The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Who Is the New Captain America?

The Captain America you’ve known for the past decade or so is no more. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) has officially hung the shield up — he’s done. Though the iconic item was supposed to go directly to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), it was instead taken out of retirement for Captain America 2.0: John Walker (Wyatt Russell). So, who exactly is this enigmatic new Avenger?

Light spoilers ahead for the premiere episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier! Proceed with caution if you’ve yet to see “New World Order.”

Walker is absent from nearly the entire premiere episode. He’s not even at the heartbreaking Captain America ceremony — one that War Machine himself makes an appearance at. Instead, he’s introduced to the masses in the episode’s closing moments, introduced specifically as the “new Captain America.”

He steps out of the shadows and winks at the paparazzi capturing snapshots of him, but that’s it. The show never addresses — at least of yet — Walker by his comic-accurate name: U.S. Agent. Regardless, the name’s practically moot — all because the two roles seem to match up closely, at least as of now.

Walker has always been an anti-hero, always skirting the line between good and bad — a tone the show has already teased with the little we know of the character. Even then, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier writer Malcolm Spellman says the series will eventually skirt away from that US Agent fans know.

“That character from the books, what he represents is extremely relevant,” Spellman previously explained. “We shifted away from the books a little bit, so we added some very, very different dimensions, especially once Wyatt got involved and started really inhabiting the character. But the spirit, all you’ve got to do is read Marvel comics and then imagine that we didn’t do half of what’s in the books. That’s my way of saying I can’t talk about Wyatt.”

Like the show, Walker has always been a replacement to Captain America

The first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is now streaming on Disney+.

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