The Falcon And The Winter Soldier Showrunner Malcolm Spellman Makes Numerous Bizarre Claims, Shows Lack Of Knowledge About MCU
John F. Trent
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The Falcon and The Winter Soldier showrunner Malcolm Spellman recently did an interview where he made a number of bizarre claims and exposed his own lack of knowledge about the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
Speaking with Inverse, Spellman first detailed that he has no clue what happened to Steve Rogers following Avengers: Endgame.
Inverse asked Spellman, “The show talks about Steve Rogers a lot across its six episodes but doesn’t ever explicitly reveal what happened to him after Avengers: Endgame. Was it always the plan to keep Steve’s whereabouts vague, or did you ever consider revealing them outright?”
The showrunner responded, “I’ve got to tell you the truth, my friend. Marvel won’t tell me what happened to Steve, so we were able to write whatever we wanted because we don’t know.”
He added, “We’re wondering if Steve’s on the moon too, you know what I’m saying? That’s as good a guess as anything because they won’t tell me.”
Falcon/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in Marvel Studios’ THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Eli Adé. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
Not only did Spellman reveal he has no clue what’s going on with Steve Rogers, but he also claimed he didn’t find out that the show’s title changed in the final episode until he saw a cut that included the change.
Spellman explained, “I’ll be honest: I discovered that title change when I was watching a cut of the episode, and it wrecked me.”
“I haven’t spoken to Marvel about whether they considered changing Bucky’s name too, but my gut tells me the reason it still says “and the Winter Soldier” is simply because they wanted to play with the poetry of a title you’ve been hearing,” he continued.
“If they had changed too much it maybe wouldn’t have felt the same, but I truly don’t know what discussion went into it. I just know it landed heavy with me,” Spellman added.
Falcon/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in Marvel Studios’ THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
In another bizarre moment during the interview, Spellman admitted he did not know at least one of the locations where the show was filmed.
Inverse asked, “Fans recently discovered that the location used for Isaiah Bradley’s house in the series is only a block away from Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthplace. Was that intentional or coincidental?”
Spellman responded, “I did not know that. So. There you go. Wow. You’d have to ask Kari [Skogland, the director] if that was deliberate or not.”
He added, “That’s the great thing about having a filmmaker like Kari is she’s going to want to milk every single moment she can. I don’t know what decision was on that house though.”
(L-R): Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Falcon/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in Marvel Studios’ THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
It didn’t stop there, Spellman would then claim the show features Bucky Barnes’ first hero moment.
He was asked, “Are there any Easter eggs in the series that fans haven’t spotted yet that you want to point out?”
In response, he stated, “I will say, this is not at all an Easter egg, but one thing no one has caught and it’s a failure in our writing I guess was when we were taking Bucky on his journey, we felt like the moment in Episode 6 where he frees the GRC members and one of them stops to say, “Thank you, you saved my life” — we always considered that Bucky’s first hero moment.”
Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) in Marvel Studios’ THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Eli Adé. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
“That was a huge deal to us, but I have not heard anyone mention it. We were like, ‘That’s it. Bucky is on his way to freeing himself from this burden of being the Winter Soldier. Now, he gets to go and be a hero for the first time,'” he continued.
Spellman concluded, “That’s not to say that he hasn’t been heroic before, but that’s the moment when he allows himself to feel like a hero. Not many people caught that.”
Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) in Marvel Studios’ THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
This answer does not make any sense whatsoever. Bucky Barnes was an American war hero during World War II. He took the fight to Hydra with Steve Rogers aka Captain America. That movie makes it pretty clear he felt like a hero before he ultimately fell from the train.
Source: Captain America: The First Avenger
As for the idea the show depicts him freeing himself from the burden of the Winter Soldier, we already started seeing that in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He pulls Rogers from the water and prevents him from drowning albeit he does walk off and leave him afterwards.
Source: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
In Captain America: Civil War, he’s completely abandoned his role as The Winter Soldier given he only had it because of Soviet and Hydra brainwashing. Zemo is the one who rediscovers the programming and forces him to comply once again.
He had already freed himself from the idea of being The Winter Soldier, the whole identity is one that was forced upon him in the first place. He never chose it.
To prove that point, by the the end of Captain America: Civil War, it is Bucky who volunteers to go on ice until researchers are able to figure out how to deprogram his mind from the Soviet brainwashing.
Source: Captain America: Civil War
Then at the end of Black Panther, it appears they figured out how to deprogram as he was no longer on ice.
He then joins the Avengers and Black Panther’s Wakandan forces in fending off Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive’s forces as they attempt to obtain the Mind Stone from Vision.
Not only that, but he’s physically changed as well. He has a brand new arm, one without the markings of Hydra and the Soviets. One given to him by Black Panther.
It truly is galling that the showrunner for The Falcon and The Winter Soldier does not know what is going on in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically with Captain America, for a show focusing on the successor to Captain America.
On top of that, they don’t even know what’s going on with their own edits until they see them. And then to make matters worse they completely just ignore other MCU movies just because they feel like it.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe definitely appears to be on the path of Lucasfilm and Star Wars. It looks rudderless and it’s starting to show in the end product.
(L-R): Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Ayo (Florence Kasumba) in Marvel Studios’ THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER exclusively on Disney+. Photo by Julie Vrabelová. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.
What do you make of Spellman’s comments?
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