Iâm going to throw up. This confirms everything I felt when I watched that fucking scene. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely are literally, blatantly, intentionally punishing Bucky by fridging him. These writers consciously chose to freeze his arc, nullify any possible background interaction with Steve or TâChalla or with absolutely anyone else, because he will be frozen out of the action for the foreseeable future until he is useful again to the plot.
Bucky will NOT recover any further, he will not regain his arm, autonomy, freedom of choice, self confidence or anything else, he will not have a life again offscreen or anywhere until they deem it convenient again, and this was done deliberately to punish Bucky for the actions he committed under literal torture and mind-control by someone elseâs orders and for someone elseâs gain. Meanwhile, literally no other character in the MCU, hardly even the villains, have been thus punished out of the narrative for actions they consciously chose to do which caused massive amounts of damage and death, because apparently only Bucky doesnât deserve to have a life.
Iâve already read all kind of headcanon-y rationalizations and justifications for that scene: that this was Buckyâs choice and thus acceptable since itâs his first choice. That this was a selfless act that proves Buckyâs worth. That Buckyâs recovery will be better with TâChalla. These are all fan interpretations that sure sound nicer, there to try and fill blanks to make sense of the decision in-universe, but here we have literal fact from these creators themselves:
Bucky will remain frozen out of the action, because the writers have deemed him culpable and in need of paying for his crimes. Heâs being âpunishedâ by being denied any character development or actual help in universe. Take yourself out of the Marvel universe for a minute, and see this wasnât Bucky choosing anything, because these are characters on a page that donât possess self-determination. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely wrote Bucky as a plot device, backed him into a corner, and left him there. This was a choice that these writers, who have creative license and power, who could have written him a way out of his âcontrolled by codewordsâ predicament they put him in, who could have given him (and us, his fans) at the very least the peace of mind that he was protected with Steve and healing somewhere in the background after an entire movie of playing everyone elseâs plot device, chose to deny him.
So the truth of the matter is that, not only did Bucky Barnes not get his own arc in Cap 3, didnât get autonomy or decision making power, didnât get any real, deep insight into what was going on in his mind or where he was at in his recovery (other than the fact the he does remember and he does feel guilt, both of which were things Bucky himself acknowledged verbally during the film), but Bucky was deliberately denied progressing beyond this stalemate and sidelined from everyoneâs lives, his own included, once he was done being useful to othersâ narrative and would have needed his own. He was fridged as âpunishmentâ, because heâs seen as guilty, and will be the only character whoâll be in exactly the same place the next time we get to see him.
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