Falcon & Winter Soldier Will Tackle "The Existential Crisis of a Black Man... With the Shield"

Marvel has just dropped a new featurette with the cast and crew of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier where they give greater insight into the issues the show's set to tackle. 

Head writer and executive producer Malcolm Spellman says the series shows "the existential crisis of a black man dealing with the shield, Bucky Barnes and Sam dealing with the fact that the most important person in their lives and the MCU is gone."

"I think most people say 'post-Blip,' but I think for the two of them, it's 'post-Steve,' Anthony Mackie says of the loss of Steve Rogers as Captain America. "They're trying to figure out how to acclimate themselves to this new reality." 

Director/executive producer Kari Skogland notes that the Blip, the five-year period between Thanos murdering half the universe's population in Avengers: Infinity War to the Hulk bringing them all back in Avengers: Endgame, will be a major concern. "Sam has blipped back, and so his family life continued while he was gone and he's coming back to have to try and reintegrate into that, and Bucky has changed, and he has maybe healed, maybe not."

Other tidbits dropped in a "lightning round" series of questions:

• Cap's shield is "compromised" and "redesigned"
• Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) is "our rock" and Spellman's first-word response to her mention is "adulthood," which suggests she might be the grown-up in the room mitigating Sam and Bucky's tendencies to bicker like kids
• Zemo (Daniel Brühl) "wears a lot of cologne"
• Captain America "is a question mark," according to Sebastian Stan, while Mackie invokes a spinning "loading" circle to imply the anticipation of what's to come.
• The thought of the Falcon inspires Stan to start singing Bob Seger's "Against the Wind."
• The Winter Soldier "stares ahead, looking for an opportunity," Stan jokes about Bucky's tendency toward silent glares.

"We are a six-hour series," Skogland says. "If the movies are a snack, we're the meal. We can be with the characters for a much longer time and we can go with them on adventures and really get to know them. That's a new thing for the fans. They haven't ever lived with these characters in the same way."

"Each of these heroes was given a personal storyline, not just personal story beats," Spellman says. "An entire story that has nothing to do with the bad guys and all that, and those storylines are fraught with emotion and are going to force them characters to cave or emerge as new people born of this moment." 

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier premieres Friday, March 19 on Disney+.

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Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.