I watched episode one of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier this week. It’s a show about two MCU characters I don’t particularly care that much about, so it wasn’t something I was really looking forward to, but I pay for Disney+ anyway and thought I may as well check it out. Reader, I liked it!

My first impression is that it looks like it cost a zillion dollars. Special-effects-wise, it looks on par with the Marvel movies. Based on that alone, I could see why Disney originally wanted it to premiere first, before WandaVision and whatever other Marvel shows are being developed.

My second impression is that I appreciated that it was trying to tell a Black story as well as a super hero story. I am not optimistic that Sam’s (The Falcon’s) family side story is going to be anything but predictable, but it is nice to see an attempt to give the character some grounding in reality. Race is an issue that touches everything in American life, unfortunately. In some ways, it would be disrespectful to Sam’s character and to the audience not to address that in some way.

I don’t have anything bad to say about the Winter Soldier part of the show, but it isn’t as interesting to me. I expect it to follow a predictable “antihero almost, but doesn’t quite, make good” formula, but maybe the writers will surprise me.

Predictability aside, I’m just glad to have something new and fun to watch.