Sam Wilson

Rogers, Romanoff, and Sam Wilson (Falcon) destroy the helicarriers and dump every S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA file onto the public internet.

Rogers and Romanoff train a new roster: Wilson, Rhodes, Wanda, Vision.

Shuri's team removes it before Infinity War; The Falcon and the Winter Soldier confirms it on screen when Zemo reads the words aloud and nothing happens.

Half of all life in the universe disintegrates. Among the dead: Bucky, Wanda, T'Challa, Groot, Drax, Mantis, Quill, Strange, Sam Wilson, Peter Parker, Hank Pym, Janet van Dyne, Hope van Dyne, Nick Fury, Maria Hill.

An old Steve Rogers asks him to try it on. Sam accepts and says it feels like it belongs to someone else.

He donates it to the Smithsonian in the first episode. Underneath the stated reason is his belief that a Black man cannot be Captain America in this country and be accepted. The government immediately gives it to John Walker anyway, which is the show's actual argument: the symbol was never his to decline, because it was never treated as his.

In the 1950s the US government tested serum derivatives on Black soldiers without consent. Bradley was already a super-soldier and fought in Korea. For going off-book to rescue captured men he was court-martialled, imprisoned for thirty years, experimented on throughout, and erased from the records. The government told his wife he was dead.

The sequencing is the point: Bradley has a serum and no recognition; Walker has recognition and no serum, and takes one out of desperation; Sam takes no serum. Wings, a shield, and nothing else.

Sam beats him and then, more importantly, talks him down. Also here: Joaquín Torres is now flying as the new Falcon, and takes a near-fatal injury in the aerial battle over Celestial Island. Sterns's parting warning to Sam is about threats from other worlds and universes.