The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s second episodic series may be a more standard return to the franchise’s typical formula than the weird and wonderful WandaVision, but The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is still dealing with some heavy thematic subtext despite being a globetrotting buddy adventure full of explosive set pieces and witty barbs being traded back and forth.
Legacy is one of the show’s recurring themes, with Sam Wilson wrestling with his decision to give up Steve Rogers’ iconic shield, only to see it handed to John Walker instead, as the mere existence of a new Captain America weighs heavy on both his mind and conscience. Anthony Mackie believes the world is ready for a black Cap, though, and Sam’s revelatory discovery that Isiah Bradley had been imprisoned and experimented on for decades will end up having a huge bearing on his arc.
After the brief encounter, Sam and Bucky are arguing in the street when a police car shows up to try and diffuse the situation, and the parallels to modern society are there for all to see. Now, a new rumor is claiming that over 80% of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier viewers turned off episode 2 at exactly this moment, but we should point out that the information comes from YouTuber Doomcock, who has a habit and reputation for pushing his own agenda.
Typically, it’s at the expense of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, but you can read what he had to say about the show’s tune out time stamp (TOTS) below and make your own decision.
“The TOTS is logged on Disney Plus whenever a viewer stops watching a particular movie or television episode. It’s useful to the bean counters at Disney Plus to note when they lose a particular viewer because this can give them valuable data about how the show is doing and what that viewer thinks about it. This source claims that around 5 p.m. on Saturday across the board, the TOTS for the second episode of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier went crazy with people turning the show off in droves all at around the same part of the show within seconds of each other.
My jaw hit the floor. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. All the turn out was at the cop scene where it clearly shows they were ready to pull their guns on a black guy who was arguing with a white guy. It’s clear that this was the message. So, in other words, Disney felt like sticking a Black Lives Matter message smack dab in the middle of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier Episode 2, and what do you know, apparently fans who are sick to death of bad news and tragic headlines decided they had had enough and turned off the episode.
Over the course of Friday and Saturday, a full 79.9% of people that were tuning in, stopped watching at that point in the story. According to this source, over the next few days the TOTS average went up to 83.49% overall. That means 83.49% of viewers turned off the episode at almost exactly the same woke point. This source claims there were also a lot of subsequent cancellations happening in real time.”
According to Doomcock’s information, close to 85% of viewers to have fired up The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s second episode turned it off at exactly the same moment, and many of them subsequently canceled their Disney Plus subscriptions in the immediate aftermath, which sounds very hard to believe given both the show’s overwhelming popularity and the sheer coincidence of it all purportedly happening almost entirely simultaneously.
