Spoilers

Bucky breaks Zemo out of prison and he and Sam take the Baron to Madripoor, where an old friend waits…

There is a lot to unpack in this week’s episode. We see huge swathes of the world from Madripoor to Germany and we hear from America. Although this seems to be almost too much, the density of this week’s show is woven together brilliantly and while it has problems it is a satisfying episode.

It is worth starting with the new Captain America who blasts into the show with a raid on a civilian business which we recognise as the family sympathetic to the Flag Smashers from last week. Cap assumes wearing the outfit will get him cooperation. When it doesn’t he is at a loss about what to do. Resistance to his investigation elicits frustration and the threat of violence. One character describes him as a brute, and this is not far from the mark. This distinguishes him from Steve who became the symbol because he was always on the side of the ordinary person.  For Steve, when faced with moral challenges, he had a belief system to fall back on. The new Captain America is a pragmatist, having had that trained into him as a special forces soldier, which means his guiding light is ‘the ends justify the means’ – and here we see the first glimpses of why he will be a villain and not a hero.

Now to a real villain, Baron Zemo, who while not quite expecting Sam and Bucky, quickly figures them out. Zemo remains a mild mannered but deadly threat. He is capable of conveying articulate arguments one minute and shooting you in the face the next. For me he is one of the most compelling villains in the MCU. Zemo has resources and contacts which allows them to quickly get to Madripoor.

Madripoor is a strange place ostensibly in the Pacific Rim and modelled on somewhere like Macau or Hong Kong but not East Asian in anyway. Instead, we have an American idea of what somewhere like this looks like. Drenched in neon and multi-cultural but the decision-makers are White. We could have had a more authentic Asian representation and it baffles me as to why a city in the Pacific is shown to be so white. Indeed, all the gun toting bounty hunters come straight from Eastern European casting.

This together with the early sections in Germany provide us both conscious and unconscious threads about how America assumes the rest of the world exists. For a show which appears concerned with the nuances of American hegemony it is fascinating to watch it get some of this right and some of it wrong.

Moreover we have strengthening ties to Isaiah and the Powerbroker. It is not clear whether Isaiah pre-dates Steve Rogers in the MCU or if they have ret-conned him to come afterwards. I did not write about Isaiah in episode 2 because it remains unclear to me what this show wants to say about the first black Captain America. This remains the case and I will withhold commentary until that narrative is clearer.

However, one fear I did have has come to pass. Kali is on the side of the angels, leading a group who behave like Robin Hood; stealing from the rich and give to the poor. Yet as is so often the case she then commits an entirely unwarranted and unforeshadowed atrocity for no other reason than that she has to be an antagonist in the show. This infuriates me because her political position is deeply sympathetic, saying as it does that no good society let’s its people starve. Why does Marvel feel the need to present an undeniably good position only to undermine it with gratuitous violence?

In some ways Sam and Bucky are following other people around this week and further behind them are the new Captain America and Battlestar, none of whom show a huge amount of agency. Despite this, and my reservations laid out above, while watching I was enthralled and enjoyed every moment. This is the best episode so far and I am pleased to see discussion about Isaiah, the shadow of the Power Broker and of course Daniel Brühl being given enough space to remind us how dangerous the deeply entitled Baron Zemo is.

Verdict: We are halfway through now so there is a long road to travel and this show is building it arguments slowly. I am looking forward to seeing where it goes.

Rating? 8 shipping containers out of 10.

Stewart Hotston