Sam Wilson Deserved Better Than Brave New World
Marvel wants fans to care about lore without thinking too deeply about themes and emotions—the things that brought them to this fandom in the first place.
by Gavia Baker-Whitelaw
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Captain America: Brave New World is something of an experiment for the MCU: the first time they’ve passed the torch of a major franchise from one character to another. Over in the comics, Sam Wilson adopted the Captain America mantle in 2015, a decision that attracted a lot of media attention (and bigoted backlash) in conjunction with other revamped titles like Miles Morales as Spider-Man and Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel. DC Comics already had a long history of recasting classic superheroes (for instance the ever-growing roster of Robins), but these Marvel reboots were more directly geared toward diversifying the publisher’s ensemble cast—and by extension, its audience.
Ten years later in the MCU, fans were well prepared for Sam Wilson’s reintroduction as Captain America. Already an established Avenger, he recently starred in his own TV series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which segues into Brave New World as his first solo movie. In the comics, this kind of reboot tends to arrive with a bang, acting as a mission statement for why fans should care about a new hero replacing their old fave. Brave New World was meant to do something similar. It’s still a big deal for a Black man to embody Marvel’s symbol of American patriotism, and this was a chance to give Sam a more distinctive voice than he received as a supporting Avenger.
But when you watch Brave New World, it rapidly becomes clear that Marvel doesn’t really know what to do with Sam Wilson. The film seems more interested in decade-old MCU lore than it is in Sam’s personal journey—never mind his potential as the figurehead of an overtly political franchise. While the comics courted controversy with bold storylines like Captain America battling a right-wing border control militia, Brave New World only makes vague allusions to hot-button issues.
As someone who was unironically invested in the mid-2010s heyday of MCU fandom, it’s frustrating to see Sam Wilson’s writers fail to learn from the strengths of those early movies. The first two Cap films are still among the MCU’s best, establishing Steve Rogers first as an old-school Nazi-punching hero, then as a more sombre protagonist in the present day, willing to stand up to powerful enemies no matter the cost.
Steve’s whole schtick revolves around the contrast between his image (a blond, muscular man who wears the stars and stripes) and his personality as a scrappy underdog with an unshakable hatred of injustice and authoritarianism—an idea that fanfic writers enthusiastically expanded, envisioning him as a champion of leftist values. Captain America: The Winter Soldier saw Steve discover a fascist conspiracy in the heart of the U.S. government. He and his allies (including Sam!) end up dismantling the law enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D., leaking classified documents to the public, and destroying a malevolent flotilla of surveillance vessels. It remains one of the most popular movies in Marvel’s transformative fandom, not just due to its fruitful worldbuilding, but because (let’s be real here) it hinges on Steve’s intense relationship with his best friend Bucky.
Sam doesn’t really have a person like that in his life, and Brave New World fails to introduce a relationship with similar narrative impact. From a shipping perspective, fandom tends to pair him with Steve (who is canonically out of the picture) or Bucky (who appears here for a five-minute cameo), but for the purposes of this movie, his main supporting character is the new Falcon Joaquin Torres, squarely positioned in a quippy sidekick role. This lack of a compelling emotional hook makes Sam’s story less memorable than it should be; a below-average entry in an ongoing franchise where we’ve already seen several other movies with overlapping themes.
In 2025, when audiences are already losing interest in the MCU, that just doesn’t cut it. If anything, Sam deserved a solo reintroduction with a similar energy to Black Panther or Guardians of the Galaxy—movies that grabbed the public’s attention because they did something new, confidently committing to a specific theme or aesthetic.
But Brave New World is so afraid of new material that it borrowed both of its lead villains from The Incredible Hulk (2008) and recycled several plot points from The Winter Soldier (2014). Like far too many recent MCU installments, it rests on the laurels of earlier entries, expecting the audience to recognize years of previously unrelated lore. It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s trying to attract new fans to the fold. For Sam’s existing fanbase, it’s basically a holding pattern in terms of character development, continuing on from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier with bigger co-stars and more expensive action.
As for the idea of relaunching Sam Wilson as a contemporary Captain America with a unique brand and political message… Well. Let’s just say that gets lost in translation.
In a genre obsessed with criminal justice, how do you explore the topic of wrongful incarceration, and how crime is defined within an unjust institution? Brave New World certainly doesn’t provide a thoughtful answer, although it makes a halfhearted attempt. After inviting viewers to consider the toxicity of the U.S. carceral system—particularly in the context of anti-Black racism—the film neatly concludes with all three villains behind bars, returning Sam Wilson to his earlier role as a U.S. government asset.
This garbled thematic arc is one of the clearest signs that Marvel doesn’t know what Sam Wilson should represent as Captain America, a mantle so explicitly politicized that Cap’s debut comic depicted him punching Hitler in the face. Pitting Sam against a more ambiguous selection of modern-day villains, this movie avoids making such a straightforward statement, pitching itself as a political thriller with little relevance to real-world politics. (In fact, its most controversial element is not a piece of intentional commentary, but rather an unnecessary blunder: the inclusion of Israeli character Ruth Bat-Seraph, heavily rewritten to remove her problematic origins as a Mossad agent, and the reason fans have protested and boycotted the film.) Theoretically, this milquetoast approach makes Sam Wilson accessible to a broad mainstream audience—but if we can’t tell what Captain America stands for, why should we care?
The final scenes throw this problem into sharp relief, as Sam bids farewell to the main antagonist, President Thaddeus Ross, played by Harrison Ford. Suffering from bouts of rage due to gamma-radiation poisoning, Ross is an elderly blowhard who almost started a war with Japan, then transformed into the Red Hulk for a King Kong-style rampage across Washington, D.C. Now safely locked up in an offshore prison known as the Raft, he’s offered a hint of redemption.
During a conversation that emphasizes Sam’s compassionate nature and training as a counsellor, Sam praises Ross for taking responsibility for his actions. He then reunites Ross with his estranged daughter Betty—a.k.a. Bruce Banner’s ex-girlfriend from The Incredible Hulk, which introduced Ross as an Army general hell-bent on catching the Hulk. (If you’re wondering whether Brave New World finds an elegant way to explain all this lore, the answer is a resounding No.)
That scene provides an interesting contrast with the film’s post-credits stinger with Samuel Sterns, a secondary villain played by character actor Tim Blake Nelson in a bunch of prosthetics. Returning to the MCU after an 17-year absence (a piece of casting that was previously consigned to the doldrums of obscure Marvel trivia), Sterns is also detained on the Raft. Like Ross, he’s been mutated by gamma radiation, but while Ross enjoyed a prosperous career in the public eye, Sterns spent years locked away in a dungeon laboratory.
Prior to his mutation, Sterns was a well-meaning academic. Then he got infected with Hulk blood, resulting in superhuman intelligence and a physical deformity where his brain sort of bulges out of his skull. Keen to keep an eye on any Hulk-related incidents, Ross imprisoned Sterns in a secret military bunker, forcing him to invent a new type of heart medication that saved Ross’s life, but eventually transformed him into the Red Hulk.
In other words, Sterns’ incarceration was the main reason he became a supervillain. His most destructive actions were motivated by his desire for revenge against Ross, who exploited him for years, and represents the cruel face of military authority in several earlier MCU movies.
But as this film enters its final act, we’re invited to feel more sympathy toward Ross than Sterns—a thread that ties into a subtextually racist trend within Captain America fandom, where fanfic writers often cast Sam in a supportive therapist role, counselling white protagonists through their problems. With Sam’s emotional and logistical support, Ross gets a chance to mend his relationship with his daughter, while Sterns remains characterized as a monstrous mad scientist. We’re definitely not meant to consider the potential repercussions of returning Sterns to a high-security prison, the very situation that provoked him to lash out in the first place.
None of Brave New World’s plot is exactly coherent, but this finale feels particularly jarring in the context of Sam’s own backstory. After calling back to a half-dozen previous spinoffs, the film seemingly forgets that the Raft holds a very personal meaning for Sam. As viewers, we’re left in a bizarre position where we’re expected to remember seventeen years of relevant MCU lore—but not attach any emotional weight to the past experiences of the film’s main character. Because, lest we forget, Sam himself was once imprisoned on the Raft.
Captain America: Civil War (2016) introduced the Raft as a U.S. government black site, where Ross detained several rogue Avengers, including Sam. Back then, it embodied the iron fist of the military-industrial complex, featuring in a storyline where Captain America and his friends are criminalized by the state. So with that in mind, are we meant to view Ross’s incarceration as a moment of poetic justice? Or is the film just erasing any lessons Sam might have learned from his own time on the Raft? To me it certainly felt like a clueless oversight—not just because Sam was once imprisoned in one of those cells, but because the film’s most emotionally affecting subplot is all about wrongful incarceration.
First appearing in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Isaiah Bradley is an elderly Black supersoldier who was imprisoned and experimented upon by the U.S. government and HYDRA. Drawing inspiration from the Tuskegee Study, his backstory touches upon institutional racism and historical erasure, contrasting with the way Steve Rogers was venerated as a national hero. For understandable reasons, Isaiah has major qualms about Sam becoming Captain America, a role that implicitly celebrates an institution that ruined Isaiah’s life.
By Brave New World, Sam and Isaiah have become friends, but they still have radically different political outlooks. Isaiah questions why Sam is willing to work with President Ross, and when Sam invites him to an event at the White House, he initially refuses. In the end he agrees to go, which turns out to be a disastrous decision. Isaiah winds up getting mind-controlled (don’t ask) and tries to assassinate Ross, landing him back in prison to face the death penalty. In turn, this precipitates Sam’s eventual split with the President, going rogue in order to clear Isaiah’s name.
It’s genuinely painful to see Isaiah suffer through incarceration for a second time. You really feel his powerlessness against an unjust system, and although he obviously gets out in the end, there’s an uncomfortable undertone to his upbeat sendoff.
We’re meant to celebrate the fact that the “right people” (Ross, Sterns, and the film’s third villain, Sidewinder) are now the ones behind bars, while the innocent Isaiah goes free. This is, after all, how superhero movies conventionally end. It’s a glorified cops-and-robbers format.
But in the more complicated story Brave New World attempts to tell, the system that imprisoned and re-traumatized Isaiah is still in place. He was right to mistrust President Ross all along. But the film doesn’t really pick up on this thread of moral ambivalence for Sam—it just wraps things up for a traditional Hollywood ending, sidelining the entire conversation about racism and carceral injustice, and returning Sam to his earlier role as a government-endorsed supercop.
All of this is a decidedly messy introduction for Sam Wilson as Captain America, torn between incompatible creative goals—most obviously Marvel’s desire to tell a political story without rocking the boat or lingering too much on Sam’s identity as a Black superhero. The result is a more conservative film than its spiritual predecessor The Winter Soldier. Sam seems to be trapped in a cycle of relearning the same lessons he experienced in previous movies. Despite becoming a fugitive on multiple occasions and repeatedly being targeted by authoritarian American leaders, he comes across as a kind of political amnesiac, returning again and again to work for The Man.
In fairness, getting upset about Marvel’s uneven continuity is—to borrow a poetic turn of phrase—like losing at chess to a dog. Long-running characters often change personality from film to film, and emotional arcs constantly get interrupted by crossover events. Fans complain about this stuff all the time, the funniest recent example being Bucky’s cameo in Brave New World, where he reveals that he is (for some reason!?) running for office. Can't wait to see my fave Soviet cyborg assassin enter his Congressional subcommittee era.
Yet despite these issues, the MCU’s continuity is still its biggest selling point. Avengers: Endgame was a smash hit because Marvel spent years building a soap opera of interconnected arcs. Audiences seem to love the MCU’s cameos and crossovers, and within transformative fandom, the most popular spinoffs usually tap into years of lore and emotional context.
It’s still Hollywood’s gold standard for shared-universe storytelling, but as the MCU nears the end of its second decade, its worldbuilding is beginning to fray. Weighed down by an absurd number of callbacks (The Incredible Hulk, Eternals, Black Widow, the previous Captain America trilogy, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier…), Brave New World doesn’t just contradict Sam Wilson’s characterization in earlier movies. It literally contradicts itself, embarking on a storyline about the oppressive power of the U.S. government, before concluding with Captain America endorsing a fascistic offshore prison.
Basically, the ideal audience here is a diehard Marvel fan who remembers the origin story of a tertiary character in The Incredible Hulk, but doesn’t care that Sam Wilson has inconsistent motives. We’re expected to be invested in lore without thinking too deeply about themes and emotions, which strikes me as a wild misunderstanding of why people fell in love with the MCU in the first place.
My newsletter partner (and Fansplaining publisher!) Elizabeth recently wrote a great WIRED article about MCU fatigue and why this movie is notably underwhelming. It covers the appeal of Captain America’s fandom peak in the mid-2010s, and the racist trends that lead Black characters to receive less fannish attention than their white counterparts.
Thinking back to that moment a decade ago, the franchise’s current problems couldn’t be more obvious. Rather than establishing a solid theme or psychological through-line for Sam’s first big outing as Captain America, Brave New World bears all the hallmarks of being smothered by studio interference, including nine (!) WGA-credited screenwriters and so many reshoots that they managed to insert an entire supporting character, months after principal photography had wrapped. There were way too many cooks in the kitchen here, and some of them clearly hadn’t read the recipe.
By contrast the MCU’s most memorable movies all involved compelling ideas and relationships, and/or a singular creative vision. They offered something fresh, and encouraged audiences to engage with the material. That evidently wasn’t on the cards for Brave New World, a “political thriller” with a palpable unwillingness to make a political statement. Instead Marvel opted to rehash old ideas, relying on the increasingly shaky assumption that fans will show up no matter what.
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Gavia Baker-Whitelaw is a journalist and critic. Previously a staff writer at the Daily Dot, you can find her work at various outlets including TV Guide, BBC Radio, Inverse, Vulture, and Atlas Obscura. She also co-edits “The Rec Center” with Elizabeth Minkel, and co-hosts the film review podcast Overinvested.