How do Avengers get paid? They don’t, according to the series premiere of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Six months after blipping back to life alongside half of humanity in Avengers: Endgame, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) needs a loan to keep his family’s seafood business afloat. Back home in Louisiana, Sam reunites with his sister, single working mother Sarah (Adepero Oduye), who has spent the past five years keeping that boat from sinking. Refusing to sell off their family’s legacy, Sam is determined to get a loan but faces a foe even an Avenger can’t defeat: a loan officer (Vince Pisani).
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“It’s funny because that scene, and that moment, ended up triggering everybody at Marvel,” Falcon and Winter Soldier creator Malcolm Spellman told Entertainment Tonight. “We were getting calls from Kevin [Feige, president of Marvel Studios], from Lou [D’Esposito, co-president of Marvel Studios], from Victoria [Alonso, EVP of Production], from Nate [Moore, VP of Production & Development], like everyone at Marvel wanted input there.”
“Whatever it is about it, it has resonated with the people that have been interviewing with us, it resonated with everyone working there,” Spellman added about the bank scene. “So I think the reason you keyed in on it is you got to see a moment where a superhero is truly a regular person, and hopefully we answered the question to some degree, that it ain’t easy being [superheroes]. A lot of superheroes are broke, especially now that Tony Stark is gone.”
When the loan officer asks whether there is a “fund for heroes,” or if Earth’s mightiest heroes were paid by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) when he was around, Sam says, “It doesn’t really work like that.” The revelation that the late billionaire didn’t pay the Avengers quickly became a hot topic on social media.
As the loan officer points out, Sam’s financials are “all over the place.” The Falcon spent two years on the run with a fugitive Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) as part of his Secret Avengers before Thanos (Josh Brolin) snapped his fingers, erasing Sam and half of all other life in the universe out of existence for five years.
Responding to Sam’s lack of income since 2018, Sarah asks: “How can you have income if you don’t exist?”
The financial struggle “gets to the humanity of it,” Spellman said. “Because we had more time, you get to spend time in a scene like that, in a bank scene, where you’re dealing with someone being famous but maybe being broke and how do you make your money as a hero? It’s a blast. I mean, Anthony and Sebastian [Stan] are both able to play with a given moment in a way that’s electric, so half of what you’re doing is creating moments for them to just do what they do.”
Starring Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Emily VanCamp, Wyatt Russell, Erin Kellyman, Danny Ramirez, Clé Bennett, and Daniel Brühl, new episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier premiere Fridays only on Disney+.
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