As The Falcon And The Winter Soldier comes to an end, Jess Bacon explores how Marvel has placed the conversation of mental health at the forefront of its shows. For it might just resonate that bit further with an audience living through no shortage of tricky times itself…
Please note: there are spoilers in this article for WandaVision and The Falcon And The Winter Soldier.
Marvel has a winning comic book movie formula. Man/woman becomes superhero, superhero unites with other superhero and they fight the bad guy. This brings in billions of dollars at the box office and only attracts more A-List actors to the ever-expanding franchise. However, with its new limited TV shows on Disney+, Marvel has changed its narrative: superheroes still need to save the world, but they can only do so if they save themselves first.
Marvel has invested a staggering budget of $25m per episode into its new ventures on the small screen making these series the biggest budget TV programmes of all time – well, at least until Amazon’s Lord Of The Rings comes along – overtaking The Crown and Game Of Thrones. WandaVision was the first limited series to land on the streaming platform and it set the tone for the just-finished The Falcon And The Winter Soldier too.
But let’s go back a year or two. At the end of Avengers: Endgame in 2019, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) is a shadow of her former self as she lost her partner, Vision (Paul Bettany). Yet in spite of the fact that, antagonist Thanos has “taken everything” from her, Wanda’s grief is lost in a tidal wave of death and overshadowed by the group bereavement of Tony Stark.
WandaVision was a chance for Marvel to explore in depth for the first time the impact of events from the previous decade worth of movies. It offered the opportunity for the audience to live a day in the life with these characters and for Wanda, that was a life of mourning. Wanda hides from reality in a grief-induced hex to mourn for her husband, and the life and future she was robbed of. It’s a heart-breaking story of a woman who dreamt of securing a happiness only found in picture-perfect sitcoms, and had to come to terms with the fact that it would only ever be a dream.
Whilst the finale of WandaVision was a CGI spectacle as fan favourite Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) fought Wanda for the power of the Scarlett Witch, the show was about love as after all: “What is love but grief persevering?”
Marvel could have made mini epic episodic movies in its new limited series or followed the structure of an earlier TV show – Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. – and had its superheroes fight a new threat in each episode. Instead, the superheroes aren’t fighting the big three, or even fighting each other like in Captain America: Civil War. They’re fighting inside themselves in order to find peace.
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The Falcon And The Winter Soldier is also a testament to this. From the start of the acclaimed new series, the show explores men’s mental health as Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is the first character in the franchise to attend professional therapy. Bucky Barnes is a 106-year-old man who spent the last 90 years going from one fight to another (sometimes as a Hydra-controlled hitman); a therapy session is long overdue for this character, but also for the franchise.
The MCU has touched on men’s mental health before in Iron Man 3 with Tony Stark’s anxiety attacks after the battle in the Avengers, Thor’s depression and grief in Infinity War and Endgame, and Steve Rogers PTSD from waking up 80 years after going into the ice. Yet none of these characters had professional support nor dealt with their issues and as a result they never got better; Tony sacrificed himself to save the world to finally be at “rest”. Whilst Steve – despite small pep talks from Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) in Captain America: The Winter Soldier – didn’t need to move on, he literally went back in time to resume his former life in the 1940s.
Meanwhile Bucky has been left behind. His character has always been used to explore the effects of PTSD, but The Falcon And The Winter Soldier is exploring the psychological work that needs to be done after the decades of battle in order to move forward. As Agatha Harkness so aptly said in WandaVision after all, “the only way forward is back.”
Sam offers Bucky some tough love in episode five of the latest show: “You want to climb out of that hell you’re in, do the work. Do it.” Bucky has to stop “avenging” as he’s done in previous movies and make amends both with the people he’s wronged and with how he treats himself.
Arguably, the MCU has done so well as a franchise as it grounds its action-packed universe in the real world with countless pop culture references. In the ‘real’ world, Ben & Jerry’s even named ice cream flavours after different Avengers. Yet Marvel needed to humanise them, not the world, as the majority of these superheroes including Wanda, Bucky and Sam were all regular people before their powers were bestowed upon them. As such, why wouldn’t they have mental health issues too?
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The new risky direction for the franchise is paying off in more ways than one. It’s been staggeringly well received by fans; social media is a hive of praise, memes and theories as each instalment lands on Disney+. The heartbreakingly honest depiction of mental health issues has resonated with its audience, especially after the pandemic.
The Falcon And The Winter Soldier also broke the streaming record for a new series on Disney+ in its opening weekend, overtaking the highly acclaimed Mandalorian. Forbes reported that out of the estimated 16 million users on streaming platforms The Falcon And The Winter Soldier was watched by almost a quarter (23%) of these viewers on its first weekend. That’s over 15% higher than any other show, including WandaVision.
The series is also being entered for the Emmys as a TV Drama as opposed to a limited series. Marvel Studios VP of Production & Development and Falcon and Winter Soldier executive producer Nate Moore told IndieWire “[the series] does feel a bit more dramatic than some of our typical stuff, as this is sort of our first foray into television, even if it’s Disney+, we thought [the category placement] was appropriate for what the show is trying to tackle.”
Fresh motivations
There’s no doubt that Phase 4 of the MCU – which so far includes WandaVision and The Falcon And The Winter Soldier – is redefining not only what to expect from comic book movies, but big budget TV. It’s no longer enough to have explosive battle sequences, it has to explore something more than a motive to fight. It’s a motive to live.
Both of these series explore the psychological impact of trauma on these characters, notably Wanda Maximoff’s destructive grief, Sam Wilson’s identity crisis and Bucky Barnes’ de-habilitating PTSD. Marvel is utilising the biggest budget on TV to explore the reality of living with mental health issues by showing a day in a life of these characters.
By looking at the mental health of superheroes, the franchise is able to externalise mental health in a visual way, for example Wanda’s grief manifesting in a red hex. It’s a new way of showcasing the depth and complexity of mental health struggles on TV. It just happens to be happening in the midst of one of the biggest shows on the small screen.
The deep dive into mental health in these big budget TV series allows characters to confront their trauma, evolve and for the MCU to continue to develop and remain the titan of entertainment that it is.
But also, it might just resonate that bit further with an audience living through no shortage of tricky times itself…
