The More I Think About It The More I Know If Bucky Did End Up Doing The Same Thing As Steve And Going

the more I think about it the more I know if Bucky did end up doing the same thing as Steve and going back to live out his life from the 40s again he'd lose his goddamn mind within a week. This man has so many gadgets, he has all the gadgets all of the time, there's a theory that the flip phone he gives Raynor is a decoy because she expects being from the 40s that's what he'd use, and he's always playing around with tech and admiring cars

Bucky would miss modern tech way too much, he'd cry just seeing ONE single computer with a 5 byte capacity taking up an entire room

Although let's be realistic he wouldn't even last the week, he'd only make it ten paces the day of arrival before losing his shit at the first white person to open their mouth

I was going to keep the bingo to the sfw card but I've been getting tempted by that nsfw card... I've not written smut in years, maybe I should get back into that

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) || Thunderbolts (2025)

So I've seen a couple people now say they're not sure why fans are against Bucky being in the senate or think he must be being forced to somehow, considering we've already seen him as the Secretary of State in What If...? and I wanted to explain why I personally would find it extremely out of character if he's willingly a senator in Thunderbolts*

For the sake of ease I'm going to refer to Earth-82111 Bucky as Secretary Bucky and Earth-19999 Bucky as Primary Bucky.

Based on everything we know about Primary Bucky, I don't see how he'd have any reason to WANT to be there and it feels very contradictory to the path they've set him on ever since Civil War.

It all pretty much comes down to the fact that Secretary Bucky and Primary Bucky have led two entirely different lives since the war, around the time there was a divergence in their lives. Their experiences from around the age of 26 onwards have made them into separate people, despite being technically both Bucky. Sebastian Stan's even said he was surprised by his lines as Secretary Bucky because they're so different from the Bucky he's used to playing.

The point of divergence in their lives is of course the train. Secretary Bucky never fell from the train and lost his arm, he was able to be rescued by Captain Carter, so he didn't go through any of the experiences that Primary Bucky has that would make his character detest the idea of being in government.

Secretary Bucky stayed the light-hearted Bucky we met in early CATFA. He never woke up during a horrific surgery to instal a bionic arm where he'd had his real one torn off in the fall, he never experienced decades of torture, brainwashing, forced assassinations and dehumanization. We can't say for sure how much Secretary Bucky knew about Isaiah Bradley and the men of his squadron, but we do know that Primary Bucky knows about them and withheld that information from Steve, which is huge. Primary Bucky knows which governments and organizations (like SHIELD) are corrupt and in what ways, has stood against the American government both as the Winter Soldier and by his own volition, he was framed for an event that led the world to agree on mandatory registering of a specific demographic of people I wonder where he might've seen that before, and has teammates who were kept on the Raft. He saw his own government, the American government, violate their own citizens the way HYDRA did him; injecting them with unknown substances that irreversibly changed their bodies, then punished Isaiah for doing the same thing they hailed Steve as a hero for, and further violated Isaiah by taking his blood without consent and creating more soldiers from him. Primary Bucky was a victim of HYDRA, the clear bad guys, but Isaiah and his brothers-in-arms were victims of the supposed "good guys", and on that fact alone I cannot see any way Primary Bucky is anything other than disgusted and mistrustful of them, if he doesn't outright hate the government. Primary Bucky has also learned a lot from being friends with Sam, how it wasn't Sam's fault for putting down the shield when the government and the country they're in put him in an extremely difficult and impossible situation out of pure racism, about how their country views heroism and its very white standards for it, and how it's not as simple as it was for Steve or John Walker for Sam to have the shield and be Captain America. He saw the US government make one promise to Steve's memory and then immediately disrespect it.

Secretary Bucky seems happy to serve his country and does so by choice, and like I said, we don't know how much he knows about SHIELD's corruption or what the government he serves did to Isaiah and the men of his squad but it's safe to say the different lived experiences he's gone through make him view his government in a positive light and he's very likely never been a number 1 enemy of the state, while Primary Bucky looks completely miserable having to wear that pin during the entire trailer.

Of course you could argue that Primary Bucky has become a senate as a way to try and change things, but the thing is he also knows better than most what goes on in the shadows and I'd say has a very grim perspective on how realistic his chances would be. He's seen and experienced how futile bureaucracy in their world is for making significant change, and idk it just doesn't feel like Bucky's style considering he chose vigilantism over "proper" processes with dealing with HYDRA remnants and the Flag-Smashers.

I'd say it's in character for the Bucky of Earth-82111 to go into politics and end up where he is, he led a completely different life that was never shaped the same way as Bucky from Earth-19999. It feels extremely out of character for Bucky from Earth-19999 to go into politics, echoes of each other or not, their initial 26 years of shared life experiences wouldn't overrule the catastrophic changes 19999's experiences would make to his mind set and opinions because people's loyalties and thoughts change depending on what information they have. Primary Bucky knows and has seen things Senate Bucky has not, so his opinion has been changed and updated from where they were at 26.

80 years is a long time for a lot of deeply impactful things to diverge them further away from each other, even if they all echo one another, regardless of how identical the first quarter was. That's just my opinion.

“Looks like breaking all those laws is treating you well.”

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER (2021) dir. Kari Skogland

just curious why does everyone assume Bucky's serum (and also all the other serums) was inferior to Steve's? There's not any evidence to suggest this, aside from Erskine obviously not being the one to administer it. We don't know anything about what exactly is in Bucky, not for certain (we don't even technically know for certain if he had a serum at all it could come from something else Zola did, except maybe word of god) we can only make educated guesses that it's derived from Schmidt's blood, which is I think the same serum as Steve, Schmidt was just the wrong man.

The perfect serum would entirely depend on what you're after and there was a reason Erskine was after a Good Man for the soldier since who the person is that's taking the serum impacts massively on the end result. Most of the language used to describe Steve's serum relies on the context that "perfected" means the ideal soldier, not the strongest/quickest/sharpest sense etc.

I've always interpreted it that Steve is the ideal soldier, he's the right balance, even if he's not necessarily the strongest (Banner would be that, but just look at the Hulk, not exactly the goal) nor has the quickest reflexes (I'd argue this is Bucky, his reaction times seem quicker than most and he disappears from under Steve and other enhanced people's noses constantly). He's undeniably the Ideal, the best all rounder with minimal impact on his psyche, but I don't think that means the other serums (which there seems to be five variations that have created 'successful' ie surviving soldiers) are weaker.

They are probably "weaker" in the sense that they're not producing all rounders like Steve, but again it hinges entirely on what you're after, if you're after the strongest then you get the Hulk, but if you're after the best senses like sight, smell, hearing etc. you might get another variation coming out on top.

The serums are just like any other tools, the best is defined by what you need it for.