SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Captain America: Civil War. If you have not yet seen the film, and don’t wish to know any specific details going in, we recommend clicking away to another one of our wonderful articles.
We’ve all had the experience of friends from one part of your life meeting with friends from another part of your life. And it is rarely not awkward. As the sole connection between the groups, there is a particular stress in wanting to make sure everyone gets along, but sometimes a degree of competition is created between the two camps – each trying to prove that their friendship with you is stronger than the others’. This basically defines the relationship between Sam Wilson a.k.a. Falcon and Bucky Barnes a.k.a. Winter Soldier in Captain America: Civil War - and it creates what is really the best character pairing in a blockbuster that is filled to the brim with amazing character pairings.
Of course, Captain America: Civil War isn’t the first time that the two heroes – played by Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan – have interacted. They first met in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where their relationship was a touch more adversarial. And by that I mean Bucky was constantly firing bullets and grenades at Sam, and even went as far as to break his flying suit and nearly kill him kicking him off a Helicarrier. To say the least, their friendship did not get off on the best of feet, though by the end of the film Sam certainly understands and respects what the brainwashed assassin means to Chris Evans’ Captain America.
While the two men try their very hardest to kill each other in Captain America: The Winter Solider, they find themselves both fighting on Team Cap in Captain America: Civil War, and it creates an endless stream of absolutely fantastic scenes where they both bond and butt heads. We see this in the fantastic and hilarious simultaneous nod they give to Steve Rogers after he plants a kiss on Emily Van Camp’s Sharon Carter; but also while they are doing battle with Tom Holland’s Spider-Man in the Leipzig/Halle Airport (concluding with the perfect scene capping line "I hate you.")
Sadly we don’t see much of Falcon and Winter Soldier interacting after Captain America: Civil War’s second act, given that Sam is thrown in The Raft and Bucky travels with Cap to unravel Helmut Zemo’s plans for revenge. It’s also pretty unfortunate that the metal armed assassin chooses to put himself into deep freeze until his brain can be refigured, meaning we probably won’t be seeing him together with Sam again for a while. That being said, we fully expect Winter Soldier to be back in action for The Avengers: Infinity War - given that pretty much every Marvel character will be present in the two-part blockbuster – so hopefully writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely will create many opportunities for them to interact.
Did you dig the tenuous, complicated and hilarious friendship between Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes in Captain America: Civil War as much as we did? Hit the comments section below with your thoughts, and tell us what you want to see them get up to in the future!
