3 years ago, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier premiered on Disney+ and followed the story of Sam Wilson (the former Falcon and current Captain America) and The Winter Soldier traveling around the globe, stopping a terrorist group known as The Flag Smashers, led by Karli.
The series would introduced John Walker (Wyatt Russell) who was once Captain America at the time until.... Episode 4 when the most infamous scene of John bashing Nico's head with Captain America's Shield to death happened and he was court marshalled for it and his title was stripped, and even his actor got death threats, a group of supporters sympathize with John Walker while other characters from The MCU, particularly Sam Wilson got vilified by his fandom for relating with terrorists despite Sam clearly not vibing with Karli's methods.
By the time of Thunderbolts/New Avengers drop in theaters, the "John Walker did nothing wrong" philosophy spread throughout YouTube, Twitter, Reddit and Instagram, getting into aggressive arguments with Sam Wilson's fans to the point it becomes flame wars, people who are fans of him or don't even watch the show make rants on Captain America: Brave New World.
My thoughts on this and what 4 lessons anybody should learn from this:
Never, Ever, Get into any discourse about your favorite character, It ain't gonna be pretty, that goes for very fandom.
You can like a certain character without putting down the other, Don't make videos about it, Don't make posts about it,
Just grow up, you people getting THIS worked up for fictional characters.
Abraham Erskine says "Not a perfect soldier, but a good man", I fell like media literacy is on life support with this one, because they completely missed the entire point.
I'm glad and lucky to be a Joaquín Torres/Falcon fan, I had to get this off my chest, because this whole discourse make them look like children.
