Another King of the small moments right there.
Justin: King of the small moments and I do think was that like a straight up Brule dig about his acting choice because it wasn’t about the character. That was about literally how he does it. That was very funny. But second, I like the jokes in this show, they’re funny, but it feels totally odd and it really made me think this series is sort of not the same tone as the Marvel movies at all. As much as everyone’s like, it’s like a Marvel movie, but in TV form. Like it’s actually not, it’s quite different. It’s like an espionage TV series and just featuring Marvel characters.
Alex: This gets to a bigger thing that is very rumory and I don’t know how true it is, but there was a lot of talk from folks that apparently they reshot a bunch of this show and reworked and rejiggered it. And there are points in this episode in particular I think and maybe the last episode where you can kind of see they overdubbed certain things. I don’t know exactly what the changes are, but certainly things like, “Hey, where’s that Joaquin guy who was certainly very important in the first episode. I think he’s somebody that was objected in there. He was apparently cast very late in the process. He was objected in there to give a little more exposition. It’s possible that the differing tones of what’s going on that you’re bringing up Justin might be part of that as well, it wasn’t quite as consistent as they thought it might be. Again, I don’t know what the changes are, but certainly I think that might point to a couple of those things.
Justin: But I don’t mean that the tone within this, I haven’t felt off put by the internal tone of the show. I was just struck in this episode by how different this episode feels in comparison to almost everything else from the Marvel Cinematic universe. Even WandaVision felt more like the movies than this does.
Pete: But they did have like some action movie fun where like Bucky punches somebody through a wall. And then it goes like, stay put, like there was still some tonal, like fun moments, but I agree with what you’re saying. It definitely is different. And one more kind of small moment that I wanted to point out when Zemo was talking about this kind of place that they’re in, where they have like the kids before he gives the kids the candy and somebody crosses behind them and the Winter Soldier feels it and turns to it. And just like a small character moment where Kyle Falcon doesn’t like pick up on it, but Bucky does. And I was just like, Oh wow. That is such a cool little thing.
Justin: Yes. And training for like 88 years or something.
Alex: Before we wrap up here, what is on your vision board for the next episode, Pete? What’s on your vision board?
Pete: Well, I’m hoping to get to like the bottom of the real issues. You know what I mean? Like what other family members on the Avengers use different kind of nicknames for their families. Did anybody do like a gappers and poppers type of situation or snatches, hoppers? But I really think that like Turkish Delight is got to be a bigger thing. You can’t just do an ad for Turkish Delight and not really have a pay off. So the next couple of episodes, I can’t wait to see that kind of pay off more.
Alex: Great, great vision board. Justin, what about you?
Justin: Yeah. So true. Based on that last image of the blood on the shield, like in the next episode, I want to see that shield in Sam’s hand or Bucky’s hand or hopefully ideally both. Cause I think it’s…
Alex: They’re holding hands together.
Justin: Trying to be like, “Oh, block over here! You throw it. “
Alex: They’re doing that thing where they’re both in one shirt.
Justin: Yeah, exactly. Stuck on you style.
Pete: I hope that also in the next episode fake cap is out of the picture dead or..
Alex: Definitely not going to happen.
Justin: I like him as the final vial villain, but I want that we’ve set up the anticipation has been building about like, who should have the shield, it’s feels like Sam’s shield, but I’m curious to see how that will play out. And maybe next episode, it’s like Bucky’s turn to have the shield for a moment, what he does with it because I think that is the statement, that’s the metaphor of this series and to stick it to see it in each of their hands. If we’re going to end up with it in Sam’s hand at the end of the series, I want to see it in Bucky’s hand and what it means for him to have the legacy, because the scene in Wakanda in this episode was about him moving past his dark past. And so when he holds the shield, what does he become? What does he become going forward? And then in the end of the series, what does Sam become if he has the shield and he’s not going to put it back on the shelf, I don’t think. Who is he as Falcon as Captain America with wings.
Alex: Kind of petered out there a little bit.
Pete: That’s a horrible way to say that.
Alex: On my vision part, we already covered this, but I just want to see some sort of reckoning and explanation of what happened with Battlestar. I do think that’s very important for contextualizing that moment. I hope they do it. We will cross our fingers and see.
Pete: It was just real nice to see someone step on the shield and do that move again. I’d missed that move. So it was really great to get that move back and in Wakanda Forever.
Alex: Great. If you like to support a podcast, patrion.com/comic book club. Also we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out, we would love to chat with you about Falcon and the Winter Soldier, iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the App of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show. A Marvel vision pod on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook comic book clublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, we’ll see you. Whoops friends.
Justin: Oh, do the stupid head tilt thing.
The post MarvelVision: The Falcon And The Winter Soldier, Episode 4 – “The Whole World Is Watching” appeared first on Comic Book Club.
Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub
Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacyThings get real dark, real quick as John Walker comes for the Flag-Smashers on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 4, “The Whole World is Watching.” With the Dora Milaje on the hunt for Zemo, the pressure is on for Sam and Bucky to try to turn Karli Morganthau, or take her down. And once the new Captain America and Battlestar get into the mix, things get complicated — and tragic. Let’s break down all the Turkish delight — sorry, Easter eggs, Marvel comic book references and much more.
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Full Episode Transcript
Alex: Welcome to MarvelVision, a podcast about Marvel, the MCU, and right now, Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I’m Alex.
Justin: I’m Justin.
Pete: I’m Pete.
Alex: And we are going to be talking about the fourth episode of the series, The Whole World is Watching. And it is true, this is a big show, lots of people watching, the whole world in fact, has been tuning in for every episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. And that’s what the title is mostly about, is the ratings for the show, which we know of course are through the roof. So that’s very exciting.
Justin: That’s right. Anytime you can just guess about your ratings and throw that in the title.
Pete: It’s a boss move, it’s a boss move for sure.
Justin: It’s a baller move. Like of shows are like, “Whoops, no one watched and we’re canceled. Episode four.”
Alex: That was my favorite show for a really long time. I wish they hadn’t titled it that because I feel like more people have watched and it wouldn’t have gotten cancelled.
Justin: Anytime you can throw a “Whoops” in there at the beginning of anything, you’re really speaking to the people.
Alex: It was actually originally called, “Whoops Friends.”
Justin: Whoops, we’re friends. I mean that’s sort of what it was about.
Alex: Kind of, they just met. They were on a break.
Justin: Whoops, we’re podcasters. That’s us. That’s what this is.
Alex: Now requisite spoiler warning here. If you haven’t watched the fourth episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier please go do that because we’re going to spoil the heck out of it. But first a little pluggy poo over here of this-
Justin: Pluggy poo? We have not vetted that term.
Pete: And what just happened?
Alex: I’m just playing around with some stuff.
Justin: Sorry, Alex its just son who’s talking right now?
Alex: If you haven’t checked it out already, we did an interview with Olli Haaskivi, who is the actor who played Dr. Wilfred Nagel on the last episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Now, if you’re only subscribed, we rolled this out a bunch of different places. We usually roll these episodes out in the Comic Book Club feed and then the Marvel Vision feed. The Olli Haaskivi episode is exclusive to the Marvel Vision feed. So if you’re listening on Podcasts, go check it out over there. It was super fun. And I think we got a lot of interesting information about how it works, particularly for one scene or slightly more than one scene actor on a Marvel show. I thought it was-
Pete: It was really cool to talk to him. And after talking to him and then kind of re-watching his stuff, he’s a really good actor, like what he is and then what he became. Wow. Pretty awesome.
Alex: I mean, I’ll tell you when I was putting together the thumbnail for the episode and grabbed the still of Dr. Wilfred Nagel, I looked at it and there was a brief moment of like, “Is this not the guy? Would somebody do a weird prank to get us interview somebody as a fake Dr. Wilfred Nagel?”
Justin: But honestly, I think a lot of the interview really lets us in on the acting process.
Alex: Yeah, you were very excited to talk acting with somebody.
Justin: As a classically trained actor. I’ve talked to YouTube bozos.
Alex: You were like, “Ooh! Yeah, I know what you’re talking about!”
Justin: I was not woo-hooing.
Alex: You were like a little boy jumping up and down talking to him.
Justin: Sure, I was jumping up and down a little bit and going like this.
Alex: “I know what you’re talking about!”
Justin: Definitely. And getting into this episode, we’re talking about today, our guy was in the Previously On just dominating.
Alex: He was. I was like, “That’s our best friend right there.”
Justin: That’s exactly what I said.
Alex: Whoops! Friends.
Justin: Whoops, we’re friends.
Alex: So, let’s talk about this episode. Lots of stuff going on in this one. Interestingly, not a lot of Easter eggs necessarily. You know, we’ve been talking about the Easter eggs, the Marvel comics references. There were a couple there, but it wasn’t the speculation, a million thing that we’ve expected from Wanda Vision, not even the level of the last couple of episodes of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, though, there are a couple of things. Pete, what did you want to call out? What’s the Easter Egg? [crosstalk 00:04:01] that they went to Wakanda? That was a good Easter egg.
Pete: But don’t spoil all the things I want to talk about at once you fucking dick, but I was going to say Zemo was hiding candy like it was Easter. So come on. [crosstalk 00:04:13].
Alex: Well, that actually was the one thing that I felt like was a weird little Easter egg there. I don’t know about you guys, but I associate Turkish Delight most with the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And I think if you’ve read the book or you’ve seen the movie, you know what it is, it’s this candy that he has there, but it’s one of those things that I think everybody that I’ve ever talked to have the same experience reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, because you hear about the White Queen gives Turkish Delight to this character, Edmund and tempts him and brings him over to her side and you hear about it, but they don’t describe it. And it’s this mysterious thing from childs that have- it’s clearly the most delicious candy of all time, but you have no idea what it is.
Justin: And honestly, in reading the book, I imagined it as sort of like a brownie because I love brownies. And I feel like it’s the kind of thing at that age where it’s like, what would tempt you to go with the bad guy? And I was like, “Well, brownies would, that’s for sure.”
Pete: At one point I was like, “Are we just in a giant ad for Turkish Delight right now? Like, this show is basically hinging on how great Turkish Delight is.”
Alex: So I’ll tell you what, it’s not great.
Justin: The actual candy Turkish Delight, it’s like a Jolly Rancher, basically.
Pete: Hey, Jolly Ranchers aren’t bad.
Alex: No, it’s fine. [crosstalk 00:05:29]
Justin: You’re not going evil for a Jolly Rancher.
Alex: If someone like Baron Zemo would take a bunch of Turkish Delights, throw it at me, I would be like, “All right. I’ll tell you literally whatever you want.”
Justin: I’ll invite you to my friend’s secret funeral.
Alex: Depending on how hungry I am, I might.
Justin: Hungry? For a Jolly Rancher? That’s not a meal. Jolly Rancher’s an anti-meal.
Alex: I’ll tell you what, we’re getting wildly off track here. But I have one cavity that I’ve gotten filled in, in my entire life. That was because there was a period of time I had a sack of Jolly Ranchers and I was like, “Well, I could just have these instead of-“
Pete: A sack? Are you Santa Claus? Who walks around with a sack?
Alex: I got a huge variety pack of Jolly Ranchers. And I was home and instead of brushing my teeth, I was like, “I’ll just pop a Jolly Rancher.”
Pete: How is that instead of brushing your teeth?
Alex: In my head it was like gum or mints, but instead I was having a Jolly Rancher and it just didn’t occur to me and I got a cavity.
Pete: You went to Cornell. How are you this dumb?
Justin: And you used to floss with Twizzlers, right?
Alex: Big gaps in my teeth.
Justin: Wow. Only one cavity. I’ve had way more cavities. And I always blame it on, I grew up on well water, which doesn’t have fluoride, which strengthens your teeth. I just add old dirt in there now. But last I went to the dentist, I went to the dentist recently cause true fans of the show will know that I had a broken tooth that had dropped off on this very podcast. And like our second episode, went to the dentist, no cavities.
Alex: Wow. Good for you. Also, no teeth.
Justin: Also no teeth. I’m out of teeth. That’s a big factor. It’s just one big cavity.
Pete: That was a real scary moment for me. When I was talking to you and your tooth was missing, I had to talk to a bunch of people about it. Like, cause I really questioned my beliefs and stuff like that because it was like, I have trusted the words that come out of your mouth for years. And then when you had just a tooth missing, I all of a sudden didn’t trust who you were or what you were about. It was a real thing.
Justin: The importance of a full set of teeth cannot be overstated.
Pete: I didn’t know I would be so shook. Yeah. But then, reverse-
Alex: Sorry, not to get back to Falcon and the Winter Soldier or anything, but actually to revisit the Turkish Delight. I think Baron Zemo is kind of getting, pulling the most focus in this show right now. Who knows if he’s going to show up going beyond this because he escapes at the end of the episode, but it’s wild to me how much he more is getting out of these episodes and out of these arcs than even Sam and Bucky are.
Pete: And the choices that he’s making and like the way he interacts with people. It’s not the Zemo that I know. It’s been very kind of cool to see this other side of Zemo, and when he crushed up the serum, I was like, “Oh, shit, look at this guy doing the right thing.”
Justin: I think for me, the main reason why Zemo is sort of having the most interest and focus is because he has a plan and we don’t know what it is. And the rest of the characters don’t have a plan and seem sort of lost. And the dialogue they have, it’s very obvious what they’re just like, they’re doing a lot of exposition. So it feels like, ah, where’s the fun here? And then Zemo’s just wandering around, being weird with candy, breaking the serum.
Pete: Don’t mind me, I’m just going to escape through the bathroom.
Alex: Well, this gets to a bigger thing. And I really didn’t want Pete to yell at me in this episode, but it struck me with this episode in particular that this is going to come out much stronger than I mean it. If this wasn’t a Marvel show, I don’t think this would be good at this point. It has a chance to turn it around in the last two episodes. But particularly this episode felt very messy to me. There were a lot of things that I liked in individual moments, but just to talk about the arc of the episode, you start off with this great flashback scene of Bucky in Wakanda, getting his [crosstalk 00:09:24] hold on, hold on. This is exactly getting to the point. You’re actually getting to the point of what I’m saying. I love it, we get to see him breaking his programming, but the episode isn’t about Bucky.
Alex: So just from a structural perspective, we get this thing that follows up on the scene from the last episode. But Sam pulls a little more focus, which is good, mind you, Zemo pulls a little more focus, which as we talked about is fun, but structurally it’s kind of all over the place. There’s nothing, like you were saying, Justin, everybody’s sort of wandering everywhere. So you get this endorphin rush of, Oh, shit, we got to see Wakanda of these big fights of John Walker going bad by the end of the episode. And these are all good things from a Marvel fan perspective, but they’re not really amounting too much in terms of the show yet.
Justin: I mean, I agree. It’s sort of what we talked about in the previous episodes where it’s like, they’re putting so much on the table and it’s not about this. And they said it a ton in this episode.
Justin: Where you don’t have black and white, good guys, bad guys here. It’s all this gray area, verbatim said in this episode. And the only issue with that is it makes it much harder to explain the motivations of everyone. Cause you have to literally go through and be like, well, he’s doing this because of this. She’s doing this because of this, because we don’t have the classic hero-villain back and forth. This episode, I think was the hard one because it was the one where we’re starting to see our sides and it was confusing here. And you see in the characters like Bucky and Falcon, I spent a lot of the episode being like, “Okay, so, oh, okay, good, good. I’ll watch. Oh no. He’s okay. Good. Okay. Now.” And by the end of it, it’s like I see.
Pete: To talk a little bit about that gray area and the black and white, there was this amazing shot from above of Ayo and a Falcon kind of meeting. And it was like this right in the middle of the road, like white stone pebbles versus black stone pebbles.
Alex: I think you mean Bucky.
Pete: Bucky, sorry.
Alex: Bucky’s the one with the metal arm. Falcon is the one with the wings. It’s confusing.
Pete: Not that confusing. Anyways, sorry I mixed it up. But I’m just saying that like that to me, like this whole like line in the ground, like all these different perspectives and in a superhero movie, or whatever, like Marvel kind of thing, you don’t get to stop and talk about consequences and what it means to be a hero and like these icons and how they can mean more and mean different things to different people. So the fact that like they do have those discussions and Falcon is flexing a little bit of his background of like talking to people who’ve been through shit was awesome.
Pete: It was this thing of like, we’re not going to just punch people in the face. We’re going to try to talk. We’re going to try to do the right thing here. The fact that Zemo isn’t justice. We want to kill him. We need him. We’re doing stuff with him. Like we’re trying to do it for a greater good, like it’s interesting. And I don’t, don’t throw this structural shit around solves, like this is some interesting shit where unlike an action movie, with the move things forward. We can sit and have little moments like this and they’re powerful and great.
Speaker 4: I agree that scene was that for me, it was one of my favorite scenes in the episode. I just want more of that focus back on Bucky and Sam, because like, we are going to get it, but that made this episode harder to enjoy because it was them sort of at the mercy of the plot when really like the idea of like Bucky being deprogrammed by Ayo. And that scene we got was awesome. I want to see a little more like repercussions of better, what that means to him and Sam. We touched it a little bit where he was sort of like trying to philosophize with Carly before he was interrupted by a Walker. That was cool. And then he had the sister thing felt a little bit out of nowhere, but like they were getting to something there that I think we’re going to pay off later, but it just felt like, and this is a term that I know Pete uses a lot. It felt like more of a middling episode.
Pete: Oh my God. First off, don’t put words to my mouth. I’ve never said that in my life. But I think that I can understand what you’re saying, but I completely disagreed because we had a lot of like reveals of who people are moving forward and how things are going to work. And some very interesting, powerful conversations that you don’t get a lot. So I ate the ship up and the Dora Milaje is showing up and just wracking shit. And the fact that fake Captain America was like, they weren’t even Schumer showed yours was really awesome. You know, like handled his shield that he used temporarily holding on to, in a way that he didn’t even know how to do. I mean, dismantled, where two soldiers armed that he didn’t even know was a thing. It was so powerful in many different ways. I had a great time.
Justin: I agree. That was badass. And honestly, the Walker stuff in this episode was really good. And I feel like this was sort of his episode putting him in a spot where he needs to be sort of the villain for the rest of the series.
Alex: Well, let me throw something out at you guys that in all honesty confused me, and maybe there is a straightforward explanation here, but I think to the point Justin was saying earlier, there’s a lot of back and forth. And this is what I’m getting at, not to harp on it too much with the structural thing, because I agree with you. There are fun sequences in here. There are things that I am enjoying. I am a Marvel fan. I am a sucker for this my entire life. So I’m never going to stop watching this forever. That’s fine. No, it’s true though. I feel like I needed to bed myself from feed who is like, how dare you? How dare you in kind of a joy, but not particularly loved this thing. Thor: the Dark World is not a good movie. I’ve still watched it several times.
Justin: That’s the ultimate credit you can drop. Hey bro, I’ve seen Thor: the Dark World more than once. So I get darkness.
Alex: No, that’s not what I’m saying. My point being like, I am a sucker for this stuff. It is fine. I’m not going to give up even if I don’t think it necessarily makes sense. And I honestly want to know if there’s an explanation here, because I was very confused by what was going on towards the end of the episode, where Karli came out and said, “Okay, our plan is we’re going to kill Captain America.” Right? And the Flag Smashers like, eh, that seems like maybe a little bit of a chess step too far. But it seems like by the point they got to that big fight where everybody going nuts towards the end that they were on board with it, at least in a certain sense, then add in that Falcon and Bucky come to talk to Karli in full costume.
Alex: Sharon is clearly tracking John Walker for them. So they must realize on some level that the flags bachelors are going for John Walker, not for them. I think though that it was never clearly established. So they’ll go after John Walker, we ended up in this fight. Karli comes out kills Battlestar, which is a whole separate thing that we definitely need to talk about here because that’s messed up. And that everybody who is onboard with the plan to kill Captain America is like, “Whoa, you killed Battlestar.” That’s a step too far and runs away. What’s going on there.
Pete: All right. There’s a lot to unpack there.
Alex: There is, this is true.
Pete: But I think Karli…
Alex: Explain it to me Pete.
Pete: Okay. So Karli didn’t know that the sidekick wasn’t powered up, she thought she was in like a super power kind of like fight. And they’re all like, okay, we’re going to follow Karli, but this is kind things you’re getting crazy right now. And I think once they see a normal person die that’s like them and who they’re fighting for, they all kind of stop and question their shit. And like, Yeah, I can see what you’re trying to say. But when you see that it does kind of be like “Whoa, whose side are we on?” because they had a lot of discussions leading up to this. And people were kind of backing away from Karli as the kind of shows this episode was going on because she was talking about like, “Oh she did kill that person.” “Oh she has gone too far.” Or maybe these ideas, so like, I think that’s why that moment kind of stopped people. And I couldn’t understand that wasn’t the original objective but when they saw that, that’s why there was pause.
Justin: Well, I think two things were happening there to echo what Pete’s saying. There’s the conversation that Sam has with Karli about supremacy. She sort of steps into saying some pretty supremacist things. And then she’s like catches herself, “Actually I’m not.” And then in that moment, when she may be at like violently strikes Battlestar and ends up maybe accidentally killing him, that’s her supremacy. She was not aware of what she’s wielding and she kills a person. And I think that’s when everyone was like, ah. Like a lot of political violence, terrorism, when you’re doing it from a distance like they did in last episode and killed those people remotely, it’s one thing. It feels like you’re supporting your cause when you’re in the room and your compatriot, your leader kills someone, it’s like, I don’t want this. I didn’t sign up for this.
Justin: I actually liked that moment because I thought it used a gray area of the Flag Smashers as like, “we feel we are now.” But then Captain America at the end, Walker kills one of their own. And you see the escalation happening here and you see they’re going to be hardened. When they were sort of soft and sort of regretting their violence for a second there, instantly they’re hardened by what, violence begets violence and Walker escalates that. I appreciate that moment. The other Walker stuff and like all the tracking, what you’re doing, I agree is a little confusing. I think Bucky and Sam are tracking Walker because they knew he was going to be a problem to them. Not because they thought he was a bad guy. It was just more like he’s the cop who’s watching us.
Pete: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:19:20] so they kind of want it… We’re talking about something that I want to back up the track a little bit. Falcon calls Sharon and Sharon’s like, “Yeah, I got a couple satellites under”. I don’t know who they think Sharon is, but I can not wait for the reveal of who Sharon is because she is running shit and like knows a lot, a little bit too much for maybe what’s going on. So I’m excited to see like a real Sharon reveal.
Justin: Get that SAT flex.
Pete: Yeah. I also think this episode was the king of small moments and I want to go back to the beginning like seeing the winter soldier cry when he’s like being said those words are loud was like really powerful and very, very cool.
Alex: And I was mostly surprised that when he cried, his tear didn’t turn to ice because of his ice powers. He’s the winter soldier, right?
Pete: That’s not a funny joke.
Speaker 4: Yeah. When Disney bought Marvel, I think he became Elsa from Frozen’s brother?
Pete: But also like he…
Alex: He want’s us to let it go.
Pete: We also saw that like he speaks Wakanda. I was so excited to get the Dora Milaje and see Wakanda and hear the music. It was really, really fantastic to kind of have those really just kind of small, amazing moments, very happy about it.
Alex: It was very nice. I did want to jump back to two things that you were talking about earlier. One, I wanted to talk about Sharon Carter. I know I threw out a speculation or just a thought about is she the power broker in the last episode. This episode, they keep doubling down on the Power Broker is upset without bringing the Power Broker on screen. So obviously that’s going to send theory mind into overtime. It’s entirely possible. It could just be a guy named the Power Broker and the should be going, but it feels like that has to be somebody right?
Justin: It has to be at this point especially this episode, the buildup of like, got an email from the Power Broker. It’s like too much hype to. And the email from that pic Karli got from the power brokers like, “Hey, I was serious about my last email”. So like, “Please give me back the serum.” They’re clearly keeping that going because they’re going to reveal. Do we have any guests?
Alex: Well I just want to mention that he definitely has read receipts on his emails? Right? That’s a Power Broker.
Justin: I know you read this, just please respond. Even if it’s just a no, just a quick no is all I want, just to know that you got it. Please confirm.
Alex: So I want to throw a theory out to you that I don’t know that necessarily makes sense. I don’t know where this rumor started from, but everybody seems very convinced that William Hurt’s Thunderbolt Ross is in this show somehow. I don’t know if somebody saw him on set or something like that. Here’s my thought, this is putting together a bunch of random things. But what if the PowerBroker is Thunderbolt Ross, right? Sharon is working for him. She was not ex-communicated at all. She in fact is double agenting it up for the US government at this point working for Thunderbolt as the Power Broker. And we end with some sort of reveal here where they capture Zemo make him work for them and they have a whole flip of the Thunderbolts thing where they’re good guys pretending to be bad guys.
Justin: I mean that would be cool. That feels a little wild to go that way. It feels like-
Pete: Two episodes left.
Justin: We need one more set up moment and another show or a movie to get to Thunderbolts I feel like? What about this? This feels the most obvious, it’s a Power Brokers Al Pacino as Mephisto.
Alex: That seems possible to me.
Justin: No.
Alex: I know there was a rumor that Kevin Feigi had a meeting with Al Pacino and he played the devil on One Division I think. [crosstalk 00:23:27] I didn’t watch all episodes of One Division. So I just kind of read the rumors and theories.
Justin: It makes sense to tie him into every Marvel series in a lot of ways. And I hear that AL Pacino’s playing Loki in the Loki show. What if it’s Nick Fury?
Pete: Could be Nick Fury.
Justin: Because I do think that he feels more like a reveal that fits in this side of the Marvel universe. William Hurt feels a little distant.
Alex: Right, I also don’t know, other than hardcore Marvel fans would be “Oh man, it’s William Hurt I love that guy.” But to be fair and I think this is part of the reason the rumors started. He has been very heavily tied to the Super Soldier Serum throughout the history of the MCU from Incredible Hulk to, that’s it.
Justin: I was going to say where is he going with this? From Incredible Hulk under William Hurt.
Alex: I also think it’s entirely possible it is Sharon Carter. She’s just like created this false identity to run shit in Madripore. The other thing that I wanted to talk to you guys about though that I do think is important to address is the death of Battlestar and specifically using the death of a black man to power the ark of a white man is pretty messed up.
Justin: I agree. I was very surprised when Battlestar, right before the scene when he died, they were doing some things. I was like, this feels like they’re setting him up to die. They wouldn’t do that. And then when they did, I was very surprised.
Pete: Also like it really drove me nuts that like when they went into the building, the fake Captain America like stopped at the stairs and just started looking up for some reason. Went about as he was going to sweep the place, you went in to sweep a place, you don’t stop and look up at the ceiling and just kind of pause. You’re supposed to be a team, you’re supposed to work together. You can’t just leave your wing man. I was just so upset that the fact that like he was so dumb.
Justin: For showbiz, it that feels like they want to talk about race in a real way. For this to happen, I got to think it has to be something they will reckon with going forward because otherwise, I don’t get it. So I don’t want to trust that things they’ve referenced go in the first three episodes leading us up to this, give me confidence they will reckon with this going forward.
Alex: I hope so. I definitely. I’m putting an asterisk on it to your point until the next episode to see how they follow up. But just on the surface, it definitely made me recoil quite a bit and not just because it was a dark moment for the show, but because of a greater world things. So we’ll revisit this discussion next episode and see what happens. A couple of other things I wanted to throw out on the same note with the end of the episode, in the comics, John Walker’s breaking point was his parents getting killed. He goes apeshit after that. He does the same thing here in this episode leading up to… I do think the best image in the entire episode was that last one of John Walker with the blood at the bottom of the shield, that was really, really well-framed and really well done.
Pete: It was so creepy in all the right ways, the way kind of hung on it. And then also he was just kind of tweaking out there. I was just like, it’s very powerful and very upsetting.
Justin: Yeah. To use Pete’s line of like this was an episode about the King of small moments, I think you said? Like the sequence that was great. The moment where like you see him bend the gun, I think and seems like, “Oh, shit”. He’s juiced up and then from that moment onto the last sequence, when you see him raise the shield and that moment. You actually get to see and make the choice to kill him, to kill the Black Smasher. That to me, I was like, Oh, very smartly done, very tense. And then to end it with that blood on the shield thing where it’s like, yes, that is and it really reflects on another great moment. The line, there’s never been another Steve Rogers. And that I thought was very cool and the conversation sort of midway through the episode with battle between Battlestar and Walker where they were like, “Hey, would you take the serum?” I thought that was really cool and it’s like, it doesn’t turn you, it doesn’t make you bad, it just heightens your qualities.
Justin: And then you hear their conversation, you’re like, “Oh, you don’t know that you have these bad qualities that it’s going to heighten when you inevitably take.”
Pete: Yeah and that’s a good question. Would you guys take the serum?
Alex: Well, actually I have a question before that question, because one of my huge bummers of the episode even beyond everything we’ve talked about is we didn’t get to see him take the serum. And I want to know how you take the serum?
Justin: I think it’s rectal insertion.
Alex: I was thinking either you drink it or maybe you eat the whole bottle and crunch it. I’m not 100% sure.
Justin: Yes like a gusher, you put the whole thing.
Pete: It seems like you would inject it.
Alex: But it didn’t have like an injecting thing. Was it just a bottle of Serum and then I guess you have to use a separate hypodermic with the doctor.
Justin: It comes with Turkey Baster and you just blast it into your…
Pete: In you’re what? I’m sorry.
Alex: [crosstalk 00:28:53] just like Fruit Gushers.
Justin: Exactly.
Pete: Just like Fruit Gushers.
Justin: You guys get the anal Gushers, right?
Pete: But regardless of how you take it, how would you guys take it?
Alex: Absolutely. No hesitation. I don’t know. That’s the long answer, if you had a chance to take a super soldier syrum that would make you super strong and extend your life, why would you not take it?
Pete: Oh my God. You would be so evil and so fucked up immediately.
Alex: It would just make me more me whatever I was.
Pete: I would just run away taking the seekers.
Justin: Super podcast. It wouldn’t be a super soldier serum would be super podcast or serum.
Alex: Wow, that guy would be talking for 24 hours. I can podcast this all day.
Pete: Oh boy.
Justin: Pete, would you take it?
Pete: I don’t know. And that’s the thing even Zemo paused. Like that’s how crazy question it is. And I appreciate the fact that I don’t think I could have made that decision like that, you know what I mean. Like I don’t know if I would have jumped on one of the vials and just immediately drank it. I like how they’re playing with the power of it a little bit.
Alex: Justin, you didn’t answer the question.
Justin: I just took it. You guys talking about it. I was like, wow, I’ve been holding onto this for awhile.
Pete: And I guess the second biggest question is, do you call your parents or anything kind of cute and adorable? Like TT, do you have a GAM GAM or anything like that in your family?
Justin: Never did growing up but now my mom insists that her grandchildren call her Meema. And I always say MIMA, and she’s like, “it’s not MIMA MEEMA.” And I’m like, “okay, it’s a child’s word. Tell me how to say it. Like, it’s your name.”
Alex: One last little Easter egg thing that I wanted to mention that is definitely not an Easter egg, but it perked up my ears nonetheless is when they were talking about the Global Repatriation Council and they were passing this at GRC. They called it the patch act at given that we have Madripoor and Wolverine’s code name and Madripoor patch. I was like, Oh, it’s definitely named after him and that I pause for a second. I was like, no, it is too early in the morning.
Justin: Oh yeah, Kevin Feige sitting in the master headquarters of the Marvel cinematic universe. He’s like, “how should we introduce Wolverine?” Like, let’s do it as the name of it and act in a small seated Falcon in the Winter Soldier.
Alex: Any other final thoughts before we start to wrap this up here, Pete?
Pete: Yeah. I can’t say enough about how crazy kind of things escalated in this episode and how interesting the addition to the Dora Milaje was such a fun escalation and all the right ways. I thought that it was just so great and I can’t get enough of it and I am hopefully for more, but I don’t know if we’ll get more,
Justin: I guess just two things I did like the joke about Zemo, do the stupid head tilt thing. That was a fun.
Pete: Another King of the small moments right there.
Justin: King of the small moments and I do think was that like a straight up Brule dig about his acting choice because it wasn’t about the character. That was about literally how he does it. That was very funny. But second, I like the jokes in this show, they’re funny, but it feels totally odd and it really made me think this series is sort of not the same tone as the Marvel movies at all. As much as everyone’s like, it’s like a Marvel movie, but in TV form. Like it’s actually not, it’s quite different. It’s like an espionage TV series and just featuring Marvel characters.
Alex: This gets to a bigger thing that is very rumory and I don’t know how true it is, but there was a lot of talk from folks that apparently they reshot a bunch of this show and reworked and rejiggered it. And there are points in this episode in particular I think and maybe the last episode where you can kind of see they overdubbed certain things. I don’t know exactly what the changes are, but certainly things like, “Hey, where’s that Joaquin guy who was certainly very important in the first episode. I think he’s somebody that was objected in there. He was apparently cast very late in the process. He was objected in there to give a little more exposition. It’s possible that the differing tones of what’s going on that you’re bringing up Justin might be part of that as well, it wasn’t quite as consistent as they thought it might be. Again, I don’t know what the changes are, but certainly I think that might point to a couple of those things.
Justin: But I don’t mean that the tone within this, I haven’t felt off put by the internal tone of the show. I was just struck in this episode by how different this episode feels in comparison to almost everything else from the Marvel Cinematic universe. Even WandaVision felt more like the movies than this does.
Pete: But they did have like some action movie fun where like Bucky punches somebody through a wall. And then it goes like, stay put, like there was still some tonal, like fun moments, but I agree with what you’re saying. It definitely is different. And one more kind of small moment that I wanted to point out when Zemo was talking about this kind of place that they’re in, where they have like the kids before he gives the kids the candy and somebody crosses behind them and the Winter Soldier feels it and turns to it. And just like a small character moment where Kyle Falcon doesn’t like pick up on it, but Bucky does. And I was just like, Oh wow. That is such a cool little thing.
Justin: Yes. And training for like 88 years or something.
Alex: Before we wrap up here, what is on your vision board for the next episode, Pete? What’s on your vision board?
Pete: Well, I’m hoping to get to like the bottom of the real issues. You know what I mean? Like what other family members on the Avengers use different kind of nicknames for their families. Did anybody do like a gappers and poppers type of situation or snatches, hoppers? But I really think that like Turkish Delight is got to be a bigger thing. You can’t just do an ad for Turkish Delight and not really have a pay off. So the next couple of episodes, I can’t wait to see that kind of pay off more.
Alex: Great, great vision board. Justin, what about you?
Justin: Yeah. So true. Based on that last image of the blood on the shield, like in the next episode, I want to see that shield in Sam’s hand or Bucky’s hand or hopefully ideally both. Cause I think it’s…
Alex: They’re holding hands together.
Justin: Trying to be like, “Oh, block over here! You throw it. “
Alex: They’re doing that thing where they’re both in one shirt.
Justin: Yeah, exactly. Stuck on you style.
Pete: I hope that also in the next episode fake cap is out of the picture dead or..
Alex: Definitely not going to happen.
Justin: I like him as the final vial villain, but I want that we’ve set up the anticipation has been building about like, who should have the shield, it’s feels like Sam’s shield, but I’m curious to see how that will play out. And maybe next episode, it’s like Bucky’s turn to have the shield for a moment, what he does with it because I think that is the statement, that’s the metaphor of this series and to stick it to see it in each of their hands. If we’re going to end up with it in Sam’s hand at the end of the series, I want to see it in Bucky’s hand and what it means for him to have the legacy, because the scene in Wakanda in this episode was about him moving past his dark past. And so when he holds the shield, what does he become? What does he become going forward? And then in the end of the series, what does Sam become if he has the shield and he’s not going to put it back on the shelf, I don’t think. Who is he as Falcon as Captain America with wings.
Alex: Kind of petered out there a little bit.
Pete: That’s a horrible way to say that.
Alex: On my vision part, we already covered this, but I just want to see some sort of reckoning and explanation of what happened with Battlestar. I do think that’s very important for contextualizing that moment. I hope they do it. We will cross our fingers and see.
Pete: It was just real nice to see someone step on the shield and do that move again. I’d missed that move. So it was really great to get that move back and in Wakanda Forever.
Alex: Great. If you like to support a podcast, patrion.com/comic book club. Also we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out, we would love to chat with you about Falcon and the Winter Soldier, iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the App of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show. A Marvel vision pod on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook comic book clublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, we’ll see you. Whoops friends.
Justin: Oh, do the stupid head tilt thing.
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