well, finished the sam and bucky chronicles. (it occurs to me many may not know what i mean by this, lool, the falcon and winter soldier). it was a solid B with a few A plus moments--

the one thing i think it did very well as an entire series is that it took the lesson of star wars and the blatant white supremacy of the fandom not allowing for a black hero to heart-

and made this entire series about transitioning the MCU fandom from white supremacy into acceptance (hopefully) of a black hero. back when steve gave the shield to sam in endgame, there was a ton of grumbling about why did he chose sam over bucky and a lot of that-

was absolutely based in white supremacy. it wasn't anything near what John Boyega went thru-- https://www.thedailybeast.com/racists-urge-boycott-of-star-wars-episode-vii-over-black-lead-and-most-of-them-love-trump

but it was there. in falcon/winter soldier, the MCU stated clearly, openly, convincingly, that they were completely behind Sam and Captain America, and made the case that it's a tragedy that he is the first black Cap.

the institutional support for anthony mackie and sam as cap is important part of ensuring that fans also support or at least keep a lid on it.

now, some of the conversations that led to sam as captain america were a bit rocky. in the 5th episode, bucky just all of a sudden says 'steve and i didn't understand what we were asking of you as a black man' and i think that's important to acknowledge-

but the show didn't in any way hint at how bucky came to that conclusion. which was disappointing. but overall, i think the most important thing is that the franchise is clearly 100% behind sam/anthony mackie--

and that is going to make his life infinitely easier and hopefully he will NOT have to deal with any of the bullshit that any of the POC on star wars had to, esp john boyega.

and hopefully that will allow for some better storytelling, as well. bcz the entire karli/one world, one people storyline was a tad ridiculous. had a lot of potential, as it's one of the first times we've seen fall out from the 'snap' taken seriously so far.

spiderman made it a joke, scarlet witch talked about it a bit, but didn't focus on it, and when it did talk abt it, it was very particular to wanda's experience.

i think there's a lot of powerful discussions to be had about what it means to repatriate, what it means to be refugees, what it means to be gone for 5 years and come back and want ur home back that somebody has claimed as their own.

and yes, a discussion about 'borders' would even be worthwhile.

unfortunately, falcon/winter soldier did not do very good storytelling around these themes or around the flag smashers or it's leader, karli.

the power broker storyline was also not that interesting and it seems to have settled itself on sharon carter's shoulders. if there's anybody i'm less interested in than sharon carter, i'd be hard pressed to tell you about them.

the other thread of the season is fake cap becoming american patriot, and as much as i hated fake cap, i think it was a good hate, in that the storytelling was great, the acting was solid, and they seemed to have a clear idea of where they were going with the story.

i hated fake cap because i was *supposed* to hate fake cap, and that is a good thing. i'm very interested to see where they go with his storyline. unlike the power broker storyline.

so. overall--the series had interesting fighting, some potentially great new characters, and was essential and important bcz of it's institutional and franchise support of of a black superhero.

it also had lots of weak/uneven points in the storytelling, and some really boring new characters. i also don't think it set up any excitement for whatever is coming next in the MCU as wanda vision did, but i don't know as if that is required.

so overall, i'd give a solid B with some A plus points.

i think that the loki series is coming next? in june?