Falcon & Winter Soldier Is Telling The Post-Blip Story Endgame Couldn't

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is exploring a lot more of the lower-stakes, intimate aspects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and one of those concepts is the world's reaction to the Blip. The world of the MCU hasn't been the same since the ending of Avengers: Infinity War, which saw the Mad Titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) use the Infinity Gauntlet to snap half of the living population of the universe out of existence. After suffering such a harrowing defeat, Avengers: Endgame forced the original six heroes to turn to experimental time travel to reverse the events of the Snap, defeating Thanos and his forces once and for all as the result of several Avengers sacrificing everything to win.

Although time travel was the means which led to the end, the Blip was successfully reversed by another Infinity Gauntlet created by Tony Stark, used by Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) to wish back everyone who had been killed off in the initial event. Hulk's snap was responsible for resurrecting familiar characters like King T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland), as well as fresh faces such as WandaVision's Monica Rambeau. Ever since Endgame, the MCU has played fast and loose with just how much both the Blip changed about the inner workings of modern society. However, it seems like The Falcon and Winter Soldier is the first show directly tackling the socioeconomic implications of the event, to interesting results.

For starters, the main conflict of the show is about Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) hunting down the Flag-Smashers, an international terrorist organization with a simplistically noble goal: abolishing borders in order to secure resources and aid to people who were left displaced and abandoned by the Blip. During the chaos of Thanos' initial actions, it's easy to assume that several second-and-third world countries probably collapsed under the sheer magnitude of the circumstances they were dealing with, something that happened to Baron Zemo's native country of Sokovia. This leaves behind an entire host of problems, specifically whole groups of people around the globe with nowhere to go because they aren't claimed by any standing nations.

Falcon and the winter soldier the blip was positive Nick fury infinity war

Of course, the "answer" that the show keeps referencing back to is the GRC, or the Global Repatriation Council. While they haven't been fully explored in-depth, but so far it looks as if the Council was created as a neutral international agency designed to provide relief aid and resources to refugees left behind in the wake of the Blip. At first glance that might seem like a good and necessary thing, but it seems like the show is implying that the GRC is taking advantage of their mission by hoarding resources and militarizing themselves to crackdown on organizations like the Flag-Smashers. If the people who were given power in order to help those in need start misusing their power, where does that leave those directly impacted?

That's why Falcon & Winter Soldier provides an intimate look at the financial situation shared by both Sam and his sister Sarah (Adepero Oduye). They both share ownership of their childhood home as well as the fishing boat that formed the backbone of their family's business. However, because Sam was killed in the Blip, Sarah was forced to keep her and her children afloat for five years alone, leaving them without enough money to keep the boat. On top of this, Sam is unable to be approved for a loan by their bank because of his displaced status as a refugee from the Blip, leaving them both directly impacted by the event in several different ways. While Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: Far From Home couldn't really deal with the intricacies of the Blip in a major way because of how high the stakes were in both films, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier seems perfectly suited to tell a more personal story about the impact of such a major international incident.

More: Bucky's Zemo Plan Betrays Black Panther's Civil War Ending