John Walker: anti-hero
Why is he John Walker an anti-hero and not a villain? Simple, because anti heroes are a side effect of good characterization. They are human, they live in a world made of shades that is more real than the fairy tales heroes are used to believe.
Steve Rogers had the luxury to look at the world and decided it was in black and white colors, where the black was full of bad guys and the white was for the heroes and the good guys. He never understood the real world is made of shades and rarely people can be put into the two boxes he loved so much.
Steve Rogers had the privilege to go into ice long before WWII reached its worst. He didn’t see the results of six years of war. He didn’t see the scars on the lands and people. He didn’t see the camps. He didn’t witness Nuremberg trials, where the “I was following orders” ceased to be an acceptable excuse.
Steve Rogers didn’t see the world change. He didn’t see how America went from the economic boom of the fifties and sixties to the protests and marches against the Vietnam war. He didn’t see the true face of the Southern state, where racism never died and people were still lynched.
He closed his eyes thinking his sacrifice would mean something and opened them again on a changed world, but he wasn’t a changed man.
John Walker never had the luxury Steve Rogers got. He was born in a world wrapped in shades of grey. He had access to news and information. He studied, first in school and then at the war academy what made the world we live in today. Like every single person with a smartphone and an internet connection he had access to facts.
Unlike Rogers he was a real soldier (let’s not forgive Steve only had 2 weeks of training in boot camp before he was picked to be beefed up). He witnessed the worst face of war. Sure, he never took part in a WW but that doesn’t change he knows more about them than Rogers. He was part of an elitè and that meant he saw things normal soldiers don’t have access to.
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He came back home with PTSD so deep it put Tony’s at shame. All of this before he was given the shield. That was the last drop. Pressure born from taking the place of an icon soon was mixed to the pressure that came from the inside.
Was he a good man? Perhaps, we don’t really care about this now. We don’t even know enough of his life to give an honest answer. He followed the rules and he became a good soldier because he followed the orders, John Walker was the perfect soldier for this time. The army doesn’t accept insubordination, because that could lead to people asking too many questions, but also to people endangering whole squads thinking they know better than men and women trained to command.
Lemar was for John what Sam had been for Steve since the first moment they met. Only Lemar had known John for years. It wasn’t blessed with Captain America’s acceptance and trust in a silly way. They shared a past. They shared a common experience. They were there for each other when alone in their missions.
Lemar knew more about John than his wife did and that’s right because sometimes you can’t make a civilian who never saw a battlefield to understand why you are so irreversibly damaged by something that happened there.
John does some very bad things not out of thirst for power or even blood, but because he’s emotionally distressed. He’s a real person who just saw the friend of a lifetime die because someone didn’t care to control their force even knowing they were enhanced.
He acted out of despair, triggered by how Karli simply ran away after she realized what she did. She didn’t take responsibility for what she did and the consequences of her actions. Karli is, right now, the villain because her actions are born from selfish roots.
There are thousands of people like her, who didn’t go to Power Broker and ask for the serum. The reason why Karli injected herself with the serum was selfish. Reasons born like that make the villain. She didn’t want to find another solution, she just wanted to use violence and feel better with herself.
These are the bases she starts with. These are the pieces of the puzzle that make a villain.
Every story needs a main character, a villain, a chorus and sometimes some antiheroes. To mix up the roles it’s a good conduit for a disaster. That’s one of the many mistakes we saw in this show.
