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).

There's a lot of speculation that she's here to set up a future part of the franchise. She may or may not be in the finale, but we could see her working with Walker and other characters in later shows. The Powerbroker has been set up throughout the season, so to pay off will have to either be someone significant or do something significant. The only character we know it could be is Sharon, but I'm hoping she is still more of the hero than that. So I've been thinking what the Powerbroker could do that would be so terrible, and in this show the sin worse than killing is medical experimentation upon captives. So I think the PB will take Karli to try to recreate the serum from her. Let's hope at least a couple of her followers make it out alive. Heh, good shout. Maybe Bucky should retire there I felt sorry for him from the moment they humanised him in the second episode. He's not a villain, he's a tragic character on a fall arc. After the season is over we need an all-season thread to discuss character arcs and themes. He's earnt the dramatics. He's trying not to be a killer (and is perhaps the only MCU hero that has really dwelt on whether they are OK with killing?) but he wouldn't be human if some part of him didn't want to pay back what what done to him, putting a gun to one of his abusers heads and not firing a bullet was taking back the power. In this show Zemo and Bucky are the ones that understand the burden of doing terrible things (though they are separated because for Zemo it was a choice to reach his goals and Bucky had no choice). Others characters either haven't done such morally compromised actions, or haven't realised what the cost is. I really liked where they ended, and the understanding and forgiveness. And I really want Zemo to start writing Bucky letters from prison where he teaches him chess, because he's realised Bucky is impetuous and doesn't tend to think strategically.

The previous arm wasn't removable, and attached through the skin directly into the shoulder. So I think it being unnecessary to clean like a real prosthetic is more about super-serum magic than Wakandan science. Bucky didn't need to be given a Vibrananium arm, he needed a replacement arm. I think that when a custom prosthetic is made for a person, that should be a free and complete gift, and if we were talking about a prosthetic of steel or carbon fibre that point probably not be disputed. I think Shuri is a generous and kind person who chose to make the arm of vibranium because that was the best possible version prosthetic she could make, and that she did not put conditions on that gift. Because Vibranium has cultural significance to Wakandans, there are probably Wakandans who see it differenty. I would suspect that Howard / the US gov bought their stock of Vibranium from dealers, but that all or some of that stock was probably stolen from Wakanda at an earlier point, which would give Wakanda a claim to ownership of the shield (ignoring that this is an alternative timeline shield, because it is easiest to assume it had the same provenance on that timeline). But because Howard made the metal into a shield, and Steve made the shield into a symbol, this particular lot of metal has lost its significance to Wakanda because the symbolism of the Shield is not of direct interest to them. As this is the mystery thread, I have a totally unrelated question: Will we ever learn what jobs Steve and Bucky had a civilians before the war? They must have been working for 6-8 years before enlisting, depending on the age Americans left school back then (my grandma left school at 15 to work in a factory during the war, but I'm British and she was a Lancashire lass).

That too, but his therapist did indicate that he was being particularly shut down during their session, compared to previous sessions.

So, I am assuming Bucky stopped responding to Sam's text because he was told about the plan to donate the Shield to the museum, perhaps one of the texts was even an invite to the ceremony. Was that the conclusion everybody else came to?

I get that Wakanda are angry with Bucky for helping Zemo escape (though I don't get why Ayo was more angry with Bucky at the end of the eight hours than when they had the initial meeting). Wakanda has a legitimate claim against Zemo for T'chaka's death, and Bucky wronged them. But beyond that perspective, the story has more nuance because Bucky is not an uninvolved 3rd party. Bucky also has a separate claim of grievance against Zemo, for using the trigger words. We know Zemo's name was in his notebook list. The opening of this episode emphasised the depth of that injury against Bucky, and with Hydra gone Zemo may be the only living person who used those words against him. So Bucky's choice to let Zemo escape prison, in addition to being a betrayal of Wakanda, was also a selfless decision that tracking the source of the serum was more important than his own claim to vengeance.

One aspect of Zemo agreeing with Bucky that Steve was the only one not corrupted by the serum is that they are also agreeing everybody else with the serum is corrupted - which includes Bucky. It makes horrible sense that Bucky doesn't include himself in the uncorrupted - he's still bearing terrible feelings of guilt and puts Steve on that pedestal because he doesn't trust himself but did trust Steve's judgement For Zemo, maybe he doesn't argue the point about Steve being an exception because it's moot - Steve's dead or gone so not on Zemo's list to stop. Bucky doesn't fit into Zemo's theory of Super-soldiers as supremacists because he didn't choose to take the serum, but Zemo is agreeing that Bucky is corrupted anyway and killing him is still part of the goal to eradicate Super-soldiers.

I get Bucky thinking that tracking the serum was sufficiently important to work with Zemo. But after the death of Nagel, Zemo's Hydra knowledge was no longer required. So Sam & Bucky should have got rid of him then - all he was offering at that point was free use of an apartment. They really made an error letting him get the lead on Karli's location. Bucky did say in this episode that it was really Zemo who broke himself out. So maybe Bucky didn't slip him the keycard after all - it was ambiguous last episode. Which means Zemo could have escaped anytime he wanted, and that Bucky had realised this. We haven't yet had any payoff to Zemo being on Bucky's list of villains who owe him amends. Was Bucky always intending a confrontation with Zemo?

From episode 4 thread: I'd say he fought both. The Howling Commandos were tasked to take down Hydra strongholds, but those were spread across occupied Europe. So I think there is a strong implication that their planned operations were against Hydra, but they would have come across non-Hydra enemy forces at other times given the territory they were operating in.

So far in show, Walker has been a foil for Sam, as they were both wresting with being symbol and taking the identity of Captain America But now he is a super-soldier he is also placed in opposition to Bucky: Walker took the serum which magnified his internal flaws vs Bucky who had the serum forced upon him whilst being mentally broken by his captors. Sam's journey in the show is to find his place in something larger than himself, but Bucky's journey is to heal himself and become a whole person again. And he's got his own shields so high that I frustrated because I have no idea how he is progressing with that. Maybe Walker's reaction to the serum will be the catalyst for Bucky to open up to Sam about what was done to him?

Fair point. But now I am wondering if the intention was to show the Dora Milaje as winning a fair fight, or going too far in pummelling somebody. They've been presented as impressive and sympathetic so far, and I'd been uncritically accepting their actions as heroic, not as bullies that need to be stopped.