What follows is possibly only Michael Bay’s idea of subtle, as Falcon takes on the bad guys.

“This has to be subtle,” Wilson is warned by a nameless camouflaged officer. They’re a criminal organisation with vague intent who have kidnapped a military liaison and are trying to get from Tunisia to the safety of the Libyan border, where the US military won’t be able to intervene. Now aboard a US air force plane in full Falcon gear, he’s being briefed on LAF.

Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) was among those who vanished, but he’s back, looking sad and packing up Captain America’s shield, with Steve Rogers’ words from Endgame about the shield now being his ringing in his ears. It opens four months after the events of Avengers: Endgame – four months after billions of people reappeared from the dust after five years away. Here, in the first episode alone, the actions flits between Tunisia, Washington, Louisiana, Switzerland, Japan and New York. In one, characters couldn’t leave a small town. Nevertheless, TFATWS, is much more familiar in tone, and the contrast between this series and WandaVision could not be more marked. WandaVision, so surreal, fantastical and high-concept, was, theoretically, a bigger ask for the casual Marvel fan (although after 22 box office-busting films and one ratings smash TV series, how many casual Marvel fans there are remains open for debate). Originally, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, or TFATWS as we’ll call it from here on in, was supposed to appear on Disney+ before WandaVision, and it’s immediately clear why.

On the other, the raising of that bar brings its own pressures. On one hand, fears over how the MCU would translate to the small screen have been well and truly allayed – we’re most definitely not in Iron Fist territory. Given the universal praise for WandaVision, the first small screen outing for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s hard to know whether that makes things more or less difficult for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

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