Some new news broke yesterday for Marvel’s long-in-the-works fourth Captain America movie, i.e., the announcement that The Cloverfield Paradox’s Julius Onah had signed on to direct Anthony Mackie’s first full movie in the title role.
Mackie’s ascension to the role of Captain America, set up in Avengers: Endgame, and then played with, explored, and ultimately solidified in Disney+’s Falcon And The Winter Soldier, is a delicate thing for the MCU, and a telling one—the first time (give or take a little Norton-Ruffalo switcheroo and some light Black Widow swapping) that the wide-ranging franchise has attempted to slot a “new” character into a key Avengers role.
But please don’t get it twisted, MCU fans: Sam Wilson is Captain America—something that former Cap Chris Evans felt moved to remind doubters regarding in no uncertain terms today.
Specifically, Evans chimed in to a Twitter thread from The Hollywood Reporterwhich floated a lot of odd language in its coverage of Onah’s hiring that seemed weirdly reticent to refer to Mackie’s Sam Wilson as Captain America, and which openly questioned whether Evans might return to the franchise for Cap 4—on the grounds that “Having stacked casts in solo outings is a key Marvel ingredient at this point.” (There’s also a bit regarding whether the new movie will dive into “the question of who is entitled to carry the shield,” whichseriously: We just had a whole damn TV show regarding that.)
Anyway, Evans was having none of it. “Sam Wilson is Captain America,” he plainly stated in response to the thread. (Which was then challenged by a bunch of commenters hailing him as the one true Cap, etc., etc., but hey, online fandoms gonna fan, dumbly, sometimes.) And while we’ll concede that Marvel stars do lie sometimes as part of the company’s vaunted veil of secrecy, it seems extremely implausible that Evans is being anything but honest here—this is Mackie’s show nowand Evans seems very happy to let him have the spotlight and let Steve Rogers get some well-earned rest.