by Abby Koch-The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has its best and longest episode yet with the fourth episode, “The Whole World is Watching.” This installment is engaging with the complex ideals of who and what makes a hero or a villain. The influence that Captain America hangs over each of these characters like a shadow, which is an aspect that makes this episode the best one in the lineup so far.
The previous episode ended with the introduction Ayo, played by Florence Kasumba, who is demanding that Bucky hands over Zemo. “The Whole World is Watching” opens with Ayo helping Bucky recover his mind by using the trigger words that once made him a ruthless killer. Because of all the work that she has done for Bucky’s recovery, Ayo feels betrayed that he would work with Zemo. After explaining the situation, Ayo gives Bucky eight hours before she collects Zemo.
Sam, Bucky, and Zemo get to work following their only lead: finding where the funeral of Donya Madani is. Zemo bribes children to tell him where the funeral is and to not trust the other two. When the other two ask where the funeral is, Zemo holds the information to himself. Sam calls Sharon Carter and asks her to be their eyes in the sky.
John Walker and Lemar Hoskins catches up with the three, also wanting to throw Zemo back in prison. Zemo is their only one with information to the funeral and helps take them to Karli. Walker is wanting to run in and immediately area and arrest Karli, but Sam convinces the group to give him ten minutes to talk to her due to experience with trauma counseling.
Karli Morgenthau has become a villain to the world after bombing innocents and is looking to expand her army with the super serum that she has. Sam talks to her, trying to be a diplomat and convince her that she is on a wrong path. Walker gets tired of waiting and all hell breaks loose when he interrupts the conversation. Chaos ensues and Zemo finds and destroys a majority of the super soldier serum before Walker knocks him out and takes the last vial.
Karli escapes, is now set on killing the new Captain America aka John Walker, and the Power Broker is angry with her due to the serums. Returning from the chase, the heroes and the Wakandans break out in a fight that allows Zemo to escape in the sewers. At this point, Walker is now desperate to prove himself and his actions take him down a dark path.
This episode kept my attention from beginning to end. The previous episodes have had issues or moments that broke my attention, but the pacing and action kept me engaged. There are minor complaints that I have with this episode.
Wyatt Russell has his best performance as John Walker in this episode. Russell plays the character as a desperate figure that knows the fact that he will never fill the shoes of Steve Rogers. His desperation paired with his ideals of heroism makes him an interesting character, which Wyatt knows how to expertly balance the two on screen.
Humor did not play as big of a role in the dialogue, instead there was a darker tone between characters. The serious tone of this episode felt perfect with the story and the elements of the show overall. I wish there was more of the serious side in the previous episode as I thought the tone was perfect.
The most interesting ideal throughout the episode was complications that they were showing of good and evil. To some, certain characters are the good guys and villains to others. Everyone is basically morally grey in the show and has blood on their hands. The only one who doesn’t is Sam. This theme was amplified with the talk of how certain people handle power when given, in this case the super soldier serum.
“The Whole World is Watching” gives audience a lot of development with Walker and Karli, but there is still a lot that is undeveloped. The actions of the GRC, a group that handled the Blip, would be nice to understand more in order to connect more with Karli. Another thing that is undeveloped are certain characters, despite them now having multiple episodes, like Lemar Hoskins and Sarah Wilson.
A certain issue that I still have is that it feels like they brought up race only as a talking point in show. These issues are representative with characters like Isaiah Bradley and Sarah Wilson except they have not been fleshed out full. It feels like race is only brought up to push other plot points, which I don’t care for. I did not like the plot decision that fridged one of the Black characters that pushed a white character’s arc.
“The Whole World is Watching” is the best episode so far out of the four that is released. The pacing and tone of this one gives me hope about the last two episodes left in the series. Despite the amount of enjoyment I got from this episode, there are still things to clean up and a lot of development needed to be made before the finale.
Next episode will premiere Fri. April 16 on Disney Plus.
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier episode four gets 8.5/10 John Walker signatures.
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