Since his MCU debut in Captain America: The First Avenger, Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes has grown into a bona fide fan-favorite, particularly after his villainous turn in the really rather excellent Winter Soldier. And while Marvel comic book readers believe it’s only a matter of time before Barnes assumes the Captain America title (perhaps in Avengers: Infinity War or Avengers 4?), we still have no confirmation on if that’ll indeed happen.
If Stan has his way though, the character will eventually head down that path, as the actor revealed recently that he’d love to take up the mantle. Speaking at a panel during Wizard World St. Louis, he said the following:
“I mean, yeah I would love that one day, absolutely. I don’t know when that day would be though, and I just think…it would be a very different Captain America you know, you wouldn’t be able to have the same Captain America as you have right now because he’s a different guy.”
Continuing on, he reiterated that it could happen, but it might take a while before we see it:
“Again, there’s this issue where we’ve got to get him to be trustworthy enough for them to give him that responsibility, you know, to fill those shoes, and those are hard shoes to fill. So I do think it’s possible, I really do, but it just has to make sense and we might need a little more time.”
If we had to guess, Marvel is definitely setting Bucky up to be the next Captain America. It’s no secret that Chris Evans is on his way out of the MCU after Avengers 4 and given how popular a character Cap is, we imagine the studio will jump at the chance to still have him involved, even if it’s another person taking up the mantle.
That’s just speculation, of course, but given that this is exactly what happened in the comics, it’s not too crazy to think that we’ll see it on the big screen, too. Even if Bucky heads down a different route, though, it sure sounds like there’s a lot to look forward to from the character, as Stan also teased that Infinity War is about re-discovering who the fan-favorite really is.
“I’ve been enjoying rediscovering him in the last few movies, including Infinity War, because he started out a certain way and then it was such a hard left with Winter Soldier, it was immediately like a whole different ballgame,” he said. “So now it’s been fun going back a little bit and finding different things that we discovered in that early movie and putting them back in little by little, finding out where is he now.”
With Black Panther now on the horizon, we may learn a little about what Bucky’s been up to lately, given that he’s been laying low in Wakanda. But if not, then Avengers: Infinity War is only a few months away and on May 4th, we’ll get the chance to re-acquaint ourselves with the Winter Soldier and watch as he continues down his fascinating character arc – one which hopefully leads to him becoming the next Captain America.