When last we saw The Winter Soldier, at the end of the film that bears his name, Bucky Barnes was beginning to put the pieces together about who he has been for the last several decades. The opening scene of the trailer for Captain America: Civil War showed us a Bucky Barnes who is no longer the living weapon that he had once been. So what does that tell us about Bucky’s feelings towards Hydra? Well, like most relationships, it’s complicated.
While Bucky appears to have turned his back on the organization that turned him into The Winter Soldier, Sebastian Stan has implied in a recent interview that there’s a bit more to it than that. Generally speaking people appreciate not being dead, and whether he likes it or not, Bucky owes Hydra for his life.
You have to remember it is the same Hydra, in a sense, that is responsible for him still being alive. And what happened before the movie Winter Soldier – and there will be a lot of things sort of made more clear in Civil War about what happened with him – kind of set up this relationship that he may always have with Hydra, one way or another. Because in a way they are like his second family. If that makes sense.
While the video from marvelite shows Stan doing his best Marvel two-step to avoid giving too much away, he does tell us that the new film will delve a little deeper into exactly what happened to Bucky in between the two previous Captain America movies. Stan refers to Hydra as a second family and like a family, even one you don’t like very much, you tend to owe them a lot. Your life, if nothing else. While it looks like Bucky is trying to be good from here on out, he can’t totally erase the person he was while working for Hydra. Whether that means there’s still a bit of the old Winter Soldier programming in his head that he’ll need to fight against in the film, or if he feels a need to protect what’s left of Hydra, is not clear. Check out the full interview below, which Stan did while promoting The Martian overseas.
There are a lot of people, including the Black Panther, who will be gunning for Bucky when Civil War hits screens next year. The trailer certainly makes it look like protecting Bucky is the right thing to do, but if he hasn’t entirely separated himself from Hydra, maybe Iron Man is in the right after all.
