can we as a fandom please stop pretending like bucky didn’t fuck up consistently in the first 4.5 episodes of the falcon and the winter soldier? like he really hurt sam and ayo, specifically. even he acknowledges in episode 5 that he fucked up. why can’t everyone else do the same
He should be held accountable for how much crap he put Sam through but as a Sambucky shipper, I view that Bucky was in a cloud of just anguish from Steve (not that it excuses it and didn’t know any better until Sam snapped him out of it.) Sam gave him tough love and boy he deserved it XD
replies like these are part of the problem. bucky barnes is a grown man. 106 years old. he DOES know better and he knows he’s actively hurting his friends as he does it. (“what was rule number two again?” asked after their joint therapy session. saying he was wondering when ayo would show up after he broke zemo out, bc he knew she’d be upset, along with the rest of her country.)
bucky knew what steve was going to do, or at least it reallyseems that way based on episode 5. his reaction in endgame itself also supports that he already knew, probably even gave steve his blessing. you know who DIDNT know his best friend that he’d spent the last few years of his life ride or die for as a fugitive away from his family was leaving? sam wilson.
oh top of that, old steve hands sam this giant symbol of america, a symbol that carries a whole different weight for a Black man than it ever would for a blond haired blue eyed WWII hero, and just. drops it on him. with no warning. “surprise, sam! i’m old and probably dying and i know we were way closer to each other than anyone else in the world last time you were alive and ALSO our other best friend died while you were dead, but here’s this hunk of metal that brings up a lot of complications for you! glad you’re back from the dead, buddy!”
all that is to say, if one of them had the right to have that much “anguish over steve,” it’s sam. not bucky. sam, who was closer to steve at the end. sam, who didn’t know steve was leaving. sam, who got handed something he really, really didn’t ask for (and then got yelled at and blamed by bucky for not taking.)
bucky’s reaction stemmed entirely from his own selfishness and ignorance. by his own admission, he didn’t consider what it would mean for a Black man to be given the shield. he knew some of what he was doing would hurt his friends, but he did it anyway. ends justifying the means, perhaps? who knows. but either way he knew he was in the wrong from the beginning
i know you said in your reblog “not that it excuses it” but replying to a post of “hey we should hold bucky accountable for the shitty things he does to his close friends” with “he was anguished over steve! sam showed him tough love!” really sounds like giving excuses, on top of putting it on sam to get bucky to apologize (which he didn’t do! sam’s “tough love” bit was mostly in reference to bucky’s amending, bucky had already apologized to sam about his behavior all on his own.)
bucky was being a dick, entirely unwarranted, full stop. bucky made his own choice to apologize for his behavior to both sam and ayo before the words “tough love” ever got into the picture. full stop. no “poor bucky bc steve left him” backstory necessary
Not only that this “idea” of Bucky anguishing over Steve? Like Mak said, episode 5 pretty much implies that Bucky knew what Steve was going to do but if you watch Endgame Bucky’s so extremely chill the entire time. What fandom likes to forget is that Sam when Steve disappears and doesn’t come back in seconds, he starts actually turning his head around with watery, panicked, freaked out eyes while he’s actually having a freakout about it with Bruce (and btw I copied this from an official script copy of Endgame, so this was in the script, you can check the file out here. It’s a PDF.)
Look at these expressions. He is FREAKING OUT.
When Sam has his talk with Old!Steve he’s still on edge and needs Bucky’s reassuring expression to actually approach him. It probably still hasn’t set in all that happened within the span of a couple of minutes. And we see Sam dwelling on it in the beginning of the first ep which is 6 months later.
Sam is certainly the one who’s feeling shit but he has to be the one to “keep it together” (and probably why he dives head first in all those missions for the Air Force and trying with all his might to get the loan for the boat even though we know how that went). No one lets Sam have excuses to be messy and all this other business, when he’s damn fully entitled to. (All that loss and grief he’s endured over the past few years?? Yeah. Damn, I just wanna give him a hug.)
All the anguish in series we have that deals with Bucky and Steve all have to do with Bucky’s character assessment of himself. As in what Steve had said once Bucky got out of HYDRA’s clutches constantly was that “Bucky was a good person” and that “none of those things he did was his fault” (and while Steve is right, if someone doesn’t agree with what you think, automatically saying it doesn’t make it come true) and eventually it seemed in Bucky’s head that everything Steve had been saying was pretty truthful and would work. But Bucky, without the support system he had in paradise Wakanda, started listening to his intrusive thoughts and came to the conclusion that coz Steve was wrong about Sam taking the shield that means everything else is probably wrong about him too.
But instead of admitting that, hey, these are bad thoughts, he took it out by hurting himself (self-isolation is a helluva thing) and hurting the people closest to him (aka Sam). And any other social interaction he had he kept people at a close distance. That’s no way to live.
Steve – it was never about missing him or him being gone or whatever, it has always been about Bucky. And the man, the grown ass man, was freaking selfish. That kind of thing can happen when you’re dealing with trauma and shit, the thing is to acknowledge that you hurt people and make up for it through action and apology.
Like, I totally get Bucky may have some mistrust over doing therapy, whether that’s partially internalized ableism happening or because Raynor, however good intended she could be, was appointed by the government and Bucky’s distrust of the government was high.
But still, did not and does not excuse the fact that he hurt and treated people he cared about badly and like an ass for a good chunk of the series (though I’m glad the series actually had some clarity for him to actually admit his actions may have hurt people – aka the moment with Sam in episode 5 and that bit with Raynor when he asks her again about rule #2, and the whole fact that he knew he hurt Sam and the expression he made after the fact. It’s the face of ‘I got into an argument with someone I care about and said some pretty shitty things that made them feel bad and I wish I could take it back or said something that wasn’t hurtful’.)
Trying to erase or never acknowledge he wasn’t an ass (which even the SHOW actually admits he was!) or to act like he’s perfect/”he did no wrong” coz of [excuse that makes him not culpable of his actions] is a travesty honestly, and really dismisses a lot of the growth he made as a character.
First: omg Sam in that Endgame scene freaking out is devastating. Can you even imagine?? People don’t spend enough time trying to imagine.
Second: ‘Bucky fucked up’ and ‘being a Sambucky shipper’ are not mutually exclusive. People can fuck up and still find a way forward together. Making excuses for characters who’ve owned their mistakes and are trying to do better is not the favor/character love some fans seem to think it is. Don’t tell the character that their growth didn’t need to happen when they are telling you themselves that it did.
And in preparation for the 1yr anniversary of episode 2:
PSA 1: Hurting someone you care about always comes from somewhere and it usually has to do with you/your own insecurities and fears, not them. Example: Bucky hurts Sam because he’s in his own shit, and he says it straight out — it’s about him.
PSA 2: And if you’re a dick to someone and they get mad about it (not that Sam actually lets out his pain here, even despite Bucky’s oblivious racism during a terrifying cop encounter and the knowledge of Isaiah immediately before this), they are entitled to that reaction. And that reaction will often hurt back.
But you know what?
In this case, Bucky didn’t feel hurt back. He felt immediately remorseful. He knew he’d crossed a line and wished he hadn’t. (“What was rule #2, doc?”)
It was Bucky fans who decided Sam was mean to him in this scene, not Bucky.
And in the end, Bucky apologizes unreservedly on his own.
Let Sam experience his pain. Let Bucky experience his growth. Respect the way they work through things (in ways both seen and unseen by us since there’s so much time unaccounted-for) and choose to have a caring partnership (whatever type of partnership you think that is).
