“Sam Wilson is Captain America”

Anthony Mackie and Chris Evans Photo: Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney

New news broke yesterday about Marvel’s long-awaited fourth Captain America movie, ie. the announcement that The Cloverfield Paradox’s Julius Ona has signed on to direct Anthony Mackie’s first feature film in the title role.

Mackie’s rise to the role of Captain America, established in Avengers: Endgame and then played with, explored, and ultimately cemented in Disney+’s Falcon And The Winter Soldier, is a delicate thing for the MCU, and telling—for the first time (let’s take some Norton-Ruffalo switcheroo and a slight Black Widow swap) that the sprawling franchise tried to put a “new” character in a key Avengers role.

But please don’t get it twisted, MCU fans: Sam Wilson is Captain America — something former Captain Chris Evans felt compelled to remind doubters in no uncertain terms today.

Specifically, Evans chimed in on a Twitter thread from The Hollywood Reporter, which dropped a lot of weird words in its coverage of Onah’s hiring, who seemed oddly reticent to refer to Mackie’s Sam Wilson as Captain America, and who openly questioned whether Evans might return to the franchise for Cap 4 — on the grounds that “Having established actors in solo outings is a key ingredient of Marvel at this point.” (There’s also a bit about whether the new film will dip into “the question of who has the right to carry the shield,” which, seriously: We just had a whole damn TV show about it.)

Anyway, Evans was having none of it. “Sam Wilson is Captain America,” he said clearly in response to the thread. (Which was then disputed by a bunch of commenters who hailed him as the only true Cap, etc., etc., but hey, online fans will sometimes adore him, silly.) And while we’ll admit that the stars Marvel does lie sometimes as part of the company’s vaunted veil of secrecy, it seems highly implausible that Evans is anything but honest here – this is Mackie’s show now and Evans seems perfectly happy to let him get the spotlight and to allow Steve Rogers to take some well-deserved rest.