Going into
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I thought that John Walker was meant to emerge as the primary villain of the piece. The character comes with a checkered comics history, and with Karli Morgenthau’s Flag Smashers depicted as having a moral cause, surely the biggest bad to counter would end up being the misguided uber-patriot who dared take up Steve Rogers’ shield. But
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier had a different and completely incongruous turn awaiting Walker in the series finale.
For a while, we got some of the Walker character arc I’d been expecting. Walker (played by Wyatt Russell, with the Russell family jawline on prominent display) slowly unravels under the pressures of being Captain America. Then he full-on snaps after the death of his best friend and partner Lemar Hoskins (Clé Bennett).