Power Broker is the villain of the Hawk and the Winter Soldier and a key connection to Marvel

Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier continues to play with his characters as his plot gets complicated, introducing new villains and new heroes, making some more likable and others looking like real idiots.

But the most mysterious villain in the series is a true deep cut from Marvel Comics. Here’s what we know so far about Power Broker, the mysterious banker who is behind the members of the Flag-Smasher organization and has a history in the comics.

[Ed. note: This piece contains spoilers for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier through episode 3, “Power Broker.”]

Image: Marvel Studios

We first heard about the Power Broker in episode 2, “The Star Spangled-Man,” when the Flag-Smashers are loading an airplane with medical supplies. One of them gets a tip on his phone and they redouble their efforts to get out of there: the Power Broker men are coming after them.

Because? As the hidden figure financed the first successful reproduction of the super soldier serum that gave Steve Rogers his skills, so the Flag Crushers stole and used it. They managed to escape in episode 2, but not without sacrificing one of their own, who uses his strength to slow down the caravan of black vehicles. (What we all know is the one that the bad guys travel on.)

Then, in episode 3, Bucky, Sam and the newly released Zemo – on their own mission to make sure there won’t be an explosion of amoral super-soldiers – tracked down the scientist who made the serum for the Power Broker in the first place : Wilfred Nagel.

Nagel is the typical evil scientist and explained that, after working for Hydra, he was hired by the CIA to recreate the super soldier’s serum using “blood samples from an American guinea pig” – Isaiah Bradley. He almost made it, before disappearing into the Blip. When he returned, no one was more interested in his research, except the Power Broker.

Zemo murdered Nagel, indirectly doing the Flag Crushers a big favor. Without the ability to make more serum, the Power Broker will have to chase them to get the latest doses.

Who is the Power Broker in the comics?

This is easy: he’s a Marvel Comics character who does a (and mean) business selling dangerous superpower treatment to desperate people. Curtiss Jackson employs a mad scientist to give people superpowers, but also to inject them secretly with heavy addictive substances. When they go into abstinence, he says it is a side effect of their superpowers, and that they have to keep coming back to him and paying for “treatments”.

Nobody is saying that superhero comics are subtle.

Although the Power Broker is obscure, the character has connections to other aspects of the story The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is saying. For example, in the comics, the Power Broker is how John Walker obtained his superpowers, allowing him to become the Super-Patriot and, later, Captain America and then Agent of the USA.

The Power Broker’s dishonesty with its customers – subjecting them to medical procedures for which they have not signed up – is reminiscent of many real and unethical medical experiments and campaigns. These real historical events inspired the creation of Isaiah Bradley, the first Black Captain America, who also appeared in episode 2.

And speaking of Bradley, in the comics, the Power Broker pet scientist is a guy named Karl Malus (got it? malice?), but Hawk and Winter SoldierThe guy from is named after a different crazy scientist trying to recreate the super soldier formula. And while there is absolutely no shortage of them on the Marvel Comics scene, Dr. Wilfred Nagel was the chief scientist for the killer and explorer government program that gave Isaiah Bradley his strength.

Unethical science and super soldiers – from Bucky to Isaiah and the Power Broker – is a recurring theme for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

How do Power Broker victims usually pay it back?

Oh you know. Competing in a professional wrestling federation with super strength. We think it will appear in Hawk and Winter Soldier? No, but we live in hope.