6. “New World Order”
The opening episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier did a great job of reintroducing us to Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes. Our first chance to catch up with them since Avengers: Endgame, it gave audiences a glimpse of some of the emotional trials they had been through and were still currently facing.
It also opened with an epic fight scene (or should that be “flight” scene) that saw Falcon remind us all what he can do by taking the fight to Batroc in the skies.
“New World Order” was a real thought-provoker; a character study on the pair that fans loved so much and yet knew so little about outside of their costumes. The only real drawback was the fact that its inherently slow pacing didn’t really gel with the 40-minute network TV episode length, making it feel like the premiere got cut short just as the story was getting going. And it didn’t help matters that Sam and Bucky never interacted at all.
5. “The Star-Spangled Man”
Just as the premiere was undercut a little by the fact that Sam and Bucky never crossed paths, “The Star-Spangled Man” suffered because of how nonchalant and sudden their reunion in the first act was – and how quickly it accelerates into that fight.
That right there, however, presented the sophomore offering with arguably its best scene as that showdown atop the trucks between Sam, Bucky, John Walker, Lemar Hoskins and the Flag-Smashers was an absolutely thrilling watch.
Speaking of Walker, the episode does a great job of setting up the new Captain America as a character with something to prove and fight for and it also does a great deal in getting into Bucky’s psyche and why he’s so angry with Sam for surrendering the shield. And we can’t talk about the interactions of the episode without praising the chemistry between Sebastian Stan and Anthony Mackie.