if you don’t mind, i’d love to hear about sam’s queer coding (and/vs bucky’s)!!
So this specifically goes to mcu Sam - I'm not familiar enough with comics Sam (YET???) so I can't speak to him. I do know he has two black women as love interests, and that the SamSteve friendship is pretty damn intense especially from Steve's side.
But as for the MCU... RILEY IS SAM'S PEGGY CARTER, and by refusing to give him a canon love interest, the MCU is actually making Sam look very, very, very gay or heavily male leaning bisexual. LET ME SHOW YOU.
First things first, unlike many many many male leads, Sam has neither had an on screen love interest, nor really expressed attraction to anyone. Bucky, by contrast, goes on dates with and openly and clearly flirts with, multiple women. His romantic history with women is referenced multiple times, canonically. Sam kind of makes a joking reference to Steve coming to the VA to help Sam impress the girl at the front desk, but I mean, that just as easily can be platonic, and he gives a cute flirty "how you doing" to Nat, but then again...
Sam flirts with men. Like a lot tbh. Like I'm sorry, but if we take his greeting to Nat as flirting, then many of his interactions with Steve are VERY flirty, too. His teasing of Bucky has flirty undertones once Bucky stops antagonising him, and Sam also gets pretty damn flirty with Joaquin, Dennis and the one Serpent Society villain in CABNW. Even some of his teasing moments with Isaiah have certain undertones tbh. By contrast, he is a lot more tight lipped and serious in most interactions with women like Sharon, Leila and she who must not be named - the big exception here is the deleted scene with Leila at the gym. That's very playful and flirty and rightfully fuels SamLeila shipping. But it's also him playing it up to get information out of her.
Furthermore, Sam gets very bashful and cute when he gets genuine compliments from men. He often does this cute open smile where he starts averting his eyes or getting a little fidgety. We see it a loooot in TFATWS, but it also makes an appearance in CABNW. And notably, this tends to happen with other dudes, not so much women. Sharon openly compliments his looks TWICE and gets nothing more than a tight lipped smile.
Again if we wanna use Bucky for contrast, we see Bucky openly flirt with women, Sarah being the most recent example. He doesn't really get flirty with men the same way, although he does a lot of intense gazing, lip licking, and getting touchy with Sam specifically. The TED Talk we're not getting into here is that Bucky Barnes reads very bisexual with a preference for women, but then Sam Wilson happens and he's just smitten and feral.
Sam is shown and implied to have very emotionally intimate relationships with other men much more so than with women. Again, Steve comes to kind big time, from their meet cute to Steve seeking Sam out, to easy camaraderie, deep loyalty, endless heart to heart conversations, hangouts that look like date nights. I mean, come on, Steve takes Sam to Peggy's funeral for support. In that moment of deep pain about his lost, big love, he wants SAM by his side, nobody else. Steve models his life after Sam when Sam is dead, which if you wanna talk coded, THAT speaks a lot. Similarly, Sam has a very date coded moment with Joaquin, and develops deep emotional bonds with Joaquin, Bucky and Isaiah. He clearly also holds female friendships, notably Natasha, Wanda and Leila, but it's consistently the men he has emotionally intimate and deep connections with. If you want the contrast to Bucky, he has few really deep connections, Steve and Sam being primary ones here, but then there's also Ayo, Shuri and potentially implied Yelena (speculative).
The Riley of it all. Riley comes up to be a parallel to Steve's loss of Bucky (literally, wartime best friends, died falling), but Riley haunts Sam's narrative in a way that much more closely resembles Steve's canonically romantic love for Peggy than Steve's canonically platonic love for Bucky. Riley's death sends Sam out of active duty and into a life of service under his own rules before being reawakened into joining a fight he believes in, which parallels both Steve going in the ice and coming back out to become an Avenger as well as Peggy trying to find her place and eventually building Shield. He passes on life advice to Steve that he himself followed to some degree after losing Riley, and he reaffirms that advice in a deleted scene post Peggy's funeral to Steve. It's about finding a new purpose and path forwards potentially in a civilian life after the loss of your big romantic love. And then in CABNW we see Riley's picture in the top shelf in Sam's office, displayed with Riley's Air Force flag, which would typically give to family or a spouse. Notably, the only other pictures we see on the shelf are of Bucky, Sarah and Joaquin. There sre no photos of deceased family members like Sam's parents, nor of friends/team mates who died, like Steve or Nat. ONLY Riley. Woth the flag. If this doesn't remind you of Peggy's picture in Steve's compass, idk what to tell you.
Samriley is not a Stucky parallel, it's a Steggy parallel, WELCOME TO MY TED TALK. Now you could say "aha, but Bucky had Steve's notebook, that's totally like the pictures too" to which I say "hi, you did not understand that this was a coping mechanism that Bucky is shown to actively choose to let go of, wheras the point of Peggy's picture has always been to show that Steve despite trying and paying lip service NEVER ACTUALLY GOT OVER HER. I will once again point to Riley's picture and the flag. And the lack of any other dead friends being similarly honoured or displayed. Then I will frantically gesture.
Somehow this has become a bit of a "Steggy is valid" post, too, but I mean. That's just canon, sorry.
Anyway, did I cook or what? Sam is queer coded af, more so than the white faves. I'm right and I should say it. Him and Riley are canon af.
