MochaJay

I don't blame the characters for their vagueness. I remember in the books Claire studied up on latter 18th Century Scottish history before coming back, then found herself in America so none of her knowledge was relevant. And Brianna was raised in a different State so knows more big-picture US history but still the wrong local history. It sounds about right to me that the only solid fact Bree passed on was the name of the officer in charge of the Trail of Tears - she would have been taught about these events from textbooks written in the 1950s. It's easy to forget 'modern' time-travellers aren't our contemporaries and that they have progressive attitudes even by the standards of their original time-period. Show Ian hasn't been working for me for the last couple of seasons. He hadn't developed the competence and dangerous edge that Book Ian possessed by this point, and I was wondering if the actor was up to the task. But I am liking what they are doing with him now a lot more; though they didn't previously have room to give him gradual development the focus he's had in the last couple of episodes is making him closer to the character I really enjoy from the books. And I agree tieing his loss to Jamie's loss of Faith works well. The book plotline didn't have a Dances with Wolves vibe to me because the books had so much more room for side-characters to flesh out the entire backcountry eco-system. There's a lot more with Trading Posts and hunters & intermarriages etc to show that Ian isn't The Special One With a Unique Understanding, but one of many people whose lives bridged multiple cultures. The show has a harder job because it has to have a tighter focus. At this point in the books Ian has a full scalp of hair. Might be they made the change for filming continuity with all the flashbacks, as I guess a Mohawk bald-wig would look terrible and the actor really was given this hairstyle. Young Ian's clothes are often described along the lines of 'hunting leathers'. His general appearance is nondescript backcountry look. Sometimes he is more formal for various reasons and then he does wear more signifiers of his adopted culture.

It seemed atypical but didn't really shock me in the context of this family. Anthony takes all responsibility for the family finances, but he views their assets as being for the benefit of them all, so I could see him having authorised his adults brothers to draw from accounts that might otherwise be under his sole control. If Colin had lost the investment then Anthony might have lost trust. But (not having read the books) I assume Anthony is planning to settle independent incomes on his brothers when they marry so has made sure they are capable of managing money.

I don't think that the different episodes have any relationship to each other. Wasn't that the original Captain America, if the episodes were related, he wouldn't exist. I agree each episode is a separate timeline, my question is more about the story structure. If there is always a single inciting change then the ripples start small and spiral out into increasing divergence. A story can focus on what happens immediately after the change, or show the change plus the later effects, or skip entirely to where things are unrecognisable. Episode 1 - follows the initial ripples from Peggy's decision. She has similar values, similar skills and the same mission so we see 20 mins where Peggy's story almost directly overlays Steve's story, and in the last 5 minutes we see increasing divergence as Peggy & Cthulhu portal to the future, the US has the Hydra Stomper and there is no Winter Soldier. We don't see much of the new reality of this timeline Episode 2 - has a flashback to the moment of divergence. Most of the story happens years later with characters who have already been changed by the ripples, but we can infer the connections. Episode 3 - does not tell us the moment of divergence. We pick up where the ripples from the Pym's lives majorly impact the Avengers lives who where mostly unaltered in the years since the divergence. ... Episode 10 - will the story pick up with a wildly diverged world without any clue what changed first?

What was the single divergent point? Hope joining Shield? I could have done with The Watcher interrupting the story when Fury visited Hope's grave, to give us 30 seconds of exposition and flashback. I enjoyed the bulk of the episode, but the first two led me to believe we would always understand the casual link between 1st change and ripple effects. Are we going to see wider ripples every week so that the final episode is full insanity with no indication what changed first?

The middle 15 minutes did feel especially like CA:TFA on fast forward, but I suppose that is what you get when the What If? is a person of similar moral values being tasked by the same organisation to do the same missions. Though I guess the butterfly effect will have taken full effect if we see more of Captain Carter in the 21st century. She was considered either too female or too British to sell war bonds, so no USO tour > Zola was captured earlier > no Winter Soldier > no Kennedy Assassination.

As I figure it, Canada maintains its claim to its original borders. The women parked in Canada, and somewhere in the woods crossed the old, unmarked, unguarded US-Canada border into former US territory. They did not travel so far to reach the fenced / guarded hard border maintained by Gilead - which in that area might have been a few miles further in for logistical reasons - eg a forest is harder for the Guardians to patrol than a natural barrier like a river. Gilead is a new unsettled state without treaties and still at war with the US, so they only claim land they physically occupy; wherever that falls short of the old US border there is a no-mans land. At the bridge where the exchange took place there isn't a no-mans-land. The new Canada-Gilead hard border aligns to the old Canada-US soft border. Nick's vehicle travelled from the exchange for several hours within Gilead, then crossed into the no-mans-land without ever leaving US land or entering Canada. They were able to do this because Nick is an Eye Commander who can command Guardians to let him pass, but common escapees would be lucky not to be shot or recaptured by the Gilead border patrols before reaching no-mans-land. I think Gilead permitted Lawrence to make the exchange, so he did his job and would expect no trouble. Possibly Fred was tried in absentia and the Eyes were ordered to execute him, which Nick kinda did. But if Nick had no orders or authority to arrest Fred, he's still secret police and it's hard to follow up when secret police disappear people. All the Guardians at the border can report is that the Eyes took Waterford. Which Eyes? - they don't know and weren't going to ask. Lawrence could identify Nick, but he has enough on Nick to make him a useful ally - so he'd be more likely to amuse himself by suggesting that Commander Blaine be set in charge of the investigation. Econopeople have to go church, that's why June was alone in the apartment block during her Season 2 escape attempt. I think Commanders are meant to be in charge of the religious instruction of their household - like with the Bible reading at the Ceremony. We have just never spent much time in a truly devout household.

Sharon has certainly fallen out of the 'hero' category, but I'm more inclined to label her as mercenary than villain at this point. I'm sure from her perspective she is only playing the game, and only hurting those that are also in the game. She can still point at people who are blowing up civilians (Zemo at the UN) or murdering hostages (Karli) and say she is not as bad as them. I don't think the show is in any doubt she has had a moral decline, as she is exploiting and perpetuating the exact systematic inequalities it was examining, as well as employing straight up evil ex-Hydra scientists. But I think she has been burnt enough that she no longer believes in the possiblity of changing the world for the better. It's not what I wanted for Sharon - I was hoping she remained a simple good guy - but it is interesting. If we see her in the MCU it could be in the utility player now that we have lost Batroc, or we could get a test of how far she has fallen and what lines she will still not cross.

What do people think about pairing Sam & Bucky vs splitting then up in future projects? Before we knew anything about this show but the title, the basic promise was give these two supporting characters their turn as lead characters, in a two-hander with a buddy-cop dynamic. The show did give moments that exploited the actors & characters chemistry, and Sam had a great lead role, but although Bucky had his own subplot he was a supporting character in the structure of this story. So IMO the show delivered 80% of its original promise, even whilst it overdelivered on its thoughtful exploration of themes which I wasn't expecting and was so glad we got. Next time we see Sam will be Cap 4. That won't be a two-hander but should be Sam's movie. There are good reasons to include Bucky: in-universe they now have a close friendship, and the actor chemistry is still gold. But to what extent do we at some point need to see Cap Sam stand on his own, rather than next to a character so closely associated with the first Cap. And on which projects will we see Bucky, to get more insight into his character, even if he never gets a lead role?

Eh, small country. The upper crust nobility would be just a few families. So his family being 'practically royalty' could mean he's third cousin to the crown.

100% all this. I also think there is a neat parallel with T'Challa at the end of Civil War. He had the best arc in that film (which isn't acknowledged enough because the Team Cap/Team IM framing of discussion limits everyone to static narrative boxes) and it culminates in T'Challa showing a beautiful moment of grace in forsaking vengeance. Bucky got the same moment at last.

I don't know if I am allowed all-season thread to discuss some of this stuff that wasn't specific to the episode? - I was thinking 'Sam and Bucky have depth: Character arcs and themes' One moment in finale I did enjoy was Walker giving the 'I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits...' line and Bucky attributing it to Lincoln. I am not used to that kind of call-and-response outside of Sorkin shows, and there is an interesting specificity to why these two men would know a less famous quote (I presume, I'm not American) - Walker is the type to have studied Great Men, Bucky comes from a time when memorising the words of dead politicians was probably part of standard education. I know a lot of the reaction is that Sam and Bucky forgave Walker too easily, but with Bucky at least it makes sense for me: His counsel to John in ep 5 and Karli in ep 6 was don't go down this road, I know where it ends. ', He will stand in the way of people he disagrees with, but he won't act as judge of others because his Truth is that you have to be able to live with yourself.

I agree with this, both Sam and Bucky had good stories with strong themes. In the end though I do think Sam was better served than Bucky. I thought we got the right amount of time to Sam's story and we had a mix of the subtle and explicit recapping of his major themes. For Bucky, I felt the show held him a bit too much at arms length - there were times when I felt I had more insight into Walker or Karli's views than Bucky's thoughts on events or themes. We are still having to guess and theorise about so much of his story, rather than experience it directly along with him. That's a disappointment, because I wanted the show to help us really connect with both the leads, but I felt one was sacrificed a bit too much to make space for the plots of the supporting characters.

Zemo: I ended the Winter Soldier programme once before, I have no intention to leave my work unfinished. To do this we will have to scale a ladder of lowlifes. Sam: Well join the party, we've already started. Nice burn on your new sugar daddy the Sam.

I've been thinking on this, and though I think the parallel is important, the roots of the difference also go back further to the original ethics. Erskine's experiment was a wartime secret, but all volunteer, nobody was doing anything of which they were ashamed. When Erskine was killed they made Steve a propoganda figure, so when he rocked up at militarily camp with a few hundred freed POWs and a photographer started taking photos, the military rewarded him in part to control the narrative. Isaiah and his comrades where subjected to unethical experimentation, down to not even knowing what they were being given. There was always going to be a cover-up, especially as most of the subjects died. Isaiah going AWOL to rescue the POWs wasn't the reason he was imprisoned - it was the excuse.

Zemo served a number of functions:- Plotwise: Sam and Bucky chasing down leads in Episodes 2 & 3 made them active protagonists vs spending the whole series waiting for leads to come knocking. Zemo was their lead. Storywise: Sam's story is about becoming a symbol of something larger than himself. Bucky's story is about healing from his trauma. Zemo put a known face to that trauma, rather than taking in abstract about dead Hydra agents. There was resolution in this episode where Bucky got to hold a gun to the head of an abuser and not take revenge, which is much more significant than a general distaste for killing people. Themewise: He was able to articulate themes and offer opposing philosophies, especially to those presented by Karli. Character-wise: He's a 'villain', in that he is morally compromised, and unchanging in his beliefs. He offered a contrast and yardstick for us to examine other characters that are on growth arcs (Bucky, Sam) or fall arcs (Karli, Walker).