****There be spoilers being dropped****

This is the episode where the Sam and Bucky meet up in the after-math of John Walker coming onto the scene as the new Captain America in the post blip world of the MCU. The episode starts off with the viewer meeting John before he begins a similar type of propaganda tour that Steve had to do in Captain America The First Avenger. It’s about humanizing John after our initial introduction made many a viewer immediately dislike him.

The government’s Captain America isn’t what this story is about, it is about Falcon’s struggle in figuring out how to take up Cap’s mantle and how does Bucky process his guilt and live with it. The new Cap is simply the spark for their story and our first real deep dive into the post blip world and how the world has changed since. It seems that they are sticking to pretty close to his comic history and that makes me wonder how Sam will get the shield later on, maybe the next episode.

Seeing Sam and Bucky bounce off each other when Bucky goes to Sam about the new Cap and the sheild is just fun. Bucky meets up with Sam to ask why he gave up the shield just has he is heading on his next mission and we get the scene where they talk about the big three, aliens, cyborgs and wizards. This gets into the issue of race and how for Sam giving the shield up was the right thing to do for him in that moment even if what they did with the shield was wrong to both of them. Steve’s shadow looms ever present in this series as it is personified in the shield itself and what it means to each of the characters and to the United States as a symbol more than its worth as a weapon.

This leads into the next big action sequence that we have seen in the trailer where Sam, Bucky and John get their asses handed to them by the Flag Smashers on the trucks. They all get beat and John gives Sam and Bucky a ride where and we can see how they relate to each other and the awkwardness of it all, as they content with someone who has taken the mantle of someone John has never met but Sam and Bucky knew so well. Then it shifts to the Flag Smashers where they are emboldened by their success so far and decide to take it up a notch.

After this we meet Isaiah Bradley whose story about the experiments done on black soldiers to recreate the super soldier serum reflects the real history of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, which was a complete unethical failure and continue to undermine trust by the black community in public health that continue today. There is a nuance in how when Sam and Bucky leave Isaiah’s home they are stopped by the cops that reflect the fear about how if you are black or a person of colour, that you have to be so careful out of fear you will end up like George Floyd or countless others.

The issue of race is something Marvel Studios doesn’t deal with in its movies but the fact they are dealing with it here allows them to reflect what society is facing at this very moment. Having a series that shows who Sam is and if he wants to carry the shield is something that makes more sense because now we are seeing him outside of his role as Falcon in a way the movies can’t get too. For Sam this is a series that contends with who he wants to be if and when he takes up the shield as Captain America, not a “black” Captain America but Captain America despite the faults of the nation and the weight of slavery and racism that the country was built on.

For Bucky this series is about is he worth being redeemed, does he deserve the chance he has been given and can he right his wrongs even though it wasn’t him who was doing it. We get the scene with both Sam, Bucky and his psychiatrist where Bucky is forced to admit if Steve was wrong about Sam, does that mean he was wrong about him. Who is Bucky now in a time and a place where he has no one, whereas with Steve in the picture, he had someone that knew him from before he was Hydra and how that is gone, how does he find peace or how does he reconcile what he did as the Winter Soldier.

It is after this where they decide to figure out who the Flag Smasher are and how they got super soldier serum they need to talk to Zemo who knows Hydra’s secrets. They tease Zemo as he plays chess in a prison as they leave the viewer to think what will happen next amid the comic and movie callbacks that underlay the series as a whole.

I enjoy how they are giving us a different look at the world in a way we haven’t seen in the past. With Marvel Studios being in complete control of every narrative front in both the movies and streaming shows. This series even more than WandaVision is giving us a broader view of the MCU as a whole and that is an exciting place to be as we get to know who these characters are outside the movies and their one-liners and to who they are within their own stories.

The hard part about a story like this is that we as the viewer are counting down, hoping they can get everything they want to get done in the time they have. It’s hard to judge at this point which is always an issue in a series but I can’t wait to see where the story goes and if it will have any implications for what will be happening in the future of the MCU.

Here we go again, after just a week off after WandaVision and her comes the next product of the Marvel machine. The title of this episode is “New World Order” set in the post blip world. It’s even more pertinent to all of us because we as a species have undergone such an extreme shift this year making what these characters are facing feel more real than I would have thought possible and making more aware of the themes that this show will shine a light on.

The first episode was the scene setter, showing where Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes are today. With Sam deciding to give the shield to the Smithsonian after having completing another mission for the US military. The action scene had a great sense of kinetic energy and a surprisingly high death count with Georges Batroc returning from the Winter Soldier movie. We meet Sam’s military liaison Joaquín Torres, who provides some exposition talking about the state of the world and sharing the rumours on the internet that say Cap is on the moon.

This episode is split probably 55% to 45% Falcon to Bucky. Falcon’s part feels like he is living to find his way in the post blip world and reconnecting with his Sister and trying to help her with keep their boat and house, trying to get a loan only to get a rejection from the bank. The undercurrent of race being the reason for their rejection reflects our current world even more acutely in this post #BLM era but it goes further than that to the subtle invisible racial bias that exists in everyone, like the banker who couldn’t see it because he can’t and is something that we all have to work to fight against.

Bucky’s story is less about the present and more about how to overcome his past. His action scene takes place when he was a Hydra agent and while completing a mission he kills a bystander who witnesses the incident. He wakes from his dream sleeping on the floor of his apartment before we go into a scene at his therapist’s office. I enjoyed the interplay between the two former soldiers and it setups what Bucky’s journey will take across this series as he tries to atone for his past.

This is highlighted by Mr. Nakasima an old man from closer to his time than anyone else. Mr. Nakasima and Bucky have lunch and he asks the waitress at the sushi place out because Bucky can’t. It’s here we learn why he befriended this person, that the victim from his dream was Mr. Nakasima’s son. Bucky’s path is personified in what he will do, will he tell Mr. Nakasima that he killed his son or not.

The episode ends with Sam as he gets an update from Torres about the flag smashers just as his sister puts on the news where the government introduces a new Captain America, End Credits. They show off the new Government Cap looking a little off with the expectation that he is gonna be a Cap we as views will hate and they made just the way he looks in the helmet just off enough that you feel it.

This show has shown us the path of where Sam and Bucky are, the series is a buddy cop kind of story but before we get to that they want us to see where each of these guys are starting from. How they compare, contrast and work together and I expect they will help each other to complete their mission but also find a way forward in their new world. We can say that for ourselves as we can for the MCU in trying to regroup in the midst of an ongoing pandemic.

The show is more topical then they could have ever imagined from dealing with racism, racial bias, patriotism, PTSD and a world that went through a dramatic and sudden shift. The parallels give it weight, make a show with a hero with wings feel more relatable than any one of us want. I enjoyed it but I do hope there is more balance between our title characters. I am excited to see what they will setup in this series for the future and all the references that will be strewn about even if I have to watch some youtuber to understand many of them.

All of us living today can now understand in some way what a dramatic and sudden chance to the world would feel like because we are now living it. Although we can see normalcy in our future, it can’t and will not look the same. Too much has happened and we still have so far to go but that feeling of understanding that different grounds this story and I am on board for their struggle and triumph against the backdrop of a chaotic world that doesn’t look that different from our own.

As children many of us are told we can be anything, its as if the innocence of youth makes the people who love us want to feel like we can fly if we so choose. Then as we grow up for a lot of us, the idea that the universe is ours to shape is slapped down by reality.

Reality can be a shot to head or a door to open it comes down to how we choose to see it. We may each come into the world unique and full of possibilities but when we clock out of this world, no one leaves it without scars.

If you don’t have any scars then you are not doing it wrong because our failures, mistakes and pain is how we learn, are the challenges we must rise up to meet, to see how far we can get.

I envy those people who are confident enough to be who they are, that are not afraid of being judged, compared to, or failing. Those people that look at the edge and jump anyway, they deserve the chance to see how far they can go.

I am in a group that keeps their emotions in check, who puts a cap on my emotional self if only so I can limit the fallout from the that which hurts. I stay outside the tribe and walks the path alone because deep down you don’t have faith that you are worth it.

I tend to think that one of the reasons we remember hate and pain is because they are shocks to the system. They are immediate, visceral and raw. It is the evolution of our fight or flight response, our natural instincts that was once the difference between life and death.

One of the hardest things we each face in our own way is being able to tell our own truth. Telling those truths is not easy because it is about a willingness to be open about who we are.

I know I’ve probably spent enough capital hiding and dodging my own truth that I could have build a suspension bridge across the grand canyon. Is it worth it?

It is safe, it is comfortable, what lay on the other side of the bridge across the edge is unknown and our unconscious mind would rather keep us safe in what we know than take the risk onto that new and unknown possibility.

Sometimes I wish I could just be honest with myself but because I am still searching for that mission, for that story it is hard. I can’t wait anymore, I am on the path towards being able to live the way I want.

Never compare yourself to anyone else, what someone else does isn’t relevant. Comparisons with other people are poison, they will keep you down and not raise you up.

When we go through the crucible, when we fall and get back up each time you stand up you are saying that you will not give in. That is so hard to do, because walking away is so simple but we all know nothing worth doing is easy.

Don’t see a problem, see a challenge to overcome and how much more it will mean because we had to work for it. The only time it is really a failure is when we don’t learn and sometimes even then we will relearn those lessons in many ways and permutations before it will sink in.

I don’t believe everything is possible, that believe may not even be healthy and can lead to being paralyzed by fear, feeling like when you have a lot of choices you don’t want to close those doors.

Think of a decisions as not closing a door but a narrowing your focus so there is nothing that will prevent you from getting through that door, even if it’s made of steel and is a meter thick because you are focusing on just that one door you know you will walk through it, its just a matter of when not if.

I have to remind myself of that every day, that the like I want exists, that the story I seek is already out there I just have to be open enough to recognize it and seize it when it comes. This is where you want to be a little stubborn, you want your dream, that goal to be your religion, something that is non-negotiable, that you have to do, not something you should do.

This is my starting point, with these words in the hope I can find a story to tell, in a world of my own making.

When I left Canada I was shattered, my confidence was broken and I felt like my life was a waste of space, time and matter. Most people I knew had good jobs, families and good social lives. I was hiding my reality and living in a box, getting rejected from everything I applied for and I believed there was something wrong with me.

If I am completely honest, I’ve had very few friends and have never been in a relationship. I keep to myself and just play at being happy and confident when in reality I end up repeating my matra’s of “I can’t”, “I don’t have any money”, “that’s not possible”.

I am sick of playing this song on repeat, I don’t want to dance to this beat anymore. It sucks, it is without joy or hope and all it can lead to is a quick death and a person not remembered.

How do you rise above the noise and find the courage to go ahead when all you feel is that you are destined to fail, that to fall is the only thing you can count on.

Even as I write I go down the rabbit hole of doubt and had the paralyzes my ability to move. Like so many people I am fighting decades of social conditioning, that failing is wrong, that you need to be secure, that you shouldn’t take risks.

Today I don’t see any other way to live that is happy without putting myself out there and waiting for the rifles to fire. Will I be able to dodge the bullets, round after round. No, but can I survive the onslaught without wanting to crawl into a hole and dying or waving a white flag, bowing in penance for my sins of going outside the norms.

I guess what really scares me is what if I write the story I want to and do everything in my power to get it out there and no one reads it. You can’t do it only for the audience, first and foremost you have to do it for yourself.

That doesn’t mean the whispers of doubt, the conversations about the risks or the looks that say without a word “poor soul”don’t matter but it means you do it not for the riches but because you can’t.

I was listening to a class that someone recorded about screenwriting by John Truby and he said that you should write a script to “change your life”. That even if you never sold it, if it changed your life than no matter what else happens it would have been worth it.

Maybe that is part of my problem I want to write something to change my life, I want something that will cause the Earth to quake underneath the soles of my feet, That what I did had and has purpose even if it is only for me.

As a person I have been waiting for lighting to strike but how can it if I am not writing. I know that I just have to write, even if it sucks, actually especially because it will suck, to fall as many times as it takes, so I can suck less, so the words won’t put someone to sleep or make someone want to start an effigy of burning books where all that will be left if a wiff of paper and ink, with the words turned to cinders in a hole.

I wrote a world of science fiction because I wanted to feel a sense of exploration and discovery in a modern context that reaches into the soul of each of us that is curious and wants to push the limits because that is what it means to be human.

I have never shared the world, I have told people about it but it lives for no one but me. It is like being a God, the one who decides the course of events that both destroys and creates new possibilities.

For me the question isn’t should I but how can I not without betraying the hopes that have been long dormant in my soul. Shall I fall, do I just survive or can I lift myself to see the world, the universe from a new perspective unencumbered by doubt, hate and or fear?

I have said this too many times, repeated this refrain too many times to count, I need to write a new lyric where I can begin the climb out of the baritone to the highs of a epic soprano for a full featured sound that will be carried like an echo across the far distance.

I have been thinking about my travels since I left Asia, I was supposed to be gone for a year or two and then get back to the struggle. It was a struggle that destroyed every fragment of my confidence and belief, I started running and since the moment I stepped on the plane I have kept on going.

I would like to stay that there was some profound reason for my trip, or that I have been transformed by it and that is true in some ways and a mirror for me in so many others.

I have learned to see my faults, my fears and my self-loathing but I still struggle to forgive myself for them. To let go of the hate and shame or the comparisons that prevent me from building something for myself instead of just spending my time running as long and as far as the winds will take me.

I am often reminded of the firsts, the first time I stepped off the plane in Thailand, or the first time I got scammed, the first time I got lost, the first friend I met, the first time I had to make a police report.

Some are good, others not so much but what really helped me and something I still have trouble with is that no matter what happens I will be OK. I’ve been plenty stupid, am boring the majority of the times and have had fleeting moments of awe, wonder and bliss.

I won’t compare my life to anyone else’s because comparison is a plague, it has made me feel less, worse than I am for no good reason. I have to open, be willing to be who I am, be respectful and understanding of that which separates us from each other is always less than how we are the same.

I am a wanderer and seek to be a writer, to take a world I have been holding in my mind and make it feel to a person, the reader that it is real in a way that turns a story into an experience.

I have lived in a world of excuses and distraction but it is time to laser in and let that story be my religion even if I don’t know the details and only have the direction of where I want to go.

So I sat on the beach in Negombo, leaving Asia for a new continent, new country and a new mission to write because there is no other path. That this decision to leave the normal behind, the need or want what everyone else has is OK, that it is the path I need to take, that I have to and what to take.

I am not writing for anyone just putting my thoughts down to make them tangible and real. I want to take the risk that my story and the way I want to tell it is worth the struggle and the risk.

What I will write will suck in the beginning but to take the risk and see the evolution in style and substance is exciting and the only thing that matters. I learned that through the contrast between my life struggling to find work in Canada to that of wandering the world.

I would have never started creating this world if I wasn’t traveling but now it is time to let it go, to not wait for perfection but to just put it out there so that I can learn and grow not just as a writer but as a person. It is time, well past time to make this story my mission, to quiet the doubt and take inspiration from the pain.

What I am writing here is more my journey, just me trying to express my doubts, to quiet the fears so that maybe I can move forward and begin to take the next step in my journey.

I have been paralyzed by writer’s block in part because I am afraid but it is time to stop waiting and start doing so I can make these ideas, story concepts and possibilities a reality, even if I fall, even when I fail I cannot give up I cannot quit because this is the only path ahead. If I leave some other door open I cannot expect to succeed at this.