Avengers: Endgame Directors Explain Why Captain America Chose Sam Over Bucky

For the last couple of weeks, the Internet has been sworn to secrecy about the events of Avengers: Endgame, with spoiler warnings and bans from the film’s cast and crew plastered everywhere. However, that all changed on Monday morning as directors Joe and Anthony Russo confirmed that spoilers are now fair game. With that in mind, many of the interviews with the two filmmakers have started appearing online, diving into all of the most spoiler-filled topics from the movie.

One of these interviews comes from a brand new episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where both Joe and Anthony appeared to talk about the biggest questions surrounding Avengers: Endgame. About two-thirds of the way through the episode, which you can find in its entirety here, the Russo Brothers were asked about the decision to have Captain America pass on his shield and mantle to Sam Wilson, rather than Bucky Barnes.

While Bucky has long been Steve Rogers’ best friend, the creative team behind Endgame felt that Sam’s story and character were much more closely aligned with Captain America. When it came time for a new Captain America to be named, there really wasn’t any debate about it.

“It made sense that it was Sam,” Joe Russo said. “I don’t think that there were significant debates at all. Bucky is portrayed in the films as very damaged, and not necessarily the guy that you would want to trust with another weapon because he can always be corrupted. And Sam, if anyone matches Cap’s integrity over the course of the last few films, it’s Sam. From the time that they met on the mall in D.C. through the end of this film, and he just seemed like the logical choice in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We don’t have all of the context that the comics have, we can only bring completion to the stories that we’ve been telling and that seemed to make the most sense.”

Sam and Bucky haven’t had a ton of time together on-screen so far in the MCU, but that will change next year on the Disney+ streaming service, where both Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan are set to reprise their roles for a TV series. Whether or not Sam fully embraces his new role as Captain America still remains to be seen.

What did you think of the choice to make Sam Wilson the new Captain America? Let us know in the comments!

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