Sam and Bucky join forces to investigate the Flag-Smashers, butting heads with the new Captain America and his sidekick Battlestar along the way.
Tropes:
- Adaptation Displacement: Sam is notably surprised when Bucky makes a Lord of the Rings reference before Bucky points out that the Middle-earth saga has been around since the thirties. Bucky: Who're we fighting now? Gandalf?
Sam: How do you know about Gandalf?
Bucky: I read The Hobbit. In 1937, when it first came out. - All-American Face: John Walker, the new Captain America, is not just a decorated soldier and war hero but also has a mixed-race wife and black best friend, reflecting a more culturally inclusive America. He's also loyal to the U.S. government's orders rather than his own conscience, something that is very different from his predecessor.
- All There in the Script: The boy who answers Isaiah's front door is never referred to by name, although comics fans may be able to guess his identity. The ending credits confirm that he is indeed Isaiah's grandson, Eli Bradley.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Sam's idea of the big three threats that superheroes face consists of androids, aliens, and wizards. Bucky vehemently denies the existence of wizards, despite not only fighting alongside magic users like Doctor Strange but even acknowledging him by name. It gets more even arbitrary when focusing on Doctor Strange. "He's a sorcerer." So wizards don't exist, but sorcerers do.
- An Arm and a Leg: Isaiah mentions taking half of Bucky's metal arm during their fight in Goyang-si.
- Atrocious Alias: When Lemar reveals that his codename is "Battlestar", Bucky demands that they stop the Jeep they're riding in so he can get out and walk the rest of the way to the airport.
- Badass Normal: Despite his tremendous physical abilities, John Walker mentions that he doesn't have any super-strength. His best friend and partner Lemar Hoskins/Battlestar is like this as well.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Isaiah makes a comment about how Bucky and "his people" treated him during the Korean War. When he and Sam leave Isaiah's home, Sam assumes that Isaiah meant white people; Bucky knows that he meant his superiors in HYDRA. Foreshadowed by his phrasing.Isaiah: People running tests, taking my blood, coming into my cell... [looks at Bucky] Even your people weren't done with me.
- During Sam and Bucky's confrontation with the cops, it looks like Sam is the one about to be arrested or possibly shot at due to the officer's profiling. But the scene actually ends with Bucky being arrested (due to missing his court-mandated therapy session).
- Isaiah makes a comment about how Bucky and "his people" treated him during the Korean War. When he and Sam leave Isaiah's home, Sam assumes that Isaiah meant white people; Bucky knows that he meant his superiors in HYDRA. Foreshadowed by his phrasing.
- Beneath the Mask: Downplayed, but Walker’s venomous order towards the end of the episode that Sam and Bucky stay out of his way suggests that Walker has a hidden dark side.
- Big Damn Heroes: When Sam and Bucky are about to get their teeth kicked in by the Flag-Smashers, the new Captain America and his sidekick Battlestar arrive to bail them out. Ultimately subverted as they get their asses kicked as well.
- Both Sides Have a Point: Walker tries to get Sam and Bucky to help him in dealing with the Flag-Smashers, but they would rather continue working by themselves. Walker makes a fair point that they didn't do too well by themselves and that strength in numbers could be a big benefit. Sam acknowledges his point, but also notes that Walker has to work inside a system that requires him to get authorizations and permissions to take action. As free agents, he and Bucky can work faster and with more flexibility.
- Brick Joke: Sam briefly comments on how a collection of fantastical forces comprise the "big three" threats that superheroes face, which Bucky believes that Sam made up. After their encounter with the Flag-Smashers, Walker and Sam discuss the big three and how the Flag-Smashers fit into it.
- Butt-Monkey: In this episode, Bucky Barnes, the famed and dreaded former Winter Soldier who terrorized the world for over 70 years, gets his ass handed to him by a bunch of randos with super-strength, constantly mocked by the closest thing he has to a friend, and at one point gets arrested for missing his court-mandated therapy session.
- Call-Back:
- A new rendition of "Star-Spangled Man" is played by the marching band during Walker's interview. As the song was an in-universe propaganda piece, it was most likely an invoked trope to appeal to the public's nostalgia.
- Bucky's time in Wakanda is referenced.Sam: Look at you all stealthy. What, you spend a little time in Wakanda and come out White Panther?
Bucky: It's White Wolf, actually.
Sam: What?
- Captain Ethnic: Sam gets called Black Falcon by a Baltimore kid who assumes that it's his name because that's what his father calls him. Sam gets one over by asking if he's Black Kid. This could also be an example of Five-Second Foreshadowing as Isaiah Bradley is introduced moments later.
- The Chains of Commanding: Somewhat. In his private moment with his wife and Hoskins, John Walker suggests that him being made Captain America was way beyond his expectations (albeit something he also dreamt of becoming similar to). He also seems to be very eager to make an excellent impression to the public. That said, the subtext of the conversations suggests that it's also beginning to get to him.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Bucky asks John whether he's ever jumped on a grenade, John begins telling him about how he's done it four times using a reinforced helmet to smother the blast, clearly missing that what Bucky was really asking was whether he'd be willing to sacrifice himself to save his comrades.
- Comic-Book Movies Don't Use Codenames:
- Played with — as soon as Bucky hears Battlestar call himself that, he asks the jeep they're in to stop, and leaves.
- Subverted, however, in the case of Bucky himself: when Sam jokingly calls him "White Panther" for his stint in Wakanda, he matter-of-factly corrects him that his actual codename is "White Wolf", and Sam responds with a Flat "What".
- Isaiah Bradley never seemed to have served as Captain America in the MCU, just a super-soldier sent against the Winter Soldier.
- Company Cross References:
- As part of his introductory PR tour, John Walker gets interviewed on Good Morning America.
- A brief shot of the surveillance footage of Zemo shows that his cell number is 2187 — the same cell number that Princess Leia was held in during A New Hope and the same identification number as Finn's in The Force Awakens.
- Continuity Nod:
- The whole public event and pageantry unveiling Walker as the new Captain America invoke Steve's USO shows, and Walker is even shown practicing and stumbling over his lines, much like Steve did when he first started.
- John Walker’s Training Montage shown on Good Morning America directly mirrors Steve's journey of becoming Cap, with John's sprinting being a mirror of Steve running at Camp Lehigh, and John boxing a punching bag being a mirror to when Steve knocked a punching bag off its chains. Even in the shot where John trains with the shield in the montage, he's wearing the same kind of white muscle shirt that Steve wore in D.C.
- Bucky jumps out of a plane without a parachute just like Steve in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, only it doesn't turn out so good for him, what with being over land instead of water.
- When questioning Walker's credentials, Bucky asks him whether he's jumped on a grenade before.
- Everybody assumes the Flag-Smashers are one of the Big Three: Aliens, Androids, or Wizards, because that's the sort of thing the MCU has faced. Apart from Red Skull, they haven't faced Super Soldiers like they are now.
- Distinction Without a Difference: Bucky's insistence that Doctor Strange is a sorcerer rather than a wizard. Sam claims that sorcerers are just wizards without a funny hat.
- Double-Meaning Title: The episode's title refers to both John Walker, the current Captain America, and the revelation of Isaiah Bradley, the African-American Super-Soldier during the Korean War and technically the real second Captain America.
- The Dreaded: Bucky calls Isaiah "One of the heroes HYDRA feared the most. Like Steve."
- Enemy Mine: Downplayed as they aren't enemies, but Sam and Bucky are united in their annoyance at John Walker and Lemar Hoskins.
- Establishing Character Moment: Given the obvious fan suspicion/immediate-and-undying-hatred of the new Captain America, the show went out of its way to portray him as nervous about his forthcoming interview and give him a Hispanic wife and Black best friend. In other words, not a secret Nazi who's been dreaming of the day that he could soil Steve's legacy.
- Face Death with Dignity:
- Isaiah Bradley invites Bucky into his house, expecting Bucky to kill him in revenge for the arm that he tore off in '51 (and out of curiosity to see his new arm).
- A member of the Flag-Smashers gives up his chance to leave with the others to slow down the Power Broker's men. He is gunned down by the Power Broker's men while running towards them.
- First-Name Basis: Walker repeatedly calls Steve Rogers (whom he's never met) "Steve" and Bucky Barnes (whom he just met) "Bucky", even though Bucky's own therapist calls him "James". Bucky and Sam, in contrast, call him "Walker".
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: Isaiah says that he defeated the Winter Soldier and took half of his metal arm. No mention is made of anyone else helping him. A moment later, we find out how he did that when he reveals his Super-Strength and the fact that he's a Super-Soldier.
- Foil: Isaiah Bradley is a tragic version of Steve Rogers. He was a super soldier and war hero in the '50s who battled HYDRA, but was imprisoned for 30 years (a twisted version of Steve being frozen in ice for decades) to be subjected to testing before being released to build a family and live out his old age in relative peace, albeit in a run-down portion of Baltimore. He's also very similar to Bucky, who was himself a super-soldier imprisoned against his will and experimented upon.
- Foreign Queasine: Rudy (the German Flag-Smasher sympathizer) offers the Flag-Smashers some of his wife's homemade cooking, an old family recipe made from chicken livers. The Flag-Smashers fight over who doesn't have to eat it.
- Foreshadowing: After his failed attempt to make a clean jump out of the plane, Bucky threatens to Sam that he will break Redwing once Sam reveals that he recorded the entire plunge. Karli manages to do just that in the later fight.
- Get Out!: Isaiah, after Bucky tries prodding him one too many times about the serum he received, forces him and Sam out of his house due to the painful memories associated with it.
- Gilligan Cut: Bucky tells Sam that he's coming with him to Munich. Sam tells him, "No, you're not!" but then the scene cuts to Bucky sitting with Sam on the plane.
- Godzilla Threshold: Bucky decides to visit Zemo for information on HYDRA, as that's the likely source of the serum that has empowered the Flag-Smashers. Sam thinks that this is a really bad idea. As Zemo himself points out next episode, they only would have visited him if they were desperate.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: At the start of the Winter Soldier's career, when he was starting to make his legendary reputation and at his physical prime as the "fist of HYDRA", a lone American operative was sent to deal with him in the Korean War... and walked away after tearing his cybernetic arm off. But because he was black and the result of secret super-soldier experimentation, the world never heard the legend of Isaiah Bradley, who was imprisoned and experimented on afterward. Sam, understandably, is pissed.
- Hero of Another Story: Isaiah Bradley alludes to a time in the 1950s when he was sent to fight the Winter Soldier in Goyang-si, South Korea, and tore off half of Bucky's mechanical arm. Bucky also mentions that Isaiah was a threat to HYDRA on par with Steve Rogers, implying that the man was a very prolific super-soldier.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Well, heroic from the viewpoint of the Flag-Smashers. One of Karli's friends remains behind to hold off an attack squad sent by someone called the Power Broker. He's killed in the process but buys the group enough time to escape.
- Hit-and-Run Tactics: The Flag-Smashers' MO seems to be this: conduct operations and sow chaos to achieve a particular objective, then make themselves scarce. Considering that they seem to be former civilians who got their hands on Super Serum, it makes sense for them to employ such guerilla-style operations.
- Homoerotic Subtext: Bucky and Sam's "session" with Dr. Raynor is explicitly modeled on couples' therapy — not to mention the invoked lack of personal space in their staring contest.
- Innocently Insensitive:
- During his interview, John Walker talks about how he looked up to Steve Rogers, and though they never met, he feels like Steve is a brother... and we cut to Bucky, Steve's real brother-in-arms, watching the interview alone in his apartment.
- Bucky is also this (even bordering on It's All About Me) when you take into account that throughout the episode, he seems to be projecting his own insecurities about his relationship/being abandoned by Steve to Sam, without considering what exactly Sam is going through since surrendering (and then de facto losing) the shield to the U.S. government. It took their shouting match in front of Dr. Raynor, before he left, for him to realize he was the one out of line.
- I Was Beaten by a Girl: Karli beats Bucky in a fight, much to Sam's amusement.Sam: That little girl kicked your ass!
- Just Like Robin Hood: Karli has been nicknamed "Robin Hood" by the general public because she's stealing relief supplies to give to the less fortunate.
- Low Clearance: Sam attempts to use this on a Flag-Smasher when the trucks approach an overhanging road sign by flying up over it, but she punches straight through it.
- Mood Whiplash: The therapy session, which starts with Bucky and Sam's Vitriolic Best Buds routine, takes a darker turn when they argue over Sam's decision to give up Steve's shield and agree to part ways after dealing with the Flag-Smashers.
- Mythology Gag:
- Sam views the Flag-Smashers' Munich hideout using Redwing's camera, essentially seeing things through his point of view; one of his comic counterpart's main powers is his ability to Body Surf into birds and view events through their perspective.
- The kid assumes that Sam's superhero name is "Black Falcon" because he's black and the Falcon. Sam corrects him, saying that he's just Falcon, and notes that the kid isn't called "Black Kid," alluding to Falcon being the first black comic-book hero to not have "Black" in his title.
- Never Trust a Trailer:
- The truck fight scene shown in the trailers had Walker and Hoskins edited out.
- Two scenes first featured in the trailer, Sam and Bucky going down a countryside road and their shared therapy session with Dr. Raynor, are shown in this episode. What aren't present are the scenes' lines at the end of each trailer scene ("God, I hate you" and "I mean, how old are you?" respectively). Also, the scene where Bucky yells after Sam in the plane after Sam jumps out, asking him what his plan is, was shown during the Official Trailer but is not present during the episode.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: After years of serving the government as a Super-Soldier capable of rivaling the Winter Soldier, Isaiah's service was rewarded by being imprisoned for thirty years as a guinea pig.
- Noodle Incident: Bucky (as the Winter Soldier) and Isaiah had a violent altercation in a bar in Goyang in 1951 during the Korean War. No specifics are given, but Isaiah strongly implies that he won the fight and notes that he tore off half of Bucky's metal arm.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Sam has such an expression when Isaiah throws a metal tin through a wall in a fit of anger, having just realized that Bucky just pissed off a Super-Soldier.
- The cops who stopped to hassle a black man on the street get this once they realize they almost had the PR disaster of their worst nightmares on their hands because he's an Avenger and war hero.
- Older Than They Think: Invoked by Bucky, who knows Gandalf from The Hobbit, which came out in 1937, as opposed to the 1950s for Lord of the Rings.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Mozart's Lacrimosa
plays during the montage which shows Zemo in prison, highlighting his evil nature and what Sam and Bucky are getting themselves into by going to talk to him. - Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Karli Morgenthau looks like a regular young woman but beats the crap out of the two Avengers, the new Captain America, and his sidekick. This is because she has super-soldier serum in her veins.
- Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: This episode shows how Sam and Bucky are starting to resent each other. As soon as they deal with the Flag-Smashers, they never want to see each other again.
- Present Absence: Steve's shadow hangs over the episode even more so than it did in the previous one, with nearly every significant character in the episode tied to his legacy.
- The episode is titled "The Star-Spangled Man".
- John Walker reveals that he wants to live up to Steve's legacy while maintaining his individuality.
- Isaiah Bradley, for his part, is a product of subsequent attempts of the U.S. government to replicate the serum used on Steve, with Isaiah left traumatized by everything done to him.
- Bucky openly rails on Sam for forsaking the shield, going so far as to claim that it's a disgrace to Steve's memory. Sam, in turn, refuses to take up the shield because of the weight associated with being Captain America. It comes to a violent head near the end of the episode, where Bucky and Sam have a vicious argument, with Steve coming up several times as each tries to drive home their points.
- Pretender Diss: Bucky's default conversation tone with Walker — in that nearly everything he says to him is about how he has nothing on Steve (not unreasonably so). Sam, for his part, tries to be civil, but Walker and Hoskins' MO makes it very difficult for him to empathize.
- Profiling: Zigzagged: After leaving Isaiah Bradley's house and having a shouting bout, Sam and Bucky are stopped by police who are clearly ready to take Sam (a black man) into custody for assaulting Bucky (a white man). Bucky only prevents it by invoking You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With, with the police embarrassed to realize that they've tried to arrest an Avenger. Then a call comes in, and they are forced to arrest Bucky instead — because he skipped out on his court-mandated therapy.
- Propaganda Hero: Like Steve when he first started, John Walker being christened the new Captain America is largely a PR campaign to help against the Flag-Smashers, right down to having the same propaganda theme song. Unlike Steve, however, Walker is also a combat asset and participates in missions, whereas Steve had to violate orders and stage a risky solo rescue mission to earn that privilege.
- Pun: John calls Falcon Steve's wingman.
- Remember the New Guy?: Isaiah Bradley, a retired super soldier and successor to Steve Rogers, has been an operative since at least the 1950s but has never showed up until now. This is justified by Isaiah being a covert asset whose existence was never revealed to the public, and who quite clearly wants to be left alone and has no desire to correct the record, and Bucky never told Steve (probably because he knew it would break Steve's heart and possibly send him on a rampage against the U.S. Government).
- Retired Badass: Isaiah Bradley is an elderly Black man... and former super-soldier, who bested even the Winter Soldier in his day. And he still has his super strength.
- The Reveal:
- The U.S. government successfully created more super soldiers, one of them being Isaiah Bradley.
- The US government/HYDRA imprisoned and ran sadistic experiments on Isaiah for thirty years.
- Helmut Zemo is still imprisoned eight years after Civil War in Berlin.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Bucky asks John Walker if he ever jumped on top of a grenade, Walker replies yes, he did, four times, but he did it with his reinforced helmet. It doubles as Comically Missing the Point (of a very dry comedy variety) as the question was about being willing to sacrifice himself, not his reflexes in stopping grenades with his helmet, exasperating Bucky and Sam and further highlighting that Walker's similarities to Steve are only skin deep.
- Running Gag: Throughout the episode, jokes are made about Bucky's perpetual Death Glare expression.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Played with: Bucky's arrest for skipping mandated therapy was overturned/bailed for by John Walker, who seems pretty insistent in getting into Sam and Bucky's graces. That said, Dr. Raynor still insisted that she has to process Sam and Bucky immediately for it to stick.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Bucky immediately orders the Jeep to pull over and continues walking to the airport after hearing that Hoskins's code name is Battlestar. Sam follows a few seconds later when Walker makes the mistake of saying that it would be easier to be Captain America if he had Cap's wingman on his side.
- Secret-Keeper: Bucky knew about Isaiah Bradley being a former super-soldier but never told anyone, not even Steve, because he felt that Isaiah had suffered enough and deserved to be left alone in peace.
- Slasher Smile: Karli gives an unsettling one to Bucky before punting him out of the cargo truck. She is not a hostage, Bucky.
- Smug Super: Less super-powered, more elite soldier made a national hero as part of a PR campaign, but John Walker is kind of an arrogant dick, especially when he uses his clout to get Bucky out of jail and change the conditions of his pardon.
- Staring Contest: Dr. Raynor wants Bucky and Sam to try out the "staring into the soul" method where the two of them face each other while saying what bothers them about the other. They turn it into a staring contest, to her immense exasperation.
- Sucksessor: Openly acknowledged by John Walker himself: while public sentiment seems to be on his side so far, he nonetheless admits to Sam and Bucky that trying to replace/one-up/live-up-to Steve's legacy is a pointless exercise — he wants to make it work, and he thinks he could do a better job with Steve's actual comrades on his side. Sam and Bucky don't like him very much anyway and take particular offense to being treated as mere "wingmen"/"legitimizers".
- Super-Soldier:
- The Flag-Smashers have all taken some variation of the super-soldier serum that empowered Steve and Bucky, giving them similar abilities.
- Isaiah is a fifties-era test subject of the serum.
- Talk Show Appearance: John Walker appears on Good Morning, America to discuss his past life as a U.S. Marine and his new role as Steve's successor.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Sam and Bucky may not be too fond of working with each other, constantly needling each other and trading barbs back and forth, but that is nothing compared to the contempt they feel towards working with John Walker.
- This Is Gonna Suck: When Bucky is informed that the plane is too low for a parachute but too high to jump, he grits his teeth and jumps out anyway. He uses his vibranium arm to slow his descent as he falls, screaming through the trees, and he lands flat on his back at just under terminal velocity.Sam: I recorded all of that.
- Time Skip: John and Lemar's conversation during the opening of the episode tell us that about two weeks have passed since the end of the first episode.
- Title Drop: Invoked in-universe when John Walker, as the new Captain America, says "Good Morning, America" on ABC's Good Morning America... even though it's nighttime when the interview takes place.
- To Be Lawful or Good: Ultimately, John Walker's attitude to his role as Captain America is to be "the perfect soldier", which means respecting and enforcing U.S. government guidelines over him and other Sokovia Accords-covered peoples. This means, then, that he will choose to obey orders instead of seeing things Sam's and Bucky's way. They part on bad terms by the end of the episode. Needless to say, this was not the philosophy of Steve Rogers, who always chose Good over Lawfulness.
- Trauma Conga Line: Sam gets put through quite the emotional wringer this episode. First, he meets with Walker, the man to whom the US government gave Steve's shield and title mere days after Sam declined the role, who turns out to be kind of obliviously insufferable. Then he discovers that the legacy of Captain America that he feels that Steve blindly burdened him with was built on the suffering of black men just like himself, including discovering that all this time there was a black man who was successfully given Super Serum and fought valiantly for his country only to be jailed, tortured, and experimented on for decades. Immediately after that, he's thrown out onto the street, where a racist cop nearly arrests him in the middle of his anger at never having been told about this. On top of that, he's forced to sit in a therapy session only for a fight to break out with Bucky, who blames Sam for letting the shield get away, unable to understand his justified motives for giving it away, and making him so angry that he tells Bucky that he hopes to never see him again after the mission is over. All in all, quite a horrible day.
- Truth in Television:
- The tense conversation between Sam and John Walker holds quite a bit of subtext to the idea of a minority being passed over for a promotion due to discrimination. Walker is oblivious to Sam's discomfort as him simply "replacing Steve" and rather defensively lists his own qualifications rather than acknowledge the prejudice that was at play.
- The scene where Sam gets profiled by white cops who nearly draw their weapons on him clearly draws inspiration from incidents of police brutality and racial profiling. What is particularly galling is that Bucky, a white guy standing right next to Sam, was himself an international criminal and assassin (since pardoned), but he gets practically ignored until the police discover a warrant for his arrest. And even then, they treat Bucky with significantly more respect and gentleness while arresting him than they did with Sam.note
- The Flag-Smashers' discussed world-view, i.e. they do not like that governments seem to be using the Snap/serving those who were victims of it in order to encroach on many things (as well as Sam and John Walker discussing the Grey-and-Gray Morality involved in the process), is a highly simplified demonstration of what Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism".
- While at face-value, the Flag-Smashers' view that governments should care about people who were "here the whole time" rather than people who are displaced may mirror "anti-immigration and anti-foreign-aid rhetoric", later episodes would point out that in the In-Universe narrative, the Flag-Smashers were in fact originally immigrants.
- Isaiah Bradley being a prolific war hero who was imprisoned and experimented upon by his own government for decades, and then summarily erased from all historical records, is based on the real world Tuskegee Experiments.
- Bradley's updated backstory with him having his blood taken by the U.S. government and HYDRA for experimentation is also based on Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who died of cancer in 1951, and whose cancer cells were harvested and used for medical research, eventually becoming the basis for a lot of medical data to the present day. Not only were Lacks' cells harvested without her or her family's consent (permission was not required during that period), her family was also solicited for their blood after her death, again without their informed consent, by researchers hoping to discover a genetic link with Lacks' cells, and their family health records were published in the 1980s, again without their permission, compensation, or even recognition.
- The tense conversation between Sam and John Walker holds quite a bit of subtext to the idea of a minority being passed over for a promotion due to discrimination.
- Underestimating Badassery: Even after realizing the Flag-Smashers have more than one Super Soldier, Sam and Bucky don't realize that they're all super soldiers. This especially kicks them in the teeth with respect to Karli, who they initially think is a hostage, thus letting her absolutely get the drop on Bucky.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Justified. John Walker and Battlestar seem friendly and polite to the openly hostile Sam and Bucky, coming to their rescue when the Flag-Smashers beat them, offering them a ride when they had to walk 20 miles to the airport, and bailing Bucky out of jail. Yet their hostility is warranted because Walker only helps them when it benefits himself. After the failed rescue, he tries to recruit them as his "wingmen" to shore up his credibility, and when he bails Bucky out of jail, he does so because Bucky is an "asset" and tries to cancel Bucky's much-needed therapy. He drops the friendly veneer as soon as Sam and Bucky make it clear that they have no interest in working with him.
- Villainous Underdog: The Flag-Smashers are former civilians going up against military operatives (with two being bonafide Avengers). They still leave them in the dust due to their surprise ace up the sleeve, super-soldier serum.
- Villainous Valour: Whatever negative actions and situations the Flag-Smashers cause, they seem to be genuinely committed to what they are doing — and they are even willing to perform individual sacrifices so that the group can survive.
- We ARE Struggling Together: Sam and Bucky's attempts to work together result in much bickering, even during a fight with others.
- Wham Line:
- The Flag-Smashers mention the Power Broker, who in the comics was the man that John Walker and Lemar Hoskins went to buy Super-Soldier serum from back when John became the Super-Patriot. This explains where the Flag-Smashers got the serum.
- "Okay, then. We're gonna go see Zemo."
- Wham Shot: Isaiah embeds a metal case into a wall, revealing that the US government continued experimenting with super soldiers to some success even after Peggy Carter disposed of the last of Steve Rogers' blood samples.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Sam and Bucky exchange these.
- Bucky is livid at Sam for giving up the shield after Steve entrusted it to him.
- Sam goes off on Bucky for keeping the existence of a black Super-Soldier secret from him.
- The Worf Effect:
- All of us are familiar with the capabilities of both Sam and Bucky (since their MCU debut), while John Walker is established in the first minutes of the episode to be at least physically and politically capable of performing the role of the government-sponsored Captain America. That said, all of them come away empty-handed in their firsts encounter with the Flag-Smashers — who avoid Mook Chivalry and exploit their numbers to overwhelm and neutralize whatever experience advantage they had. Bucky gets the worst of it and is the first to be taken out of the fight, despite being the only one of the four who should be a match for a super soldier, mostly because they gang up on him.
- In a historical Noodle Incident version, apparently Isaiah Bradley and the Winter Soldier encountered each other in Korea, and it ended with the Soldier losing half the metal arm. Considering this supposedly happened at the height of the Soldier's peak performance, when in the present day he and Cap are portrayed as relatively even, it helps establish what a dangerous operative Isaiah Bradley probably was.
- Worthy Opponent: Bucky views Isaiah this way not only because he kicked Bucky's ass but because Bucky was working for HYDRA when he did so. Because of this, he preferred to leave Bradley in peace rather than intrude on the peace he found after his release from prison.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Karli pretends to be a hostage captured by the Flag-Smashers to get the drop on Bucky.
- Wrecked Weapon: Redwing, unfortunately, gets smashed in half by Karli. Bucky practically celebrates its "death".
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Sam's reaction to Walker bailing Bucky out of jail.
- You Shall Not Pass!: While the Flag-Smashers prepare to flee Munich by plane, one of them, implied to be a relative of Karli's, stays behind to draw fire from an ambush as the plane takes off. He is promptly gunned down, but his allies escape cleanly.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: The Flag-Smashers, despite their unsavory image within the U.S. government, seem to have enough grassroots clout that they have families taking the risk of sheltering them. Their conversations also imply that they represent a growing social rift between the people who were Snapped and the people who were left behind.
