As we all know by now that Chris Evans is going to depart from the MCU after being the heart and soul of it portraying the true embodiment of Steve Rogers aka Captain America. We all love Cap as much as we love Iron Man but now it is going to be over. But that doesn’t mean that the MCU could not have another Captain America. There are certainly two candidates who can take on the mantle of Captain America in the future of the MCU.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier have been the true friends/followers/sidekicks of Steve Rogers in the MCU and both of them are the deserving candidates who could don the Shield next and step up as the next Cap. But who is it going to be?
Both Sam and Bucky have enjoyed limited time on screen, and haven’t really had a lot of character development. If you think about it, both the characters individually haven’t done enough that they could be straight away handed over the shield.
Recently, it was announced that we will be getting a Falcon & Winter Soldier series for Disney Play and it will be written by Empire’s Malcolm Spellman. It will supposedly be set up after the events of Avengers 4 where Captain Steve Rogers is expected to die, so the series will be based on the “Fallen Son” storyline giving us the next Captain America out of the two heroes.
We can obviously only have one Captain America, so the events of this show will decide who gets to take the mantle next. While both these heroes are equally deserving, they haven’t been properly flesh out as characters yet & Infinity War was the perfect example of wasting such remarkable characters on screen.
Giving them a solo series would be a smart choice because they will get the time and focus which they wouldn’t have in a movie. Also, if Marvel wants to produce a Captain America 4 with one of these characters, then instead of making a 2 hour film to decide who the next Cap will be, it will be a better option to choose Cap on the show, and then go on to make the film with a new Captain America already in play.
While the usual moviegoers will accept any of the two heroes to take on the mantle, ardent MCU fans would want a perfect explanation and set up for one of them to carry the Shield and that can easily happen through the show.
Currently, both the heroes have an equal chance to be chosen as the next Cap as the reports have supported Falcon to be the next Cap for quite a while, and the movies have teased Bucky to be the next Cap.
All three Captain America movies have shown us scenes where Bucky held the Shield at least once, while reports dating as far back as 2013 have mentioned that Marvel is looking for an African American character to be the next Cap. Even the Crossbones actor of the MCU, Frank Grillo recently revealed in a podcast that Marvel wants the next Cap to either be Black or a Woman.
He said:
“I don’t know, but there’ve been rumors that [the next] Captain America could be African American. It could be a woman. You know? So they’re looking.”
This was before the reports of the new show came out, so we know for a fact that the next Captain America will not be a woman. There are 2 reasons for that. The first one is that Marvel Cinematic Universe will already have a new Captain in the name of Carol Danvers moving forward, and the second one is that the limited series that Marvel is developing may lose its value of the prize of Captain America is removed from the show.
People will be more intrigued to know who among the best friends of Steve will don the star-spangled suit. Will it be the guy with the wings or the guy with the metal arm?
