Anthony Mackie reflects on the ‘mind-blowing’ call to become Captain America

Anyone vaguely familiar with comic book history would have been fully aware that the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s long game would eventually see Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson installed as the new Captain America, dating right back to his franchise debut in The Winter Soldier.

It took a while to get to that point, though, with the final episode of last year’s Disney Plus series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier seeing the latest iteration of the star-spangled superhero suit up for the first time. In between those two points, there was the small matter of concluding the Infinity Saga, retiring Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, and giving Sam a storyline worthy of culminating in his anointment.

With those boxes ticked, the next step is for the actor to headline his own standalone feature-length blockbuster, which is currently in development. Speaking on the red carpet at the CMT Music Awards, the MCU veteran admitted it was “mind-blowing” when the news was confirmed to him by the studio hierarchy.

“As a dad of boys, it’s really cool when your kids can see you do something that they can watch. We do all these movies, most of them our kids can’t watch. But my kids were actually able to sit down and eat popcorn and watch The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, or Avengers, or all those movies. At this point, everything I do is for my little boys, so that’s the fun part.”

There’s no word on when we can expect to see Mackie’s Captain America movie soar onto the big screen, but there’s a distinct possibility he’ll pop up for a Phase Four cameo or two in the interim.