The first episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is here, and we’re breaking down all the big moments on the series premiere, “New World Order”. Sam Wilson, a.k.a. The Falcon, is struggling with what to do about Captain America’s shield in the aftermath of Avengers: Endgame, and taking a side-trip down to New Orleans. Meanwhile, Bucky, a.k.a. The Winter Soldier, is dealing with the sins of his past and going on dates. But while these two Avengers deal with personal issues, in the background Sam’s sidekick Joaquín Torres is investigating the mysterious Flag Smashers, who might be a big threat than anyone realizes. From The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Easter eggs, to Marvel Comics references, to who that new Captain America is, we break it all down on this week’s episode.

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Full Episode Transcript

Alex:                 Welcome To MarvelVision, a podcast about Marvel the MCU and now Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which premiered today on Disney+. It’s finally here. It was suppose to be the first Marvel series on Disney+. Turns out, as you all know, it’s the second, to come out after WandaVision. That’s what happens in the real world. That is some real truths.

Justin:              It’s crazy to say it’s finally here when literally WandaVision just ended. We’re spoiled. We’re spoiled is what it is, and now we’re diving into it like “Oh, we finally got this next one,” and we’re already doing it. We’re already here.

Alex:                 I had to watch Marvel Studios’ Assembled for a week instead of my friend adventures with my super friends. Very upsetting.

Justin:              Yeah. I know. I had to take this time off and look at my family members and my pets.

Pete:                Oh. Oh, gross.

Justin:              Yeah. Just-

Alex:                 No thanks, man. No thanks. So as usual, or maybe you’re tuning in for the first time because you’re more interested in Falcon and the Winter Soldier than potentially you were in WandaVision, we go pretty heavily into spoilers on this podcast. That’s what we talk about here. So go watch the first episode right now before we get into it. We’re going to talk about some of our general thoughts on the show, how it kicked off, how it kicked off potentially compared to WandaVision, but we’ll also be talking about Marvel Easter eggs, references from the comics, anything that we picked up, and speculation for the rest of the show.

Alex:                 So let’s start off with our first thing. From your guys’ perspective, WandaVision, I think, in a very surprising way, really raised expectations before Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which I certainly wasn’t expecting going into WandaVision. That was a huge hit, global domination just built over the course of the run. Obviously, there was a lot of consternation about the last episode and how it went. I liked it, for my note, but this is a very different show. This is much more straightforward MCU.

Pete:                Wait. Wait. Wait.

Alex:                 How did this first episode strike you?

Pete:                Wait. What about the last episode? There was conversation? What did you say?

Alex:                 Consternation. Just there were people that I think were a little upset about how certain things turned out with the last episode of WandaVision.

Pete:                Oh, really?

Alex:                 Yeah.

Pete:                People were … Oh, okay. I didn’t know.

Alex:                 Yeah. I mean, it was a huge surprise to me too that-

Pete:                You’re using big Cornell words. You’re going to lose our audience. You know what I mean?

Alex:                 No. That’s fair.

Pete:                Let’s not flex our knowledge on us all the time. You know what I mean?

Justin:              Oh, my god. When you say consternation, just use a smaller word, like butt angry.

Pete:                Yeah. There you go. Thank you. Yeah.

Alex:                 Lot of butthurt fans out there. Okay.

Justin:              There you go. Now you’re speaking to the people.

Alex:                 Let’s talk about Falcon and the Winter Soldier though and this first episode here. It’s obviously very different from WandaVision, but given those expectations going in here, given what you knew about the series, just broad strokes, how did the episode strike you?

Pete:                Well, I also feel like it’s tough because it has to follow WandaVision now, which is such a quirky, huge hit, and I feel like that is a little tough because it’s a little bit straightforward. But what I really enjoyed was there’s a lot going on. It’s not just a simple kind of action thing, which I was happy about. There’s a lot going on with these two gentlemen’s lives, and it’s like we’re just really kind of digging into where they are. I thought it was fun. I was impressed with a lot of it and how quickly … I was surprised that there’s still, by the first episode, because we’re only getting a small handful here, that they’re not already together and kind of working together. So I was a little like “Oh, no. We didn’t get them together in the end,” but that’s the only-

Alex:                 You got to save something for episode six, man. That’s what it’s all building to.

Pete:                Oh, don’t. I can’t do the whole thing apart. I don’t want to do the whole thing apart.

Justin:              We’re just going to see them passing each other in a hallway now and again like “Hey.”

Alex:                 Game of Thrones style.

Justin:              Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest … When you talk about WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it’s … If the TV show Friends … If they’d released Joey first because of a pandemic, it would have been a little bit harder to see what’s going on.

Alex:                 I’ll give you one better. It’s if they released Episodes first.

Justin:              Yeah. Okay. For all you Matt LeBlanc heads out there, you must be loving-

Pete:                Is that a shot against Joey?

Alex:                 No. Episodes was literally about him playing a Joey-type character on a show and commenting on the idea of television based on both Joey and Friends. So yeah. It feels like it’s skipping a beat. It’s like they jumped ahead and then they’re going back to the thing that should have come right after Endgame.

Justin:              But it’s interesting because I think so much of all the commentary, the consternation, the butt anger about WandaVision was because the potential was all over the … Everyone was like-

Pete:                Was huge. Yeah.

Justin:              … “Fantastic Four. Al Pacino is Mephisto. Who’s going to be … The Mandarin’s rings are going to be hidden,” all this stuff, and it wasn’t that.

Pete:                Also, Paul Bettany’s joke, which was hysterical, kind of fueled the fire for it as well, which didn’t help.

Justin:              For sure, but what I think … If the original order had been preserved and Falcon and the Winter Soldier had come first, I think there would have been less of that, because what we see in this first episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, to me, is like this is like the bridge from Marvel movies to television. It’s like has the same pace, the same type of storytelling as the first act of a Marvel movie, where lots of actions, a little bit of introducing stuff, some table setting. The main characters don’t even meet here.

Pete:                But you got Rhodey also being the bridge as well.

Justin:              Rhodey pops in, but people aren’t like “Are we going to see War Machine?” It’s like “No. He’s here. He’s already here.”

Alex:                 Yeah. He’s here.

Justin:              He’s watching.

Alex:                 Yeah. He left. He came here, and then he left.

Justin:              Yeah. He’s out of here. It was nice to see him. It was a drop in.

Pete:                Yeah. It was nice.

Justin:              I think-

Alex:                 He was on set that day anyway. So they just added him in.

Justin:              That’s how Holleywood works, you know?

Alex:                 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Justin:              It’s like “Hey. Pop in.”

Pete:                Hey. You going to be around for something we’re shooting later? Because that would be cool.

Justin:              We’re shooting this thing over here.

Alex:                 Yeah. No problem. What do I have to do? Is this like a Black Monday thing? Or what’s going on?

Justin:              Yeah. It is. They tricked him. But I don’t think there’s going to be that kind of speculation for this show, because it is just starting in a different place, and its expectations are sort of right wh