I recently re-watched Cap2, and this scene — it’s basically Bucky’s equivalent of what Steve did on the Lemurian Star — he takes out a whole squadron (???) of pilots single-handedly. And it’s … stunning how brutallly effective he is. No fancy Cap parkour. Just straight up killing machine.
Which I think gets at the above meta/commentary — WS is not just a soldier, he’s a highy trained Super Soldier. He can go toe-to-toe with Steve on basically everything — hand-to-hand combat, leading a team (he leads a team when he’s tracking Nat/Steve), and taking down a large # of machines/men single-handedly.
The difference, then, is the drive. Which is that WS has none. He is a ghost that simply follows orders (and when he doesn’t, he gets wiped.) Bucky has no direction, so he goes where he’s pointed. One thing I find so interesting about mcu!WS is how neutral he is. There’s no Soviet brainwashing (we see Pierce giving him The Talk, but he doesn’t seem to actually care), no misguided sense of right or wrong. Just … nothing.
Of course, Steve was like that, too, at the beginning of the film — just following orders and muddling through life. But Steve knew enough to be dissatisfied by that, to Want Out. Which is why he’s Steve.
And this is one of the larger themes of CA:TWS — it’s about a bunch of highly skilled people who no longer find satisfaction in following orders, and want to find meaning outside of their jobs. Sam did it, Nat and Steve are looking, and Bucky is just starting.
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