Fans aren’t sold on the idea of Wyatt Russell’s John Walker inheriting the mantle of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Captain America, but luckily for the studio, that’s exactly what they were aiming for. After Sam Wilson gave up the shield, the government swiftly stabbed him in the back by naming their own preferred candidate to suit up as the nation’s resident star-spangled superhero.
Russell is ready for the backlash that comes with taking over an iconic role when there’s already a very suitable candidate having been named in canon, and if Walker’s comic book history is anything to go by, he’s going to struggle to maintain his squeaky clean image by the time The Falcon and the Winter Soldier wraps up its six-episode run on Disney Plus.
The actor admitted that he was completely clueless about the extensive lore that comes attached to the MCU, but he’s up to speed now having been given a crash course in the Marvel Studios back catalogue. In fact, he was recently asked how he thought Walker would have fared had he been forced to come up against the threat of Thanos, and the 34 year-old was honest in his answer.
“I would’ve been dead in like one second, right? I mean, Thanos can, like, kill everybody. You need like, the team of Avengers, everybody in the world to defeat him. John Walker would’ve probably been stepped on like an ant if he’d been doing it alone. He would’ve tried very hard and failed valiantly.”
It took almost every imaginable Avenger to defeat the Mad Titan at the conclusion of Avengers: Endgame, although the debate still rages as to whether or not Scarlet Witch or Captain Marvel would have been able to get the job done single-handedly. John Walker might be Captain America, but he doesn’t have any superpowers like his predecessor, at least not yet anyway, so he’s right in thinking that Thanos probably wouldn’t have given him a second thought.