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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is doing a lot to expand the borders of the MCU. New characters are popping up on the show left and right, and we’re getting a deeper exploration of the entire Captain America canon. We haven’t even figured out who the mysterious Power Broker is just yet, which means we potentially have another major MCU debut! I mean, unless he’s just minor villain Curtiss Jackson like in the comics which, unless he’s played by the real Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, would be a letdown.
There’s another something that TFATWS introduced in Episode 3, “Power Broker,” that could have major ramifications for the MCU down the line: Madripoor. What’s up with Madripoor? Well, it’s just the biggest piece of X-Man canon that Marvel Studios has ever used to date. Okay, obviously we aren’t counting Quicksilver because apparently he wasn’t considered X-Men-y enough to be exclusively owned by Fox back in the old days when Disney didn’t own everything, and Evan Peters ended up being—well, you saw the WandaVision finale. Anyway.
In “Power Broker,” the newly freed Baron Zemo (Daniel Brühl) takes Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Bucky (Sebastian Stan) to Madripoor, an island nation in the Indonesian archipelago. It’s described as a lawless haven for criminals, a rep it’s had for at least 200 years (it used to be a pirate sanctuary!).
Our heroes (and Zemo) visit both High Town and Low Town in the episode, seeing the seedy nightlife that exists in all social circles on this infamous island. From what we see in the episode, the MCU’s Madripoor is home to 1. bounty hunters, 2. mad scientists, and 3. expatriates avoiding extradition. It’s also the one place where terrorists like Zemo can really cut loose and —
Wow—the mastermind who broke up the Avengers, everybody!
So how do the X-Men fit into this? In the comics, Madripoor is pretty much first and foremost an X-Men locale. It debuted in 1985’s New Mutants #32 by Chris Claremont and Steve Leialoha. Claremont would return to the crime island time and time again during his ’80s X-Men run, specifically in a number of Wolverine stories: 1988’s Marvel Comics Presents #1-10 and the first two years of Wolverine’s first ongoing series. Claremont also set a flashback issue (Uncanny X-Men #268) in Madripoor, making it the site of Wolverine’s first meeting with Captain America and Black Widow during World War II.
There are even a couple of fun Easter eggs that refer back to the comics in the form of two bars.
Princess Bar was featured prominently in Claremont’s Wolverine story in Marvel Comics Presents #1-10. The Brass Monkey Saloon— which is the bar Falcon, Bucky, and Zemo visit in this episode—appeared in a two-part Captain America story (#363-364) written by Mark Gruenwald, the same guy who created John Walker.
Madripoor’s debut follows the inclusion of S.W.O.R.D. in WandaVision. But while S.W.O.R.D. was introduced in the pages of Astonishing X-Men, its ties to S.H.I.E.L.D. have always made that organization feel more Marvel-y than X-Men-y. Over the years, other Marvel characters have had adventures in Madripoor (Nick Fury, Captain America, the Avengers, etc.), but it’s really impossible to sever the link between the island and the X-Men that was forged during the first years of its existence in the comics. For that reason, this feels like a major step towards the X-canon—canon that Marvel Studios just acquired along with Fox not too long ago—being integrated into the MCU.
Just saying—if you see a short, stocky, hairy dude with an eyepatch in the background of any of these Madripoor scenes, it could be Wolverine.
New episodes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier premiere on Disney+ on Fridays.
