Falcon and the Winter Soldier Head Writer Details Reference to Red Skull

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has come to an end, but the show’s head writer, Malcolm Spellman, has shared a lot of thoughts about the series since its final episode dropped. Recently, the writer did an interview with Everyone Loves A Good Story and talked about some of his dream Marvel team-ups. Spellman was also asked about the Flag Smashers and their connection to a line said by Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avengers. “You could have the power of the gods! Yet you wear a flag on your chest and think you fight a battle of nations! I have seen the future Captain! There are no flags,” the villain says to Steve Rogers. While some believe the Flag Smashers pulled inspiration from Red Skull, Spellman admits that it wasn’t their intention when writing the script.

“I’m a halfway let you down. For sure, all the writers in the room watch all the Cap movies multiple times, and definitely the Red Skull scene ’cause we knew Zemo would be referencing him as to the identity of superheroes and supremacy ends up becoming. The suit of power always land you in that place. The connective tissue… we did not catch that line going to the Flag Smashers, at least not consciously. Everyone watched that movie five times before the series so who knows what subconscious connectivity went off. No one caught that line when we’re doing the Flag Smashers,” Spellman explained.

“You never know. You know that famous line, ‘a great artist steal.’ Basically, all artists look at other artists and draw from it, and do their own thing. You can set out to say, we don’t do a two-hander with Bucky and Sam that’s going to be like 48 Hrs and Lethal Weapon right? But at the time you’re done, it doesn’t look like that. It evolves as it goes. You’ll never know what you’re picking up when you’re digging with all these research,” he added.

We’re not too surprised to learn this wasn’t intentional considering Red Skull was a straight-up Nazi whereas Karli Morgenthau, the leader of the Flag Smashers, is considered by Spellman to be more of a fallen hero.

“In construction of the character, we were like, ‘Let’s make her a kid.’ And, ‘Let’s make her tap into the spirit of how people feel today.’ And even though the pandemic hadn’t hit yet, that all just exacerbated a feeling folks were having. And if you’re Black, you’ve been having it your whole life, which is, the game is rigged, the people who are at the top are becoming irresponsible. We accept that the game is rigged, but now, they’re getting irresponsible in how much they’re taking from us, and people just have to push back. And we wrote Karli as a hero. She is a hero that goes bad,” Spellman explained in Marvel Studios: Assembled.

Watch The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+.

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