Bucky is ab to relapse. He’s falling back into the winter soldier. He’s about to struggle with a relapse and I haven’t seen anyone talk ab it yet.
His fighting on top of the trucks was really subdued for an international assassin. His landing from the plane showed us how out of practice he is. But. It feels like over the past few episodes, he’s been quicker to act and to fight. Something I found really frustrating was that despite being a super soldier like the flag smashers, they constantly seemed stronger than him.
They don’t anymore. The knife he buries in the wall, the way he jumped over bannister the way the other super soldiers do. He smashes whatever Zemo was holding. Even just his posture behind Sam when he was watching him talk to Karli was so. Guard dog. Menacing. And it all started when he had to pretend to be the winter soldier again.
There’s Zemo’s subtle mental manipulation. He keeps talking about how there’s never been a person who wanted the serum bc they were supremacists. That no one who has HAD the serum was a good person. And highlights that the only exception had been Steve Rogers, over and over again.
When he first visited Zemo, he recited the words to activate the winter soldier, which didn’t work then. Then he had to play the role of ACTUALLY being the winter soldier in public.
The icing on the cake is his face when Ayo takes his arm off. He feels betrayed, and not just bc she “took back a gift” (low key feels like ableism) but bc if there was a release mechanism to his own prosthetic arm he didn’t know about, which means they never fully trusted him with it in the first place. And he knows that now. He’s no longer the white wolf, he’s back to James. By taking his arm off and calling him James, the implication is clear: you’ve made no progress.
As someone who also has PTSD, being asked to play the role of who you once were? Of the person you’ve tried so desperately to leave behind? And then stripped of your progress by someone who helped you in such a crucial time?
His deprogramming at the beginning was foreshadowing. Chekhov’s Gun. The Winter Soldier’s days are not over.
