The Falcon And Winter Soldier Finale Reveals What We Suspected All Along
Contains spoilers for "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" episode 6, "One World, One People."
After six episodes of high-octane buddy cop twists and turns, "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" ends in a surprisingly heartwarming fashion. Sam (Anthony Mackie) embraces his destiny as the new Captain America, and immediately makes sure that Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) gets his rightful place in history. Bucky (Sebastian Stan) earns himself a modicum of redemption, and some highly deserved downtime with Sam's extended family. Even the various antagonists and uneasy allies largely get what they wanted. Zemo (Daniel Brühl) rids the world of excess superpowers once more, Karli (Erin Kellyman) dies but keeps her legacy alive, and even John Walker gets a nice fist-pump moment when Contessa Valentine Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) gives him a new gig as the U.S. Agent.
However, arguably the biggest winner of them all is Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), who gets to end her long exile in Madripoor, and is reinstated as a government agent. However, this might end up biting a whole bunch of people in the rear, because "The Falcon and Winter Soldier" finale also reveals a certain secret that many of us suspected all along.
It sure looks like Sharon Carter is the Power Broker
The identity of the mysterious Power Broker was finally revealed in "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" Season 1 finale, and most of you guessed it: The mild-mannered Madripoorian art dealer herself, Sharon Carter, has actually been the one pulling the strings all along.
The show has been hinting that Sharon might be more than meets the eye for quite some time, what with her oddly vast resources and ready access to satellites and top-notch mercenaries like Georges Batroc (Georges St-Pierre) despite her fugitive status. When Sharon comes face to face with Karli, we finally learn that the superpowered Flag-Smasher used to be Sharon's respected underling, and she might even happily welcome Karli back into the fold. Thanks to Batroc and his greediness, we also learn that blackmailing Sharon is a terminally stupid idea.
As with everything in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's worth mentioning that the revelation does come with an asterisk. Awesome as it might have been to give Sharon a WandaVision-style villain song to announce her true identity, "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" resists the temptation to include a song-and-dance number called "It Was Sharon All Along," and makes sure that Sharon never outright admits to being the Power Broker — even though Batroc calls her by the title, and her association with Karli heavily alludes to it as well. Because of this, and the fact that the reinstated Sharon has a phone call about selling classified data and weapons with an associate, there's always a small chance that she might just be an associate of the unseen, true Power Broker. Still, at the very least, she's very much a member of Team Brokering Power — and with her newfound access to government secrets, she's more dangerous than ever.