When Anthony Mackie got the call that Marvel Studios executives wanted to meet with him shortly after the release of the 2019 superhero blockbuster “Avengers: Endgame”, he realized he was getting a new position or would be fired.
But after several years and several Marvel films in which he played Sam Wilson, that ally of Captain America who is also known as the Hawk, Mackie was feeling optimistic.
“I’m assuming that the next ‘Captain America’ movie will be me,” he said.
So Mackie traveled to Marvel’s offices in Burbank. “I put on a suit,” he said. “I sit there as if they are about to tell me the best news I could receive.” His exuberant voice faded slightly as he continued: “So they’re like, ‘Let’s do a TV show,'” he said.
In addition to the fleeting dismay at not being offered another movie, Mackie said he feared he would not be able to translate the Marvel brand for TV.
“I was surprised,” he said, “mainly because I didn’t want to tarnish Marvel’s nickname.”
That is how Mackie learned of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”, the new Disney + series that will make its debut on March 19 and will continue the adventures of those two reluctant allies, played by him and Sebastian Stan.
Arriving two weeks after the end of “WandaVision”, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” is Marvel’s second program that seeks to extend the characters and momentum of its cinematic universe in streaming television. His narrative mission is straightforward: to tell the next chapter in the story of his title characters, last seen in “Endgame”, after an old Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) retired as Captain America and gave Sam Wilson his shield.
Both in its history and in its subtext, this show asks, how can the Marvel franchise continue without one of its most prominent figures?
As Stan explained, “Let’s explore where these two guys left off, with one big character missing – the prominent figure who brought them into each other’s lives. Where are they and how are they dealing with the world? “
“The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”, which consists of six 45-55 minute episodes to be released weekly, offers timely explorations on the nature of patriotism and extremism and the values of inclusion, diversity and representation, set in a world struggling for stability after a global catastrophe.
It is also a series loaded with implications for the character Wilson and actor Mackie, who, in a universe with few precious black heroes, now has the chance to become main characters after long careers as helpers.
“I got used to being the forgetful guy,” said Mackie. “It has become part of my brand.”
The stage was set for “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” about two years ago, when Disney launched its streaming service Disney + and sought out its subsidiary studios in search of original content.
At the same time, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was reaching a narrative tipping point with “Endgame”, which said goodbye to beloved characters like Steve Rogers while creating opportunities for new champions to emerge.
Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, said that from the beginning, his company wanted its Disney + programs to look as significant as their films in terms of production values and the characters and stories they included.
“As far as Marvel Studios is concerned, the MCU now lives in movies and shows,” said Feige. “We really wanted people to get used to the idea that there would be a back and forth. The story will be consistent and equally important in both places. “
Marvel started developing programs like “WandaVision” and “Loki”, about the Asgardian rascal played by Tom Hiddleston. The studio also saw potential in Falcon and Winter Soldier, two unlikely allies with deep comic stories that the films hadn’t fully explored.
Stan has followed Marvel’s twists and turns for a decade. He joined the film franchise as Steve Rogers’ loyal friend Bucky Barnes in “Captain America: The First Avenger” (2011) and his character was upgraded to become a fearsome assassin in the sequel “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” “(2014).
When Marvel initially told him about his idea for a TV series, Stan said, “It was straightforward and somewhat ambiguous at the same time.”
There was an inherent logic in pairing him with Mackie and letting them play with each other, Stan said, “I thought, yes, that sounds incredible – it also looks like it could be a million different things.”
A few months later, Stan said, the studio came back with a more detailed plan for a six-hour storyline that would offer “enough time to build scenes and get into their personal lives – a day in the life of Bucky Barnes, a day in the life of Sam Wilson – like you’ve never seen it before. ”
The TV project was also carefully evaluated by Mackie, who said he grudgingly embraced a type of team player status that he won with his roles in films like “The Hurt Locker” and “Half Nelson”.
“I always play with everyone, if you are a white actor and want to be nominated for an Oscar, you need to make me star next to you,” he said.
Above all, Mackie, who spoke openly about his desire to see more representation on Marvel projects, said he expected a narrative that embraces the complexity of his final scene in “Endgame”.
In this sequence, when Rogers asks his character what it is like to hold Captain America’s shield, Wilson replies: “As if it were someone else’s.”
From Wilson’s perspective, Mackie said that moment “was not an opportunity – it was a big burden.”
“It wasn’t like him to sit and wait for the shield,” he continued. “He wasn’t looking for a promotion at work.”
Malcolm Spellman, who created “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” for television and is its lead writer, said that while Marvel’s concept for the series has always been “a two-way companion”, he specifically wanted to model the show on genre films that dealt with racial issues, such as “The Defiant Ones”, “48 Hrs.”, “Lethal Weapon” and “Rush Hour”.
Spellman, a writer and producer of programs like “Empire”, said that “what survived from the first day I entered the millions of different iterations of this project was the spirit and conflict of the two central characters”.
Barnes, a brainwashed combat veteran who spent periods of his life in suspended animation, is “someone who is 100 years old and has done nothing but fight,” said Spellman, while Wilson spent his career struggling with “all black excellence. – the concept of working twice as hard to reach half ”.
“If you want some honesty with them, you can’t avoid all the trauma that Bucky went through, and you can’t avoid the fact that Sam is black,” said Spellman.
For Marvel fans, the series revisits characters from “Captain America” films, such as intelligence agent Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) and villain Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl). It also presents a new potential antagonist, John Walker (played by Wyatt Russell), who in the comics was an adventurer and potential successor to Captain America. He believes he is a better embodiment of American values than Steve Rogers.
As with other projects, Marvel is being demure about the plot details. But the creators of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” said that the series would face the same questions that the country has been asking itself in the last turbulent months: who is the American and who decides what principles the country defends? What compels people to take extreme action in the name of what they believe to be patriotism?
Kari Skogland, who directed all six episodes, said the series continued to embrace the same controversial themes – “not just current issues, but difficult to talk about issues” – that Captain America pioneered as a comic book character. On his first cover, in 1941, the hero was depicted punching Hitler in the face, and he has evolved over the decades to reflect Americans’ ambivalence about his leadership and the actions taken on behalf of his nation.
The comics Marvel published in its formative age “were born out of a time when the world was healing from a series of very particular events,” said Skogland, who also directed shows like “The Handmaid’s Tale”, “The Americans” and “Undead.”
“They came from a post-war, anti-fascist space and were talking about the morals and ethics that prevailed at the time,” she said. “They never shied away from that.”
Stan said it was inevitable that viewers would see parallels with recent crises such as the Capitol attack on January 6 in the series – not because their creators specifically anticipated or copied these events, but because they sought to tell a story about a country at a crossroads. dangerous to yourself.
“Watching the things that were happening on Capitol was incredibly disturbing,” he said, “and it was also particularly disturbing for us because it somehow reflected things that are happening on the show. You can’t do a show like this and not talk about those things. “
If the series were ultimately to grant Sam Wilson the status and title of Captain America – an issue he looks set to address during his run, although the outcome is not guaranteed – that would have considerable symbolic weight, Mackie acknowledged.
But for now, the actor preferred to speak more widely about Captain America as a character who represents a responsibility that all Americans have to preserve the fabric of the nation.
“Captain America’s idea is that I am my brother’s keeper,” said Mackie. “Somewhere along the line, we forget that. America is the land of opportunity, freedom, choice and power, and Captain America represents it all – he represents it for everyone ”.
Of course, it would be extremely powerful for black children to be able to see Captain America portrayed by a black actor, Mackie said. But “it is so important for a Latin, white or Asian child to see a Black Captain America”.
Pointing to the increasingly diverse range of superheroes that comic book publishers and entertainment studios have expanded in recent years, Mackie said: “It was very important when Miles Morales became Spider-Man. We need Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel so that the girls can look and say, I can be that. This is as important as having a Black Captain America. “
Whatever the outcome of “The Hawk and the Winter Soldier” for him and his character, Mackie, now 42, said he hoped to stay in the superhero game for a longer time and regretted not having entered it before.
“I wish I could have done that in my 20s,” he said. “It takes a lot of Advil to do a Marvel show.”