Marvel Fans Declare That America’s Ass Title Belongs To Anthony Mackie After The Falcon And The Winter Soldier Trailer

Steve Rogers’ abdication of the shield and mantle of Captain America to Air Force pararescue airman Sam Wilson will be a point of contention in the forthcoming The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, with the United States military rejecting the Star-Spangled Man With a Plan’s choice of successor in favor of their own costumed super-patriot, John Walker.

That conflict is inspired in part by Nick Spencer’s recent two-year run on Captain America: Sam Wilson, which closed out its first issue with a sequence in the Sonoran Desert that introduced Joaquin Torres, who would eventually inherit the title of Falcon himself. But Wilson has also inherited an even greater responsibility from his former brother-in-arms, and it’s one that the government can never take away because it was bestowed upon him by Marvel fans themselves.

While traveling by way of a quantum tunnel to the aftermath of the Battle of New York during the time heist in Avengers: Endgame, Scott Lang declared the Captain America of 2012 to be the bearer of “America’s Ass,” a title that the Cap of 2023 later accepted after emerging victorious, albeit narrowly, from a one-on-one fight with his eleven-year-younger-self. The joke, while amusing, mercifully stayed in 2012 as Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Captain headed to 1970 to compensate for a situational miscalculation.

By the final minutes of Endgame, Steve had become the bearer of a tired, 179-year-old ass (the questionable arithmetic of Christopher Markus and Stephen McNeely notwithstanding) seated on a lakeside bench in upstate New York, where he decides to pass on his legacy to his young protégé. There’s an entirely separate article to be written about his decision not to burden his lifelong friend James Barnes and fellow World War II veteran with the responsibility of the shield, and that may wind up being a topic of conversation at some point in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but Wilson ultimately, if a bit reluctantly, accepts the assignment with Bucky’s blessing.

In the opening seconds of the densely-packed teaser for the first three Marvel Cinematic Universe series set to debut on the Disney+ streaming service that aired during the Super Bowl this past Sunday, Sam Wilson pries the vibranium shield out of a tree during a practice session. In the very next shot, he goes through a full-body windup to launch the shield again, and in the process puts his own maximal gluteus on display. And while there will be disagreement over who should wield the shield and carry the title, that single image has fully settled one debate among the fandom: Sam Wilson has America’s Ass.

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The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s first season of six episodes debuts on Disney+ this August with an inaugural episode helmed by Handmaid’s Tale and Punisher director Kari Skogland.