The Falcon And Winter Soldier: Who Are The Masked Soldiers?

This year’s Super Bowl isn’t just featuring a showdown between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs but has also shown us a battle between Marvel’s dysfunctional duo of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and a band of masked soldiers, and we thought we’d take the opportunity to reveal who these mysterious combatants are! With Captain America retired in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, both Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes have some big shoes to fill, but it seems as if they are going to have some serious challenges to prove they are up to snuff!

The latest trailer for Disney+‘s The Falcon And The Winter Soldier gave us a better idea of the mission that the two friends of Steve Rogers will find themselves in, attempting to battle a hoard of threats while also struggling with their many personality differences. Though we don’t have a ton of details about the masked villains that have handprints on their masks, it was revealed in earlier material linked to the live-action series that these in fact were the “Flag Smashers”. The Flag-Smasher was a Captain America villain that was created by legendary writer Mark Gruenwald and artist Paul Neary in 1985, taking several different incarnations throughout the decades.

Recently, Flag-Smasher appeared in a Captain America storyline in which the villain was actually a tool for a Steve Rogers that was under the influence of Hydra, thanks in part to some shenanigans from Red Skull and the cosmic cube. While this new band of soldiers is obviously far different from the iterations that have been seen in the pages of Marvel Comics, it’s clear that they have an ax to grind with the partners of Steve Rogers and might be in cahoots with the returning villain from Captain America: Civil War, Baron Zemo.

Disney+ has been garnering a lot of attention with the television series Wandavision, the first Marvel Cinematic Universe property since 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, and it seems as if The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is looking to introduce us to an action-packed series that just might introduce us to the new Captain America!

Are you hyped for the arrival of this new Disney+ Marvel Cinematic Universe series? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of the MCU!

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