I mean, first, there's insufficient evidence to say they "put a built-in weakness" into his arm. For all we know, it's just a weakness, a consequence of the specific tech used... something something harmonic resonance, or whatever. https://twitter.com/StephenSeanFord/status/1381414562046468097

And second, is it not "just sad" that he was using the technology given to him by "those who helped" against "those who helped"?

He knows who the Dora Milaje are and he knows who John Walker is and he sided with John Walker, who he knows is in the wrong here.

I think that privately he believed he was keeping the peace between two nations by stopping them from killing "Captain America", but that's internal

Right. It was practical, ending the fight, not punishment. No "You betrayed us for the last time, James Buchanan Barnes." Just, "Nope, you don't get to hit me with that arm." https://twitter.com/SJWReaper/status/1381612007506382850

Possibly it means that he underestimated them. It could be as simple as he never thought through the implications of what they taught him.

I mean, he definitely knows it comes off, because he knows how to put it on. https://twitter.com/CatSittingstill/status/1381613333904777217

There's space for Bucky to feel genuinely betrayed by Ayo, but that doesn't change the fact that Ayo has reason to feel betrayed by him. As I've said on another person's thread: it's possible for more than one person in a situation to be in the wrong.

She turned off a piece of assistive technology that is a functional piece of Bucky's body. I'm not denying that happened.

But it's not the only thing that happened.

Vibranium and its resulting technology is the wealth and blood of Wakanda, a part of their national identity.

And in a fight with a man who was using a stolen chunk of that sacred metal with another nation's flag iconography painted over it, Bucky took the gift they had trusted him with -- a weaponized superpowered prosthetic -- and used it against them, to help the vandal.

Control over vibranium and vibranium technology is an existential matter for Wakanda; without it, Wakanda's society would have fallen to imperialist aggression ages ago, and they know it's not too late for that to happen.

I think we've seen enough that we can infer that they felt better about the child's toy Howard Stark cobbled together knowing that Steve Rogers was the one carrying it out in the world.

And I think the fact that Steve vouched for him is a big part of why they felt comfortable letting Bucky walk out of Wakanda with what the shield could have been (if Howard had understood what he had) attached to his shoulder.

But the idea that they should have trusted Bucky so far that they would have taught him all the ways that a Wakandan engineer or soldier could have thought to disable it, and helped him counter that... why? Forget trust, why would that have occurred to anyone at the time?

I mean, what kind of trust results in a brainstorming session that starts with, "Okay, assume one day you turn on us and we come for you, or vice-versa. What are some of the ways we could exploit your reliance on our technology in that situation, and how could you stop that?"

And as a last thought for this thread: we know that the MCU earth outside of Wakanda can make a functional cyborg arm without vibranium, because Bucky had one decades ago as the Winter Soldier.

There are reasons he couldn't and wouldn't have gone to Tony Stark for an Iron Man arm even before the Snap 2.0 killed him, but that knowledge is out there. He could have divested himself of the Wakandan tech and given up nothing except the stuff only they can do.

And yes, he could also have gone with a cybernetic prosthesis that's not a weapon at all, that is no stronger than his other (already enhanced arms) and with no special capabilities. https://twitter.com/fangirlJeanne/status/1381625822084096001

I think on a meta level, the reason he has a weaponized super arm is that the people writing the story knew they were going to write more stories about him getting into superfights.

But in-universe, his healers chose to give him a sword and he chose not to ask for a plowshare.

And he knows the arm is a weapon, even as he thinks of it as part of himself, because he has memories of using his previous Hydra model as a weapon. He knows what he could do with the bronze age version of his post-industrial-revolution arm.

And honestly now I'm just enthralled of thinking about that part of his recuperation in Wakanda, the conversations and meditations on the difference between having a weapon vs. being one, on whether he was ready to be done fighting or just needed to know he could fight safely.