Hey, true believers! The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is hitting TV screens on Disney+ today, and you don’t want to miss it. The show has all the action you’d expect from an entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), but it also takes it time to delve into the struggles Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes face when they’re not off avenging as the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, respectively. The Root was lucky enough to sit down with the Falcon himself, Mackie! In part one of our interview, Mackie talks about what Captain America’s shield means to him as a symbol, Falcon’s struggles with accepting Captain America’s shield, and what it means to be a Black man potentially taking over the mantle of Captain America. Mackie has been the Falcon for seven years now, and this show is the first time the character gets to step into the spotlight. Luckily, it doesn’t disappoint. I cannot reiterate enough how caught off guard I was by the pilot. It was not what I was expecting, and I mean that in the best possible way. While the movies take a pedal to the metal, non-stop action approach, the series takes advantage of the longer run time to slow things down. As such, we really get to know more about Sam and Bucky as characters, and I really appreciated the way it took into account the things these characters experienced in the movies. It also provides a further look at what post-Endgame life is like in the MCU. While Endgame may have reversed some of the problems caused by Thanos, it also introduced new ones. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier address some of those in big and small ways that consistently surprised me. But I’ll stop yammering about the show. I got a whole column starting this Monday dedicated just to that anyway.