‘The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’: Will Shuri From ‘Black Panther’ Be in the Disney+ Series?
Marvel’s The Falcon and The Winter Soldier has finally arrived. The series premiere hits Disney+ on Friday, March 19, and after the success of WandaVision, fans are ready for more Marvel TV. But will Bucky Barnes’ connection to Black Panther‘s Shuri be explained in the series? Here’s everything you need to know about Letitia Wright’s possible appearance.
How did Shuri heal Bucky?
Bucky (Sebastian Stan) has lived a difficult life. He fought in World War II alongside Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) in Captain America: The First Avenger, and was believed to be dead, but he survived the fall, but he lost his left arm and was kidnapped by Hydra.
The Nazi-run agency turned him into the Winter Soldier through brainwashing and hypnosis. Bucky’s personality was completely wiped away through the brainwashing, leaving only the Hydra-made assassin behind. Steve spends all of Captain America: The Winter Soldier trying to help bring his personality back. When he’s himself again, he has to cope with the fact that he was a mindless assassin for decades and was responsible for the death of Tony Stark’s parents, among others.
In Captain America: Civil War, Bucky is framed for the explosion at the Sokovia Accords that kills T’Challa’s father, King T’Chaka, but he proves his innocence. He’s then taken to Wakanda where he voluntarily goes back into a coma so the country’s team of scientists can undo the rest of Hydra’s brainwashing.
In a post-credits scene in Black Panther, it’s revealed that Shuri is the one who helped heal him. How exactly she healed him has not yet been explained, but Wakanda’s superior technology definitely played a part. T’Challa gave Bucky a new vibranium arm in Avengers: Infinity War to prepare him to fight again.
Is Bucky still brainwashed?
Bucky and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) were both lost in Thanos’ snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. They were brought back, and the new series is all about dealing with life post-blip, post-Thanos, and post-Avengers.
Will the story of how Shuri healed Bucky be told in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier? Fans are hoping it will. And if there’s one thing Marvel lovers know, it’s that it’s rare for questions to go unanswered. It might take several movies (and now, TV shows) to learn what the creators had in mind, but the questions get answered nonetheless.
The Falcon and The Winter Soldier has been advertised as a globe-trotting adventure. Given that, it’s entirely possible that Sam and Bucky will end up in Wakanda or will run into one of the characters from Black Panther.
As always, Marvel has kept the details of the series under lock and key. So if Wright does appear in the show, it will be a surprise. Early reviews of the series premiere do reveal, however, that Bucky is in therapy and is trying to heal from his traumas. (Coping with grief seems to be Marvel’s new favorite theme.)
Whether his Hydra brainwashing is capable of being reactivated will be a concern throughout the show.
How many episodes will ‘The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’ have?
Stan shared a clue about the show’s possible connection to Wakanda on his Instagram Story. (A Reddit user graciously captured it before it disappeared.) The photo showed graffiti that said “White Wolf,” the nickname the people of Wakanda gave him.
The graffiti also appeared to say “brake the mask,” which could be a reference to Helmut Zemo, the show’s villain. Zemo is the Hydra agent who framed Bucky for the attack at the Sokovia Accords. In the Marvel comics, the White Wolf is the adopted son of King T’Challa. He’s a white man who has his disagreements with brother T’Challa, but he’s loyal to Wakanda.
Marvel hasn’t hinted that Bucky will be the comic book version of the White Wolf. Rather, it seems to just be what Wakandans call him. But his ties to Shuri make a strong case for the possibility of her appearing in the new series. She does love fixing “broken white boys,” after all.
Fans will have to eat up every minute of the series, as it will only have six episodes running at about 40 to 50 minutes each.
