Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Spoilers)

It’s a TV show. We expect characters to have clear motives. The fact that in the real world feeling marginalized is a reason to strap on a vest bomb or shoot up a store does not change the fact that these fictional characters have unclear and unstated motives. It’s a comic book show, a world where villains monologue their entire plan before exciting the captured hero. Look at Killmonger…he felt marginalized and oppressed, but we got a lot of time to get a clear understanding of where his head was at. He’s not just vaguely pissed at the world.

Maybe it’s good enough for you, but I think it’s flimsy.

So they were basically scavengers. If this is the motive, then you can’t argue that they don’t want to eliminate 3B people. That’s literally the only circumstance where they get their cushy, unearned fortunes back. Yeah, it probably sucks to return to their original status, but there isn’t some big injustice going on here. If these people are supposed to be the big bad of the show then you’d expect them to have a relatively unique or interesting circumstance that isn’t the same as some 20% of the entire planet.

Their motives are quite clear. The plan has fallen apart, but the motive is crystal clear and plainly stated. Motives aren’t plans.

Yes, you already said that. Clearly I disagree.

No, they were the survivors who stepped up to keep society running in the face of unimaginable cataclysm, and are now that the cataclysm has resolved, they’re being cast aside without any particular care to their well being.

Again, they’re not just poor, they’re literally living in refugee camps. They’re stealing food and medicine to give to people in the camps. These aren’t people who are disaffected, they’re people who are genuinely neglected by the state. And they appear to be foreigners: the GRC meeting is about repatriating them.

So, think of it this way. Half the population of Earth vanishes. It’s a catastrophe every where. Strong countries teeter, weak countries collapse. Places like the US and Western Europe offer a deal: whoever you are, wherever you’re from, come here, and we will give you a job and a house. Millions take up this offer, fleeing the collapsing countries, which furthers their collapse. (remember the scene of all the ships anchored at the Statue of Liberty in Endgame?) This influx of immigrants keeps the stronger countries afloat for the next five years, while the rest of the world goes to shit.

Then everyone comes back. The immigrants that had been begged to come are kicked out of their houses and jobs in favor of the original inhabitants. There’s a huge, global effort to help people who were displaced by the Snap (who are mostly natives of the country they were Snapped from) and little concern given to people who are displaced by the returnees (who are mostly foreigners). Worse, they want to deport you back to where you came from, which is now a failed state that’s already overwhelmed dealing with it’s own returnees.

I’d say that’s a justifiable motive to want to blow something up.

As someone who has espoused far left philosophies my entire adult life, there are certain subjects that are just too foreign to some people’s way of thinking to be a taken seriously. A world without police or borders just to name two. These ideas are so unfathomable that there has to be some other ulterior motive involved. It can’t be that someone actually thinks that these are goals to be sought after in and of themselves. In the case of the flag smashers surely there’s some nefarious end being plotted. Some ultimate evil that our heroes can overcome.

But, a world without borders is truly a big bad when compared to Captain America. He’s the embodiment of nationalism. So the flag smashers are the polar opposite.
And this show is all about examining where the characters fall on that spectrum.

It’s not a traditional story of good versus evil. But one of shades of grey. You can see good and evil in everyone depending on your point of view.

We don’t know any of this. This is 100% unadulterated fanwank. We really know nothing about what the world was like during the blip and we have no idea what these people were doing.

They also stole money from a bank. And bombed a GRC facility with people in it for an unknown reason. You’re cherry-picking plot points to suit your narrative.

Totally speculative. Nothing about this is in any MCU canon.

You’ve invented a motive that might hold water. Not a shred of it is in this show.

Agreed they have motive … and an incoherent plan of action based on that motive.

What would have been just?

Both those who had been snapped and those who stepped into the now open niches have claims.

Let’s imagine it at a micro level. A woman with a husband and child is snapped and returns. Over that time a different woman has married the man, adopted the child, and raised the child for the last couple of years as mom.

What is a just solution? Go King Solomon and slice the kid and husband each in half?

Now actually exploring that could have been interesting. Instead we just get empty sloganeering and blowing people up because they won’t give us what want and that’s all they listen to.

Well, like I said, it’s a fine line between subtext and fanwank. We know there are refugee camps, and that the refugee camps are filled with foreigners, because the GRC wants to repatriate them. Endgame showed a scene of NYC where there were a half dozen ships moored at the Statue of Liberty. The Flag Smashers are explicitly angry about the emphasis on nationality post-Snap.

Really, the only conjecture part is that nations were actively soliciting immigrants, and that a large part of the developing world backslid dramatically.

Yes, they’ve done a lot of bad things. That’s why they’re the bad guys in this story. But bad guys can still have compelling motives, and I think F&WS has done a pretty good job of establishing the Flag Smashers without just throwing it at us in a villain monologue.

I dunno if this counts as any sort of canon, but it seems to be fairly well informed:

I think you’re misunderstanding the charter of the GRC. The people being “repatriated” are not the refugees…it’s the blipped people.

“The Global Repatriation Council knows that for many it wasn’t that easy. So much has changed. But we’re here to help you find your way. Helping you back into your homes and jobs. Helping you navigate changes to society, laws, and borders. Helping you get back to the way things were. GRC, the Global Repatriation Council. Reset. Restore. Rebuild.”

―Advertisement Narrator

The GRC is also tacitly responsible for caring for these refugees, bit they are not the charter. And there’s no necessary implication that anyone is a foreigner.

It is idealizing the world in which half the population was disappeared and much of the other half was miserable with grief. Which we saw in Endgame as not so rose colored no tribalism Imagine All the People.

No, he’s not. You’re confusing people’s motivations with the rightness or wrongness of their subsequent actions. It is not only possible for a person to act in an immoral way in response to a justifiable concern, but it’s one of the themes of the TV show we’re discussing.

It’s not like this is an unusual thing, it’s a REALLY common thing in movies and TV. I mean, Zemo is a character in this same show. Or, have you ever seen Wrath of Khan? “Someone is wronged but they go crazy and take it too far” is the oldest story in the book.

I will just point out that all of this could’ve been avoided if Tony Stark hadn’t been so selfish about not losing his Blip-born daughter, whom he doesn’t even get to see grow up. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

How?

Miller was using their actions to gather the subtext to back into their unstated motivations. I’m saying that the subtext he’s saying is there is undermined by the scattered and self-serving nature of the other actions he ignored.

I’m not going to go down this rabbit hole with you. I know the difference between motives and actions. I don’t feel that the show has illustrated any clear motive for these villains. You’re welcome to disagree.

I’ll leave it with this analogy. One of the plot points is that Sam chose not to take up the shield at first. Now, you could simply say that his motive was “he didn’t want the responsibility”. You can call that a motive, and for a lot of people it would be sufficient, but for the main character of a show like this that’s not enough. It’s mushy. You need to understand that his motive is far more complex and nuanced, more tied to his experience as a disillusioned soldier, a black man and a friend to Steve. He has real interesting motives for his choice, and Bucky draws this out of him in the course of the story. Saying the Flag Smashers are simply feeling marginalized is too mushy.

Sure, makes sense. Their motivations are pretty clearly stated, though, so I don’t know why you’d need to do that. They have said it out loud.

Would it get you off my back if I rephrased my criticism to say that I found their stated motives unsatisfying?

No, I get that’s their overall charter. I’m talking specifically about the scene in the latest episode, where the Flag Smashers interrupt a meeting of the GRC to discuss what to do with the refugee camps, which are not blipped people

I think this puts it really well, thank you.

What’s been a bit frustrating to me about this show is that there’s clearly some germs of greatness, such as the compelling dilemma @Miller has laid out about—which however hasn’t led to much more than people punching each other. Another aspect of this, likewise clearly hinted at in the subtext, but at best partially realized, is the sort of troublesome idea of the superhero itself, which has always teetered on the edge of white savior-tropes; a fact magnified by the explicit embodiment of the American ideal, Captain America, and the relation of that role to the reality of black lives in actual America, whose struggle is still to assert that yes, they do matter.

Handled more carefully, these issues combined could make for a powerful statement, about how even noble ideals can be harmful to the marginalized, but I don’t think the show (possibly hampered by the excision of some parts of the plot) is quite up for it.