Falcon and Winter Soldier Director Kari Skogland Says Series Examines if Captain America Is Still Relevant

When Steve Rogers returned to 2023 at the end of Avengers: Endgame, he passed his iconic shield onto Sam Wilson, in the hopes that he’ll take up the mantle of Captain America. Of course, it then confused fans to see that the Disney+ TV series featuring Sam was going to be called The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Is Sam not taking over the Captain America title like he did in the comics?

This is a theme that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is going to explore. According to director Kari Skogland, the series will really examine whether or not the idea of Captain America is still relevant today, or if maybe that mantle is a thing of the past.

“The central idea of it where Sam was handed the shield and what was that going to be and the exploration of will he or won’t he take on what’s this is going to be for a Black man to carry the shield,” Skogland told Murphy’s Multiverse. “What is Captain America’s relevance? Is there a Captain America that makes any sense anymore? All of those questions I thought were very topically important to not just discuss but to go on a real exploration in a deep dive sort of way.”

Skogland went on to explain that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier benefits from being a TV series, rather than a film. They have time to explore the characters on a deeper level.

“On the other level was the nature and the depth of these characters that we were able to in a 6-hour space compared to [a movie]. I call it the meal vs. the snack,” the director continued. “6 hours is the meal and the feature is now the snack. And there’s plenty of room for snacks but I love the meals because you don’t feel like you’ve got these time constraints where you’re trying to jam too much into too short a space and the characters can live and breathe. And you’re also not sweating the ‘I better wind this up’ too quickly. You’re able to let it gestate and let us worry for the character or be with the character. I really looked for performance opportunities and found from the get go it was going to be a challenge for the actors to find those moments and the table was set for them to do their great work and they did.”

Are you excited for the arrival of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on March 19th? Let us know in the comments!