The Falcon and the Winter Soldier review: A sturdy Marvel drama with more brooding than ambition

There is intrigue and action, but this latest MCU spin-off series struggles beneath the shadow of WandaVision

Disney Plus’s new Marvel series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will leave you neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed. To steal a line from 10 Things I Hate About You, it is the TV embodiment of “whelmed” – a sturdy, functional and generally not-bad vehicle for a handful of the studio’s B-listers.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, a six-episode collaboration of characters introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, stars Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan as the respective heroes of the title. Both characters were BFFs of Captain America (Chris Evans) in different time periods – Mackie’s Sam Wilson was chosen as his successor in Avengers: Endgame, and Stan’s Bucky Barnes was a Second World War army sergeant turned brainwashed super-soldier. Taking place in the immediate aftermath of Captain America’s last stand in Endgame, the show explores what they did next: we meet a Wilson who is uncertain about his new responsibilities, while Barnes is off atoning for his past misdeeds.

This is a series that was originally intended to be the MCU’s first foray into live-action television, with the sitcom pastiche WandaVision scheduled to be a weird tonal experiment arriving in its wake. But between a pandemic and a number of delayed MCU films – most notably Black Widow – a switch of release dates occurred.

WandaVision, starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany, proved to be a word-of-mouth smash, captivating millions through the start of the year with its unique blend of self-referential wit and puzzle-box mystery. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, now arriving a few weeks after WandaVision concluded, suddenly seems comparatively less ambitious. It’s a show, based on the single episode supplied to critics at least, driven by bang-bang shoot-outs and brooding.

Structurally, this feels like a full-length feature film chopped up into segments. Whereas WandaVision made the most of its 30-minute runtimes, with each of its early episodes more or less self-contained riffs on classic comedy shows, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s introductory segment plays less like a pilot than a first act. Its two heroes don’t meet and there is minimal humour, as well as a deliberate sense of wandering. Both men are bruised and ashen-faced when we meet them, with their lingering traumas from past movies leaving them bereft and purposeless. It’s nowhere near a bad thing but makes The Falcon and the Winter Soldier oddly ripe for binging, as opposed to anything to get excited for once a week.

Which isn’t to say there’s an absence of intrigue. There is well-staged action and a cliffhanger ending to the first episode that leaves things on an exciting note. A pledge from showrunner Malcolm Spellman that the show will explore the racial dynamics of a Black man inhabiting the role of Captain America is also promising – even if the MCU has so far had a limp track record of exploring socio-political themes.

Read more: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will set up at least three future MCU projects, says series creator

Slightly more anxiety-inducing, though, is the presence of a gang of anarchist bad guys known as The Flag Smashers, who will presumably serve as the show’s villains. So far there’s no evidence to suggest that the subplot will descend into a jingoistic mess, yet it’s also hard not to raise an eyebrow at mention of their name.

For MCU die-hards, there will naturally be much to enjoy in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but the show doesn’t immediately declare that it’s doing anything that interesting either.