INTRODUCTION
Extreme, loving, close attention was paid to the legendary shield of Captain America in the Disney series The Falcon and Winter Soldier. It was such a big deal. Who would inherit the legacy? Who would take up the mantle? It seems so emotional, so meaningful, except that...it's not Captain America's real shield.
SPOILER ALERT!
If you haven't seen The Falcon and Winter Soldier or Loki, please do, they are very worth watching. Having grown up reading Marvel comics, I appreciate every detail the writers put in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) films. It's like watching sequels to Iron Man, The Avengers and Captain America. I am about to give away many secrets and plotlines, so don't read any more of this if you aren't caught up and don't want to know.
THE REAL SHIELD
In the original Captain America his shield is given to him by Tony Stark's father. It's a silver disc made of concentric circles. There is a star in the middle.There are no gaps or black symbols. The star in the middle is basic. It's made entirely of vibranium.There are no lines bisecting the circles. No strange, black, trapezoids along the lines. Within the stars there are no coffin-shaped designs. Just a star, a circle, and radiating, circular lines. It was destroyed by Thanos in Avengers Endgame.
THE REAL, REAL SHIELD
In the Marvel comic books (Earth-616) Captain America's shield is an admixture of vibranium and admantium. Vibranium absorbs impacts and is invulnerable because the force is redirected by the metal. Admantium is just damn hard, but like any tough metal if you hit it rough enough, it cracks.
In the movies the real reason Captain America's shield is destroyed by Thanos is because The Mad Titan's impacts were so devastating Captain America's pure vibranium shield couldn't redirect the force, so it shattered from the vibrations. That's why Black Panther is so badass. His vibranium outfit absorbs hits until he redirects the force into a blast. In the comics Captain America's vibranium/admantium shield is destroyed because of The Infinity Gauntlet, not a sword made of uru.
THE IRON MAN SHIELD
Throughout the Iron Man films there is a variant of the shield that shows up on occasion. You keep seeing it throughout the films. Something important to remember is that after Captain America ended up frozen in Antarctica, research continued. Stark's father certainly kept going with is ideas, and given the amazing abilities of Iron Man's armor thanks to nanotech, there are so many possibilities. They keep showing us this other shield for a reason.
If Captain America had ditched the vibranium shield and asked Tony Stark to design a new shield, built to withstand Thanos and utilize all the technology and innovation Iron Man made use of, what would that shield be like? In both Avengers Infinity War and Endgame, Iron Man uses a shield. The first is nanotech. The second is some sort of energy field. This is an important detail. After Captain America debriefs Stark, the inventor could give him a shield that is prepared to take on Thanos and more.
THE FALCON AND WINTER SOLDIER SHIELD
At the end of Avengers Infinity War, an old Captain America shows up after a younger one takes off to the past to return the Infinity Stones. We are not shown this adventure. It is presumed that the stones were returned. So we have no idea what really happened after young Captain America took off and came back.
Assuming he isn't a Skrull or variant, this Captain America gives Falcon a shield. Everyone is cool with this. It's unusual, when you think about it. The real shield was just destroyed by Thanos. Where did this one come from? Since we just watched Thor steal a Mjionor hammer from the past, this new shield was assumed to come from the "normal" past. It didn't.
There's another problem. Captain America was returning Thor's hammer. So, isn't taking a shield from the past bad if we have to return important, iconic, unique artifacts like Captain America's shield and Thor's hammer? So this older version of the hero is a variant from an alternate reality, right? And Loki taught us variants aren't always good things. As soon as that new shield was handed over to Falcon, Hulk should have intervened, considering the advice he just gave.
Something to remember is that this older version isn't dead. He's out there, somewhere. Is he in the same dimension as Falcon and Winter Soldier? Did he return to an alternate reality? Is he still talking to Hulk, or any of the characters? We don't know. Watching a meeting between old Captain America and his younger self would have been incredible, and the conversation would have had profound effects on the MCU.
THE DIFFERENCES
Having personally done film before, I can assure you a lot of attention is paid to making sure everything in the last shot matched the next one. If my character hands you a Rossi .357 magnum revolver, and in the next scene you are holding a .45 Springfield semiautomatic pistol, that's a problem. Observing viewers will notice the difference.
Hulk warns Captain America about traveling back in time and creating new realities. He describes them as, "nasty." A warning is given about returning the stones to the exact places they were left. However, Loki informs us that when an Infinity Stone is displaced, a new reality results. When Captain America chose to stay behind all new possibilities, as well as problems, surfaced. He didn't even return the way he was expected to.
Now, really think about what just happened. Captain America's return is practically a punch line. "Don't screw up," Hulk warns him, and The First Avenger returns, very old. Looks like somebody screwed up, bad. Remember, when The Ancient One showed Hulk the problems of an alternate timeline, it is presented as an ominous, dark cut branching out from the original. Obviously, this is intended to show us how terrible these places are.
Instead of showing up in the time machine, he is just there, sitting on a bench by a lake. Captain America gives a shield to Falcon. After watching Loki it's important that this person giving his symbol away could be just a variant of Captain America. He didn't return via the machine. He just appeared. Out of the hundreds of others that exist in the multiverse, hopefully this character didn't return with a different agenda and a new piece of equipment.
This shield is vastly different than the one Captain America just lost to Thanos. The new one has a black line bisecting the inside white/silver circle of the shield. Black symbols the shape of trapezoids break up the line. The star symbol inside the blue of the shield has coffin shaped designs inside the arms of the star. There is another symbol inside the center of the star. This new shield seems designed to open up, somehow. The trapezoid symbols could be part of a hatch.
Since we saw Agent Carter getting arrested in the background of Loki, something is probably going on behind the scenes. The audience is told that The Avengers were supposed to do what they used time travel to do. When young Captain America is replaced by an older one with a different shield, nobody notices because of the sweet, sad music and feelings, despite the fact that Hulk's advice was obviously just ignored.
LOKI AND KANG THE CONQUEROR
At the end of Loki it is revealed that Kang did, and always has, won. The Time Variance Authority could have existed the entire time The Avengers films were happening, and we wouldn't have noticed since the audience has been told Kang allows the time travel heist to happen. Why wouldn't he? It's how the Conqueror probably conquered.
Since the effects of Kang's supremacy are immediately felt throughout time (at the end of Loki the statues within the TVA change, reflecting Kang's eternal supremacy) it's easy to see why a Captain America leaving, and then a different, older one with a strange shield showing up is a bad sign.
Look at this all from Kang's perspective. Thanos is a rival. The Avengers are your enemies. How is the playing field looking like by the end of the films?
If you are going to conquer a realm, the best bet is to get that realm to fight itself, slaughter the survivors and sweep once the civil war is over. Thanos is gone from one timeline and dead two times. His army is obliterated. Asgard is destroyed, Loki is dead, Thor has left Earth and been replaced by a person who deserted their post once and even betrayed Thor for money. The populace of Asgard is also decimated. No Odin either, so his advice won't help.
Tony Stark, the only technical genius that might understand how to defeat Kang, is dead. Hulk's arm is shriveled. Black Widow is dead. Captain America is a geriatric octogenarian. The Vision, an immortal machine man privy to the greatest secrets of two of the most intelligent minds Earth had to offer, is also dead. From Kang's perspective, killing The Vision would be very important. There is no team of mighty superheroes to stop him. If the circle and the trapezoid represent his supremacy, the five coffin shapes within the shield may as well be for his potential adversaries. No wonder he won.
Another fact is that in the comics, Kang just can't fight Thanos. The latter is too powerful for the former to combat directly, and Thanos is smart enough to figure out just about every plan or technology Kang could use. The one weapon the Conqueror had (aside from surprise) was time, and he used it on Thanos to win.
GOOD OLD CAPTAIN AMERICA
When Captain America went back to the past and stayed there, he didn't just sit around and keep his mouth shut. He didn't just have to stones, he had Thor's hammer. The events surrounding his adventure to return all that could easily be the plot for an entire series. Since he planned on staying in the past, his plan probably included preparing it for the future. This meant telling his story.
Think of all the things he knew, from how his vibranium shield would be destroyed by Thanos, to The Snap that killed half of all life in the universe, to Loki's invasion of New York City, Bucky's fate, how to stop Hitler, the destruction of Asgard...everything. Since time was on his side (where he went, Tony Stark had not even been born yet) he and the people Captain America warned had plenty of time to prepare. It's annoying that we don't know if he came from the past, or another timeline.
If he stayed in the same past as Falcon, doesn't that mean there were two Captain America's? Where was this other one hiding out? Was one frozen solid while the Captain America from the future was talking? Did they just keep frozen Captain America on ice, and he's in Antarctica while future Captain America is handing his shield to Falcon? What a headache. It gets worse when you consider that old Captain America could actually be one from a different reality. With all that in mind...what's in that other shield he brought back from the past?
Remember, this man is an epic superhero. If he could go back in time and bend/break the rules to warn everyone and save the lives of billions, including his personal friends like Tony Stark and Black Widow, he would. The older Cap could have come from a happy, benevolent utopia where everything worked out for the best. From his perspective, the timeline he came back to could have been a wrong one.
CAPTAIN AMERICA...ON ICE!
By the way, it's worth noting that right now, in the MCU...a young Captain America is frozen in Antarctica. What? If he went back in the past to be with his girl, the other one is probably not around. Why would his girlfriend want to be with two men? Leaving the other one on ice until they thaw him out later would make sense. He even has a vibranium shield, which is why future Captain America didn't come back with that. He returned with something better.
THEORIES
To understand the future let's look at the past. Black Panther's vibranium armor stores up kinetic energy and then releases it. We have yet to see the new shield take a really hard hit. Since Thanos hit the other one so hard to shatter it, channeling that energy into a blast to whup the ass Thanos sits on makes sense. Iron Man also creates an energy shield at one point. Maybe the other Captain America shield does that now.
Another is that Tony Stark left a hologram that talks to everyone after he's dead in Avengers Endgame. Putting a hologram like that in the shield to warn everyone about Kang would be a great idea. At the right time, with the right trigger, he could pop out and tell the future about what the past figured out.
That shield has a lot of room, and Tony Stark eventually used nanotech. For all we know there are tiny cameras and microphones inside the new shield, transmitting information to another timeline or somewhere else. Once Kang starts to be a problem, glowing people could appear and offer solutions.
The shield could even be a time travel device. Sure, Captain America could have just been hanging out for many, many decades until he made his stealth roll to sit on a park bench. Or he could have used the shield to send him there from another timeline. TVA technology can create doorways to travel through time. They could also have sent him over using some technology until they beamed him back after he dropped the shield off. At the right moment, that shield could go off, making everyone teleport to the same timeline.
SYMBOLS
The symbolism of the five coffins is easily understood. Thanos, Iron Man, Loki, Black Widow and The Vision. The coffins also represent the fact the Avengers team is effectively dead. The circle within the white circle on the inside of the shield was a warning. Since Captain America is basically super old now, the fifth coffin could represent him.
Again, pay careful attention to what The Hulk says to Captain America. He says to watch out for bad potential timelines. Almost as if it was the punch line to a joke, when Captain American vanishes he is immediately replaced by an older version sitting at a bench. We saw a similar logic in place when Ant-Man kept coming back messed up, so this was foreshadowing.
The black line and trapezoids on the shield is foreshadowing. In Loki, Kang's supremacy is symbolized by a circle representing The Sacred Timeline and a strange shape, similar to a trapezoid, that is Kang's castle. Since Kang won (he tells us so in Loki) Captain America basically left and came back with a shield showing Kang's victory. If he had come back with a shield that had a hammer and sickle on it we would have noticed something was wrong.
Kang's castle looks like a trapezoid. Each one on the shield could also represent the flawed, murderous rule Kang's supremacy lead to, since each one symbolizing a timeline created by Captain America going back in time with the Infinity Stones with the circle symbolizing Kang's own timeline. Since The Time Variance Authority are all mind controlled slaves with their memories wiped clean who kill whole timelines to preserve Kang's rule, a trapezoid is a proper symbol.
BAD OLD CAPTAIN AMERICA
There's also something else to consider. We are given no real evidence that the old Captain America that shows up is the same one that vanished. He doesn't have the same shield. He's older. Could he be a robot? Kang mind controls people by wiping their memories clean. He could probably plant new ones. Maybe this older Captain America is evil, and the real one is somewhere out there, lost in time.
This older, variant Captain America might also be from a timeline where he is evil and America is a fascist dictatorship. The strange shield he brought back could be a danger to the past, which is Kang's present and our future. The new Captain America shield could be a time bomb! Like we learned in Loki, not all variants of a hero, or villain, are the same. Older Cap could also be Older Evil Cap, working for Kang. Either way, good or bad, he helped The Conqueror.
THE END..?
The next movies coming out set the stage nicely for the new Captain America, featuring Falcon. I'm glad he got a shield. Flying around without a helmet in a jetpack while other heroes like Iron Man and War Machine get indestructible armor is insulting. That new shield is going to be a factor in the film, and by then we are going to know more about Kang the Conqueror because there's going to be another Spider-Man film, another Doctor Strange film, and another Ant-Man and Wasp.
Most of these movies include the other characters. If that shield has any special properties, we are going to learn about them. There's also another Avengers film coming out, and it would be a fun surprise if a shield that has been in the audience's face for so long is revealed to be completely different and essential to the story line involving Kang.
There's also something else I've noticed.
At the end of Loki the camera backs out of a black hole. We see a spacecraft flying towards us for an instant, as if trying to leave. Is that The Avengers? The X-Men? The Fantastic Four? All of them have access to spacecraft. Why are they leaving? Where are they going? We then see another black hole. Why two? Why not five or six? Is Kang lying? Did he just photocopy the universe and conquer that? When Thanos used the Infinity Stones to destroy them, since energy can neither be created nor destroyed, a new universe was probably created (we were told they were created during The Big Bang) when they were.
We leave the black hole and escape the singularity (how did we do that?) and end up in another black hole. Further and further the POV travels until we are at Kang's castle. So Loki is inside a black hole with a copy of another universe in a black hole inside of it. That clears things up nicely. Not.
Now that I've really thought about it, the ship you saw leaving the singularity from the last episode of Loki, season 1, was probably owned by The Collector. What was he collecting? Or who?
When Star Lord is first introduced, he is dancing along to "Come and Get Your Love" by Redbone. In Avengers Infinity War, he is doing the exact same thing on the exact same planet in the exact same position listening to the exact same song. It's practically synchronized. Sure, it could be that Star Lord does that alot. Or it could be that the events of Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame take place in a completely different universe.
When Doctor Strange first sees the multiverse, it's not parallel universes. The imagery is psychedelic. When The Hulk talks to The Ancient One, she says infinity stones create universes. In Avengers Infinity War, Doctor Strange saw many, many universes where Thanos was not defeated. Only one timeline allowed The Avengers to win...one where anyone who is a threat to Kang is destroyed. How convenient.
When we catch up with Star Lord it could be that it's a clue the audience is watching a parallel universe, where Star Lord already met his friends before ending up where he was, again, only for him it's the first time. I honestly don't know. Maybe that other universe we saw in Loki is a photocopy created from the destruction of the first set of Infinity Stones, and all of the characters that died in the first universe are in that one.
That's enough mystery for today. Sorry I cannot answer any of these questions that have just been created. We'll have to be patient. What does this new Captain America shield truly represent, for the future of the MCU? Only time will tell.
