#NotMyCap: Marvel Fans React to New Captain America Revealed on Falcon and Winter Soldier

Marvel fans are saying #NotMyCap after The Falcon and the Winter Soldier reveals a new star-spangled Captain America (Wyatt Russell) in the series premiere of the Marvel Studios series, “New World Order.” Six months after a 112-year-old Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) relinquished the mantle of Captain America in Avengers: Endgame, entrusting the shield to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), the high-flying hero known as the Falcon feels like the symbol belongs to someone else. Despite urging from fellow Avenger James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), Sam returns the shield to the United States government to display in the Smithsonian — and watches as the government hands the shield to America’s “new hero,” John Walker (Russell).

“The reason it happened is the doubt that Sam would naturally have in this country, if not the world,” Falcon and Winter Soldier creator Malcolm Spellman told TVLine about the episode-ending reveal. “Being a Black man, he knows how he’s viewed and he knows the electricity that would come from him carrying those stars and stripes. You meet his family, and [they] already have opinions on it — you’re hearing some of it in jokes, but it’s very pointed. A Black man being betrayed by his country I don’t think is a surprising thing to Sam or any of our viewers, but it is powerful because it gets to the heart of Sam’s doubt. And how he copes with that doubt over the series is going to determine who he is moving forward in the MCU.”

Comic book readers will recognize the Cap wannabe as U.S. Agent, who may not be fit to carry on the mantle and legacy of Captain America. When Sam is reunited with James ‘Bucky’ Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Steve’s wartime buddy and lifelong best friend, they’ll work together to determine who will wield the shield by the end of the six-episode series.

“At the end of Endgame, Sam didn’t accept the shield. If you remember, he told Steve, ‘It doesn’t feel right, because the shield is yours,’” Mackie previously told The Rich Eisen Show. “So [The Falcon and the Winter Soldier] is a long way of figuring around who’s gonna be Captain America, where is the shield gonna end up, and if that moniker is gonna come back — and if somebody’s gonna hold that moniker again.”

Here’s what Marvel fans are saying about Steve’s replacement on Falcon and Winter Soldier:

No, I Don’t Think I Will Call Him Cap

My Cap

Changing Channels

A Sad, Strange Little Man

Don’t Wike It

America’s A-Hole

No.

Super Soldier