Spoilers for the first episode ofThe Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
One of the tricky things about superheroes is how closely you want to place them into the real world. One of the strengths of Marvel Comics’ superheroes is that they exist in our reality, or at least have to deal with real-world issues — like Peter Parker struggling to pay rent. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has leaned even further into this by noting that none of their heroes (since the ending ofSpider-Man: Far From Home) has a secret identity, which means they essentially live in public as celebrity superheroes.
But the closer you move them to reality, the more questions arise, andThe Falcon and the Winter Soldierhad a pertinent one: who pays the Avengers? If you look at MCU superheroes as essentially global firefighters trying to save the world, then who is responsible for them?Captain America: Civil Warflirts with this question when it comes to the Sokovia Accords, but since those Accords are nebulously rendered into nothing more than “government supervision,” they don’t really answer the question of payment.
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The Falcon and the Winter Soldierprovides an answer on who’s paying the Avengers, and the answer is: no one. Even the incredulous loan officer suggests that maybe Stark Industries was bankrolling the team, but Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) notes that the Avengers basically live off charity. Basically, the superpowered people tasked with defending the Earth have a GoFundMe, and even that GoFundMe isn’t pulling in enough money for Sam to buy a boat to keep his family’s business afloat.
But if you pay the Avengers, that raises a lot of tricky questions. Ultimately, they’re not firefighters. They have no jurisdiction (the Sokovia Accords have apparently been forgotten post-Blip), and so they have no tax dollars flowing in to support them. If any singular entity backs them, you then have a Vought International scenario a laTheBoys,where your heroes are now arguably in the employ of a corporation with its own interests. So the only way to keep the Avengers “pure” is to have them work in accordance with their own benevolence. They’re all inherently good people who are willing to bear the burden of risking their lives for no money because it’s the right thing to do. To introduce a payroll would then sully the purity of their actions, as well as raise the question of how much you pay someone whose job is to do whatever they believe is right to save the world.
Superheroes are an inherently tricky concept the closer you place them into reality because they raise the specter of strongmen leaders and ultimately fascism. Their might makes right, and simply trying to move them into a capitalist system of “Well, someone will pay them to do whatever they think is right” only complicates matters further. And let’s be blunt: Marvel Studios, a subsidiary of the giant entertainment conglomerate The Walt Disney Company, is necessarily eager to take time away from superhero fun times to get into a discussion about the economics and realities of who pays for a superhero to be a superhero because that question also leads to “Well, if they weren’t paid enough, would they still come to the rescue?”
I’m skeptical thatThe Falcon and the Winter Soldierwill untangle these questions. For starters, the thrust of the aforementioned scene isn’t really about who pays the Avengers, but that Sam Wilson, a black man, cannot get a bank loan even though he was literally part of the team that saved the world from Thanos in theEndgamebattle. That’s the point of the scene, even though it raises the question of who pays for the Avengers and the answer turning out to be “no one.”
This leads to the question of whether anyone should pay for them. Personally, if you’ve established that for all intents and purposes, Stark Industries has infinite money and that Pepper Potts is a benevolent person, then Stark Industries should dispense some kind of monthly stipend to anyone who is an Avenger. Of course, from a narrative standpoint, that then deprives you of rich conflicts like Sam not being able to buy a boat or how other Avengers make money. It’s one of those questions that you don’t really want answered because it only serves to raise more questions while depriving the viewer of the narrative conflict they ultimately want.
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