Black Panther’s Arm Failsafe Confirms Bucky’s Fears About Himself

One of the greatest blows to Bucky in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier thus far is the moment he realized Black Panther and the Wakandans built a failsafe into his bionic arm as it confirms his worst fears about himself. In episode 4, “The Whole World Is Watching,” things came to a head as Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson, John Walker and Lemar Hoskins, and Ayo and the Dora Milaje got into a three-way battle when the Wakandans showed up to collect Zemo – who, naturally, ended up being the only one not to fight and escaped during the conflict.

While Zemo’s escape is more important to the plot, there was a moment that was more important to Bucky on a personal level. As he squares off with Ayo, she reaches out and touches his bionic arm. A quick ripple of Wakandan tech in the form of kinetic energy ripples down his arm – and then it falls off, leaving Bucky stunned and Ayo angry. “Bast damn you, James,” she says before leaving. Bucky’s dumbfounded expression is a moment that could have been played for a laugh; instead, it ended up being more than a bit sad due to what it meant.

That moment was when Bucky realized the Wakandans had built a shutdown mechanism in his powerful arm – meaning that even after he was deprogrammed from being the Winter Soldier, they still felt the need to include a failsafe just in case. In case he backslid. In case one day something triggered him and he turned on them. Even after all the progress he’d made fighting on the side of good, that emergency shutdown switch proves Black Panther and the Wakandans understandably don’t fully trust him. It’s another confirmation of his worst fears – that maybe, no matter how much he proves himself, other people will never fully trust him to not be a monster. Maybe he is the monster he still fears himself to be.

However justified they were in making it – and with Bucky’s history, they were – the secret failsafe in his arm is felt as a deep betrayal. By not telling him they had this control over him and his arm, the Wakandans treated him no different in that regard than Hydra, removing his body autonomy. From the people who helped heal him, who built him a new arm, who sheltered him when he needed it most, it’s a brutal realization. The only real peace Bucky ever found was in Wakanda, as the Wakandans were the only people he felt fully trusted and weren’t afraid of him. In the split second that Ayo literally disarms him, he realizes it was all a lie. They trusted him – but only to a point.

To her credit, Ayo seems to understand the moment is a painful one for Bucky. When she spits out “Bast damn you, James,” it has a double meaning. On the surface, she’s damning him that he turned on the Wakandans by breaking Zemo, who killed their King T’Chaka, out of prison. But underneath that, she’s damning him that he forced her to do this, to trigger the failsafe on his arm, knowing it would badly wound him, not physically, but mentally and emotionally. As shown in an earlier flashback in the episode, it was Ayo, after all, who was with Bucky the night he realized he was deprogrammed for good and wept for joy.

Yet, Ayo disarming Bucky continues the theme that has recurred throughout the show: After his decades as the Winter Soldier, what little faith Bucky has scraped together in himself comes from the external perception of those around him rather than an internal sense of true self-worth. He worries that Steve Rogers was wrong in judging his worth as a good man. Zemo gets under his skin when he says he still sees a bit of the Winter Soldier lurking in Bucky. And now knowing the Wakandans don’t fully trust him. If Bucky wants to truly grow in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, he’ll have to learn how to derive his self-worth from within himself.

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