Okay I have words about John Walker from Falcon and the Winters Soldier so if you're not caught up to the current episode (S1 E4) scroll on past 👍.
There's a lot of hate for the guy because he's not Steve. Remember this fact because it'll be important later ;). Also, this may be all over the place because that's just how my thought process works.
Let's start with the earliest episodes. We see John anxiously practicing his speech in the locker room before going out on the field. He wants to be a hero and now he has the chance. In the military he was a "hero" but now he can do some actual good. However, he's been thrown into a position that comes with an impossible standard to meet up to.
We see this for the first time when he meets Bucky and Sam. They immediately shun him. He tries to explain that he's not Steve nor does he want to be Steve. He just wants to do good. The two of them rip him apart before leaving. Now this isn't a hate on Bucky and Sam thing because I love them! But now John has just been shunned by Cap's best friends. That's a huge blow. He's just trying to do good. He didn't ask to be Cap, he was picked. Just like how Steve was.
He tries again after Sam and Bucky have gotten out of their therapy session. He just wants to help and to try and start to meet up with the expectations pushed onto him. They push him away again.
Let's talk about Steve for a moment. Steve never dealt with these kinds of things. Steve dealt with larger than life situations. So that right there puts John at yet another disadvantage because this is a situation that Steve probably wouldn't have dealt with because he was so busy fighting larger situations. And when Steve did deal with smaller situations he was usually against the law so John has no blueprint to follow.
Back to John and now to John's past (also a bit of a comparison with Steve). John served in the military, has jumped on grenades and won some medals of honour. "But Steve jumped on a grenade!" He did. But John actually served in the field. John has ptsd (you can't say he doesn't, especially looking at the latest episode. More on that later.). Steve was plucked out of training and given the serum.
Now that we've gotten the base stuff out of the way. Let's dig in here.
You can see as each episode progresses how John is losing himself to the stress of the mantle he's been given. When we first see him he's neatly groomed and walks with a comfortable gait. By the latest episode he has bags under his eyes, demonstrates nervous tics and has a scruffy beard growing.
Let's look at when Sam is talking to Karli shall we? John is anxious. He's pacing, his eyes aren't focused, he's demonstrating his nervous tics (head shaking). Something must have happened while he was in Afghanistan that was similar to this situation. He keeps talking to Bucky about leaving his partner in such a dangerous situation. Knowing that Sam is in there alone is clearly a cause of distress for him, ultimately leading to him abandoning the plan to go in there. Sam doesn't even like him, yet he can't handle the thought of him being in there alone.
The Dora Milaje encounter. John gets his ass beat by the Dora Milaje. Not just beat, they were close to killing him on a number of occasions. This scene rubbed me the wrong way for a number of reasons.
1) Were they sent there by T'Challa? Because there's no way he would tell them to kill or beat whoever they had to to get Zemo back in jail.
2) John was worked up and was rude, yeah. And he really shouldn't have put his hand on her. But is that reason for them to try and kill him? He's essentially on their side?? He also wants Zemo back in jail. It just felt odd to me.
On the same encounter, before a few DAYS ago, John was being trained in physical stuff and showboating. He probably has never met a Dora Milaje or even really been told about them. So this group of people beat him up when he had successfully kept up against super soldiers a few days ago. Of COURSE he would be upset. And of course he would use the serum after that. Let's summarize so far before we move on to the finale.
1) Thrown into a position that has such a high bar to meet that he's doomed to fail from the start
2) Shunned by the two people whose opinions arguably mean the most
3) Wants to help but has no idea how and leads to making some bad decisions
4) Beaten by a group of normal people (because he has no idea how the Dora Milaje operate).
Anyone thrown into his position would also lose their marbles. How could you not? Everywhere you go you're reminded that you're not the real Captain America.
So he takes the serum so that he can never feel that helpless again and the FIRST combat he gets into his best friend dies. Look at him in this scene. He's shuddering, nervous tics, and for a few seconds he's only capable of calling Lamar's name and he's horrified. John has checked out. He's gone. Look at him. His eyes are glazed over, he's staring at nothing. I wonder if he was even aware that he chased the guy down and killed him. He was in war, has seen all sorts of awful things and had to do awful things. Now he just wants to be a hero and his best friend is dead. He's had a full nervous breakdown.
Okay, we're almost done here. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a "John did no wrong!" Post. He made decisions, some of them bad. But I believe he's a victim of circumstance. I also don't think he deserves all of the hate he gets. Especially since most of the hate is "You can't be Captain America! You're not Steve!" That just plays in to why he went crazy in the first place ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Anyways I think John is a wonderful character. Marvel really did that with him! He feels like a real person you could actually meet which isn't something you can usually say about superheroes (or I guess anti-hero in John's case?). I'm so curious as to if he's going to continue to spiral down or if they're going to try and help him, especially since second chances seem to be one of the main themes of the show.
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