Now that I've let the series settle for a few days, I'm a little more off the hype than I was. The finale really left a sour taste in my mouth.
Overall, there were a lot of things done well. The action sequences were on par with MCU movies, which is top notch. Getting Zemo involved again was top notch. The development of US Agent was great and he has a strong future in the MCU as a Loki-type anti-hero for Cap. The development and relationship of Cap/Bucky was perfect. Bucky's acting was amazing and really showed more aspects of his character.
Aside from that, there were a lot of negatives. The plot has way too many holes/inconsistencies for me. It started when Bucky broke Zemo out of prison. That just seemed... unlike him? But whatever, I let that one slide at the time. But, then the whole Sharon gone bad, but not really, but really for real thing just didn't sit with me. She's the power broker? She helped the heroes kill her source of the super soldier serum for what purpose? It just didn't make sense and still doesn't. It's like they built the whole series up for some big baddy... and it was the ultimate let down. They even made her the ending credit scene in the finale to rub it in our faces. The flagsmashers were about as bland as you can get. I'm still not sure what they were trying to do even after a rewatch. And we were supposed to sympathize with them and feel for Sam trying to turn Karlie good. But, how can we sympathize with them when they have no goal that makes sense and we just see them going around killing people and blowing up buildings for no purpose? They needed way more development if they wanted the audience to have any interest at all.
Lastly, and I'm probably going to ruffle feathers with this, but the series felt way too preachy. I get that they wanted to tackle racism with Sam becoming Captain America - and that's great and makes complete sense. But it really felt like they just kept throwing it back at us. Everything became race. From the cops pulling them over, to the rejected loan, to the black falcon, to the Karlie "sympathy". And then it gets tops off with this 20 minute speech by Sam saying the same thing over and over and over. Like, could they have been any more subtle? I dunno - I just feel like they could have done a better job overall and that makes me disappointed.
Both FATWS and WandaVision have shown glimmers of how amazing these D+ series can be. The highs are up there with the MCU movies. But, the lows seem to fall right in line with the previous television series, which is disappointing. There's so much potential if they only polished things up a bit more before releasing them.
