Over two years has passed since the release of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier on Disney+ and after such a long time, a rumor regarding a controversial deleted plot is now confirmed to actually be true. Released during the height of the global pandemic, a similar storyline was supposed to be in the series but was scrapped. A tell-all book about the MCU reveals the truth.
While most of the time rumors turn out to be false, that is not the case for The Falcon and The Winter Soldier as the tell-all book titled MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios reveals that the Anthony Mackie-led series had a scrapped storyline related to the real-life pandemic. The book reveals, as reported by ScreenRant:
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ had already canceled location work in Puerto Rico after a devastating earthquake in January 2020. The pandemic not only forced the show to abort a shoot in Prague but made a planned plotline about the heroes rushing to stop a fast-spreading disease feel a bit too close to reality. (Spellman acknowledged that the series had removed the side story, although he said that it wasn’t because of the coronavirus.)
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier was released in 2021, with the global pandemic still on its peak, and supposedly, the series would also involve a fast-spreading airborne virus being used as a bioweapon by the antagonists of the show, the Flag Smashers. The series was criticized for having mishandled the villains and the anti-heroes which could have been effective had they been utilized efficiently. The Flag Smashers turned out to be a group whose goal is to bring everything to the was it was before the Blip.
In the end of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, the Flag Smashers did not even pose so much of a threat to be considered as villains; they were more like a group whose ideals had a point but their means were too much to get others to support them. Had the fast-spreading airborne virus been involved in the series, the Flag Smashers would have been a more challenging villain for Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes. The removal of the said plot led the series to the path where people almost forgot that a show like that exists.
In the defense of the makers of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, having a fast-spreading airborne being utilized by a villain in a show while an actual pandemic is happening across the globe could make the viewers uncomfortable or worse, accusations may be made as to whether COVID-19 could be a weapon when it is just a sickness spread airborne. Guess taking the road less travelled for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was the better option, then. For Anthony Mackie, he would return as Captain America in Captain America: Brave New World.
All the episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier are available on Disney Plus.
