Despite the many differences from the source material, The Falcon and Winter Soldier star, Danny Ramirez, says he was still inspired by Joaquin Torres's counterpart in the comics. In the series, Torres is introduced as a competent, and highly trained part of the US Military coordinating with Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson, a.k.a., the Falcon. Yet fans of the young hero know that Torres has a very different origin in the comics.
During a period in Marvel comics when Sam Wilson had taken on the role of Captain America, he was called upon to rescue a Mexican teenager in Arizona who had been kidnapped by members of the Sons of the Serpent. Long story short, Sam discovered young Torres had been experimented upon by a man named Karl Malus and turned into a bird/human hybrid with wings, super hearing/vision, and healing. Not long after, when Sam was thrown out a window and Torres saved his life, Sam reluctantly took on the teenager as his new sidekick. Sam even let Torres use his old codename, and thus a new Falcon was born.
In a recent Screen Rant interview, Ramirez stated that the source character still influenced how he played Torres in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He said that "OG" Torres has a certain "spark" or "chispa" that defines and motivates who he is. Ramirez tried to bring that spark to the role because, for him, that is what is "firing off his pistons." Read what Ramirez said below:
Yeah, I definitely read the comics that he appeared in and I knew that he was different in many regards. But I think what inspired me was that there is a spark that he has in the comics, that I was like, "At the end of the day, that's what the character is. It's that soul; it's whatever is firing off his pistons." So, I think I tried to bring that magic and that chispa - as we say in Spanish - into it. That's kind of what I brought into from the inspiration of the OG JT.
Ramirez is no stranger to comics, this being the second time he has played a superhero on a TV show. The first time he played the mutant character, Wes, on Fox's short-lived, The Gifted series, which was also based on Marvel comics, though it did not exist in the same continuity as the MCU. This was also not his first role playing a member of the armed forces, as about a year before shooting The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Ramirez was playing a fighter pilot on the set of Top Gun: Maverick.
Marvel has done a fairly good job over the years of adapting characters from the comics into the shared cinematic universe without managing to lose their essence. It seems like Ramirez and company have managed to do similar with Torres for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, though it might be a bit early to tell. Torres has only been in a handful of scenes across four episodes, and fans have yet to see him do anything more than act as a sounding board to Sam. Now that he has Sam's old wings though, the future may be bright for the MCU newcomer. If he has the "chispa" to get those wings back in action.