Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s Anthony Mackie Confident Disney+ Series Doesn’t “Mess Up the Marvel Brand”

The Marvel hot streak continues. After 23 hit movies and small screen success with WandaVision, [...]

By Cameron Bonomolo

The Marvel hot streak continues. After 23 hit movies and small screen success with WandaVision, the first Marvel Studios original series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie is confident the Captain America spin-off "did not mess up the Marvel brand." In the six-episode series premiering Friday on Disney+, Sam Wilson (Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) return for the first time since Avengers: Endgame — until recently the highest-grossing film of all time. After the blockbuster success of Endgame and the critical acclaim of TV's WandaVision, Mackie reveals what he hopes Marvel viewers take away from Falcon and Winter Soldier:

"I hope people take away from the show that we did not mess up the Marvel brand. This could have went really wrong and we could have been the first bad Marvel show, and we're not," Mackie said during Marvel's virtual launch event on Thursday. "We kept it going!"

What was planned as the premiere Marvel Studios series before it was delayed amid the pandemic "raised the bar," Stan told Mackie with the kind of buddy cop back-and-forth at the heart of Falcon and Winter Soldier. "Don't sell yourself short."

"We kept it going, baby," Mackie said. "We have a good show! Yes, we're not bad! That's what I want people to say: 'You know, they don't suck' (laughs)."

In the well-reviewed series from head writer Malcolm Spellman (Empire) and director Kari Skogland (The Walking Dead, The Handmaid's Tale), Sam and Bucky team up on a global adventure with Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl), and U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell) along for the action-packed ride.

"You have six mind-boggling, super-charged hours ahead of you packed with cinematic action pieces, but also with unseen and fantastic character pieces," Brühl, who joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2016's Captain America: Civil War, teased during Thursday's virtual event. Added VanCamp, "I just recently saw it, so all I can say is it's awesome on so many different levels. You get to experience these characters on a deeper level because you have more time with them, so that's really cool. It's also action-packed, super fun, I think it's amazing. I'm super proud of everyone's work in it."

Read ComicBook.com's spoiler-free 4/5 star review for the series premiere of Marvel's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The new series debuts on Disney+ beginning Friday, March 19.

Want to learn more about the latest Marvel Studios series? Check back on ComicBook CRAM every day leading up to the premiere of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and click here for even more articles and videos to find out everything you need to know about the new show!

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