Following his debut four years ago in the Disney+ subscription-exclusive series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Carl Lumbly’s Isaiah Bradley returned for the 2025 movie release of Captain America: Brave New World. Unfortunately, the Korean War veteran enhanced with super soldier serum was made an unwitting pawn of Samuel Sterns’ schemes, having been brainwashed into attempting to assassinate President Thaddeus Ross. While Isaiah is still in peak physical condition at such an advanced age thanks to the serum coursing through his veins, Lumbly informed me that the running aspect of his big action sequence took quite the toll on him from an emotional standpoint.
I had the pleasure of speaking with the actor on behalf of Captain America: Brave New World’s Digital release, with the Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD rollout set for May 13. During our conversation, I asked him what the most difficult or challenging part of shooting the White House action sequence, and he started off telling me:
Running. That would be my simple answer. Because in many ways, and I'm not trying to be funny about this, he couldn't run fast enough even with super serum in his system. There's no way to outrun the reality that he’s living in. So something about coming to and realizing that he had perpetrated something that he had no idea what he had done, but he knew that he was right back where he had been so often in his experience with this country. He was being accused of something that he did not do, he was accused of thinking things that he did not think, and he was locked away with himself once again, not knowing what his fate would be, having his life in the hands of other people.
Remember that Isaiah Bradley was thrown in prison for defying orders and going behind enemy lines to rescue some fellow Black super soldiers during the Korean War. He was experimented on by the US government and HYDRA for 30 years, and the only reason it wasn’t longer was because a nurse faked his death and managed to smuggle him out. So for him to be thrown in prison yet again for actions he wasn’t in control of was emotionally devastating. Like Carl Lumbly said, no amount of running was going to fix the horrible situation he’d been forced into.
The good news for Isaiah, however, was that he had Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson in his corner during Brave New World. As Lumbly laid out for me, the new Captain America’s differing perspective on life compared to Isaiah’s meant he had the drive to prove his friend’s innocence, whereas Isaiah had resigned himself to spending the rest of his life in prison. As the actor put it:
It just happens that in this instance, his life is in the hands of the best person he could hope for, Sam Wilson, Captain America. And the world in which Sam operates is very different from the world in which Isaiah operated. Sam has agency and capabilities and assumptions and expectations that Isaiah has not dared have, but seeing that it's possible has to affect his thinking. So it's beyond the fact that Sam can save him. It's that Sam can operate in a world that looks completely like madness to Isaiah, but Sam can operate there. And maybe if Sam can, perhaps Isaiah can too.
As is often the case with these Marvel movies, good won out in the end. Sam Wilson, Joaquin Torres and their allies exposed Samuel Sterns’ crimes, and after Ross’ rampage as Red Hulk was stopped, Isaiah Bradley was freed. It’s hard to say if we’ll see Carl Lumbly reprise Isaiah in another upcoming Marvel movie or upcoming Marvel TV show, but I’d like to think that Sam’s actions will indeed affect him and push him towards being more open with the world.
With Captain America: Brave New World out of the way, the next Marvel movie on the docket is Thunderbolts*, which arrives on May 2. One month later, you can see Carl Lumbly back on the big screen starring opposite Tom Hiddleston in Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck.
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