Origin Stories/Rebranding
Things Falcon and The Winter Soldier Need to Continue
So far WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier have both essentially acted as a sort of rebranding for their respective leads. While they were already both established members of the Avengers, there was still a lot of room for character growth.
On top of all that, Sam and Bucky’s new roles for phase four had to be set up, as they’re set to be major players now that key members like Iron Man and Steve Rodgers are no longer around.
Besides the origin story of the new Captain America, we also got the introduction of John Walker as the U.S. Agent. While he was certainly thrust onto the scene, the show did a great job at fleshing his troubled character out across the season, thank in part to a standout performance from Wyatt Russell.
This TV format seems to be a great way to tell the origins of these already established characters and the U.S. Agent angle shows that it can even work for new characters. Instead of a single movie trying to jam a ton of story into two hours, we got six separate hour-long episodes that let each character shine on their own.
There’s no doubt that origin story movies like the upcoming Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings will still have a place in the MCU. But at the same time, it’s clear that introducing new characters or old character’s new roles can be done exceptionally well over the course of a few weeks.
