The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Was Meant To Have A Completely Different Storyline, Fans Believe

Released in 2021, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was meant to face all the COVID-related struggles the series ever could. Although the pandemic was slowing down and becoming more controlled by the time of the premiere, the cast and crew faced many difficulties during filming.

Many fans believe that showrunner Malcolm Spellman, along with other writers and producers, had to go so far as to change the entire storyline to get away from any COVID associations. While the theory has been completely debunked, it makes too much sense not to share.

Rumor has it that the Falcon and the Winter Soldier were supposed to go on a journey to stop the spread of the deadly virus, but were later changed to a global mission to stop an anti-patriot group. The speculation is mostly based on some details left out of the show that would make a lot more sense if there was a virus involved.

If you remember the series, in the first episode Bucky and Sam stumble upon a large cache of vaccines and then it's never mentioned again.

Of course, one could argue that it would be smarter to just remove all mentions of the vaccine altogether if the producers wanted to rewrite the story, but they'd still have to hit the number of frames they needed to fill the episodes with.

With a sufficiently vague setting and lack of description, the vaccines still make at least some sense.

Speaking of vague, The Flag Smashers ended up having pretty vague values. This argument was even used as one of the main criticisms in the reviews of the series. It's not unheard of for Marvel to downplay the antagonists to fit the narrative of the story, but if the narrative was changed, maybe they just had no choice.

Another telling sign is the casting. It's no secret that the MCU can spend a lot of money on actors, but no one really got it when they hired well-known TV actress Veronica Falcón to spend a few seconds as Karli's late adoptive mother Donya Madani. Surely she was supposed to play a bigger role in the story, but for some reason, it was cut.

Although the production team denies that this theory is true, many fans believe that the show would be better if it was. If you want to revisit The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, you can stream it on Disney Plus.