A Captain America: Brave New World Theory Points To A Heartbreaking Death

Key Takeaways

MCU fans expect a character to die for emotional impact, as trailers hint at a potential tragic outcome.
The director hints at serious danger for Falcon, suggesting a key emotional center will involve danger or death.
Joaquin Torres, a secondary character, may face early death to resonate with fans.

When Captain America: Brave New World finally hits theaters next February it will be the dawn of a new era for the MCU. And of course, it will be the dawn of a new era for Captain America as Steve Rogers has officially handed off the mantle to Sam Wilson. From all the clues in the trailers that have released ahead of the film, it looks like Sam will have to get up to speed quickly as things go wrong rather quickly.

Just how wrong things are going to go is still up in the air. It’s a safe bet that at least some of the things that were shown off in the trailer were meant to be a misdirect. Marvel does a pretty good job on a regular basis in making people think a project is going one way, and then going another. Despite that, there are plenty of MCU fans who believe they have nailed down one particular theory about what they can expect to see. And it looks like Captain America: Brave New World‘s director has hinted that theory may be correct.

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Heartbreak In Captain America: Brave New World

One of the biggest features of the MCU is that the good guys rarely die. They might take a beating that very few people could handle; even if they aren’t superpowered, they almost always somehow survive. Doling out death in small sample sizes means that when someone the audience actually cares about does die, it tends to have a little more punch. Certainly that was the goal with Avengers: End Gamekilling off Black Widow. And it worked to at least some degree to see her teammates slowly realize that she wasn’t coming back and that there wasn’t a way to get her back. That she wasn’t just taken out of action but was dead and gone.

The MCU then delivers the pain of going through that death over and over as they did in Hawkeye when her sister came looking for who she held responsible. Other deaths haven’t carried the same weight as hers though. When Marvel seemingly killed the Scarlet Witch, it was served up as more of a death of a villain, which of course was essentially the thing that needed to happen. But in Captain America: Brave New World, it’s hard to tell exactly just how a potential death will go over. At the very least, the intent is to give Sam Wilson someone to grieve over.

The character around which this Captain America: Brave New World theory surrounds is Joaquin Torres, who is the new Falcon after Sam took over the mantle of Cap. Torres was briefly introduced in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, though he’s expected to have quite a bit more screen time in the upcoming movie. However, if he is indeed getting more screen time, it hasn’t been shown in the trailers released so far. He’s gotten very little mention or appearances in the hype campaign leading up to February so far. And that’s why the theory points to Falcon getting killed off relatively quickly.

He’s gotten very little mention or appearances in the hype campaign leading up to February so far. And that’s why the theory points to Falcon getting killed off relatively quickly.

The character’s longest appearance is in the scene centered around Eternals‘ crystalized Celestial, with very little beyond some “blink and you missed it” appearances beyond that. While he is a secondary character and isn’t as big a name or face as the Red Hulk or Captain America, if he was going to be around much, it feels like he would have been in a few more scenes.

Captain America Director Seemingly Confirms

While Marvel does tend to misdirect, like not showing Falcon much in the trailers, to convince people of something, in a recent interview with Empire, director Julius Onah might have essentially confirmed thatthings are going to go bad for the heroes.

Onah first said that the Falcon and Sam have a “big brother dynamic. He then added that that the relationship between the two men will be, “one of the key emotional centers of the film.” Those comments certainly make it sound as though there will at the very least be some serious danger for Falcon. But more likely he’s going to be killed off entirely.

Marvel doesn’t really have any qualms about killing off side characters, and Torres is very obviously a side character. On the other hand, there’s also the idea that the real Captain America and Falcon were Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson and that replacing that partnership with anything else won’t go over well with fans. In other words, the company might see killing off Torres as something the fans would prefer to having the beloved duo changed entirely.

At this point, it feels like a no-brainer that some good guys aren’t making it out of Captain America: Brave New World alive with all the explosions and shooting going on. The new Falcon seems like the very obvious choice to go down.

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Captain America: Brave New World (formerly titled New World Order) marks Sam Wilson’s first MCU big-screen appearance as Steve Rogers’ successor after receiving the suit and shield in Phase 4’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Anthony Mackie returns as the titular Avenger alongside Danny Ramirez as Joaquin Torres, Carl Lumby as Isaiah Bradley, and Tim Blake Nelson as The Incredible Hulk’s former ally Samuel Sterns. Harrison Ford makes his MCU debut replacing the late William Hurt as Thaddeus Ross.