Bucky Barnes is working through his pain and his past in Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and it’s honestly refreshing to see. The show isn’t shying away from his actions as the Winter Soldier, and he’s facing what happened to him head-on. But there is a friendship that’s established in the pilot that has me worried for the future of Bucky Barnes and his new friend.
**Spoilers for Bucky’s storyline in Falcon and the Winter Soldier lie within.**
Imagine my surprise when Falcon and the Winter Soldier showed Bucky Barnes killing a young man during one of his Winter Soldier missions as a nightmare, only to discover that Bucky had befriended this man’s father to make amends. Bucky, what are you doing?!
Throughout the pilot for Falcon and the Winter Soldier, we get to see Bucky Barnes exploring his list of “amends” that he has to make in order to right his wrongs, according to the U.S. Government. When he left to take care of himself in Wakanda, he was still technically on the run. So now that he’s back in the States and living in Brooklyn, he’s working through his issues with a therapist and still working on himself. It’s lovely to see.
One of his “amends” was his new friend, Mr. Nakajima. The older man is first introduced when he’s fighting with his neighbor about trash, and Bucky comes to stop the fight, asking Mr. Nakajima then if they’re still on for lunch. At first, it’s cute because Bucky’s one friend is this older man.
But as the episode goes on, we learn more and more about Bucky, and he even gets to go on a date with a young woman named Leah. As they’re talking though, she brings up Mr. Nakajima’s son and how his death still weighs heavily on the older man. The problem is, the more I learned about Mr. Nakajima, the more I realized that the young man in question was the kill we saw Bucky carry out in his nightmare at the beginning of the episode.
All of this truly has me so worried for Mr. Nakajima. It feels very much like the same sort of situation that Bucky went through in Siberia when Tony Stark realized that Bucky Barnes killed his parents as the Winter Soldier. So … why is Bucky doing this same thing with Mr. Nakajima?
Did he meet the older man and want to be there to help him in a way his son couldn’t? Did he go to make amends and realize that this man is someone he could talk to and befriend and not think about what would happen if he ever found out? I just worry for Mr. Nakajima. I worry about the progress that Bucky Barnes is making, and I’m so worried about what’s going to happen as he keeps making these amends.
Mr. Nakajima is on his list of amends but making ‘friends’ with the people he’s hurt was not one of his three steps in making his amends. I just worry for Mr. Nakajima if he ever finds out what Bucky did and I worry for Bucky dealing with that fallout.
(image: Marvel Entertainment)
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