The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Marvel’s Newest TV Debut

Marvel expands its world with a new superhero offering on Disney+

Hot off the success of Disney+’s WandaVision comes another TV instalment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. To fans of the MCU, the characters played by Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan are already familiar as Sam Wilson, who took up the mantle of Captain America from Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) at the close of Avengers: Endgame, and Bucky Barnes, Rogers’ best friend who made a temporary trip to the dark side as a brainwashed assassin and still struggles with his murderous past.

Pairing the two sidekicks for a six-hour series was an opportunity to explore the backstories of these characters and their personal sagas, in a way that the feature films had not allowed for. “We wanted to learn more about both of them,” says president of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige. “In the little interactions they had with each other in The Winter Soldier and Civil War, and seeing them interact with each other as friends of a mutual best friend in Captain America, it was a very fun dynamic. We thought, if we ever had that opportunity, we’d watch a whole show with the two of them.”

Crossing over into TV is not a new venture for Marvel, but spinning their vaunted “Cinematic Universe” into episodic series is an opportunity to introduce a broader audience, that perhaps does not believe they are fans of the high-octane action movies, to the inner workings of the characters. “The goal is always to continue to expand the fans of Marvel,” says Feige. “The greatest compliment that we can get on a project—and we’ve been very lucky to get them on many things over the years—is, ‘I don’t usually like these kind of movies’ or ‘I never read a comic, but I really enjoy X, Y or Z.’ WandaVision is an extreme example of that, but I think there is much to be found in everything we’re doing, including Falcon and the Winter Soldier, with all the blasting and explosions, that will appeal to people, whether they’ve been following along with the MCU or not.”

But as the universe expands across platforms, jumping in as a first-time viewer is becoming more daunting. Feige is adamant that introducing new viewers to familiar characters without a barrier to entry remains one of his main concerns. “I always say when the lights go down and a movie starts, it’s a clean slate,” says Feige. “As we make more shows and as we make more films and as we introduce more characters, that does become harder and harder. But it is something that all of our writers and all of our filmmakers pay great attention to.”

And indeed, Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), Vision (Paul Bettany), Falcon and the Winter Soldier aren’t the only superheroes making their streaming debut this year. A series featuring Loki (Tom Hiddleston) premieres summer 2021, after which the first animated series, What If…?, will make its debut, with shows focused on Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany) right behind. “Disney+ has been a burst of creative energy for me and all of us at Marvel Studios to enhance our universe, to deeply explore more characters in our universe, and to do so in a very different and unique way,” says Feige.

Because of the per-episode cost, the MCU series have landed on smaller episode counts than the norm set by other streaming platforms—in the case of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier a mere six hours. “It all comes down to the storytelling,” says Feige. “The bar is set high for the features and for the series, and we try to exceed that bar every time.”

While an episodic Marvel story allows for weekly doses of superheroism, Feige trusts the viewer to figure out their preferred way of consuming the content, whether it is one episode or movie at a time or one big binge. “We’re building the shows to be experienced the way we build our features; to be experienced in a run, and sometimes they have tags that hint at the future and what’s to come,” says Feige. “It’s fun to be able to do that week to week in series programming, but other than that, it’s very much the same high bar that we try to set for ourselves.”

The length and scope of an MCU series is also determined by what comes next in the Marvel Universe. “The fun of the MCU is, obviously, all of the crossover that we can do between series and films,” says Feige. “It will always vary based on the story. Sometimes it will go into a season two. Sometimes it will go into a feature and then back into a series. We’ve announced that Ms. Marvel, after her debut on Disney+, will be going into the second Captain Marvel film. But sometimes—and yet to be announced—we are planning second seasons for some of the upcoming series.”

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier streams on Disney+