'The Falcon And The Winter Soldier' Almost Ended With A Different Title

When The Falcon and the Winter Soldier drew to a close last week, it had itself a new title – Captain America and the Winter Soldier. This title makes sense, since Sam Wilson has gone from Falcon to Captain America, and will be leading his own Captain America movie next.

But according to Falcon and The Winter Soldier head writer Malcolm Spellman, it came close to having yet another different title besides Captain America and The Winter Soldier. And that title is Captain America: The Legend of Curly's Gold! Okay, no it isn't, but that would've been cool, too.

The actual alternate ending title was Captain America and the White Wolf. White Wolf was yet another nickname for Bucky Barnes, and there's a certain logic to giving him that official title at the end of the show, thus rubbing away the stain of the villainous Winter Soldier name. And according to Malcolm Spellman, it almost happened, but in the end, the Marvel rules got in the way.

"I got to see that moniker [White Wolf] in watching one of the cuts, and man, it really affected me emotionally," Spellman said (via CBM). "The reason [the closing title card] still says The Winter Soldier is solely based on Marvel feeling like they needed to keep some of the original title in there to land that feeling. I don't think it had anything to do with where Bucky is going or how Bucky evolved."

Spellman continued: "I think that they felt like if they went too far away from the original title, you wouldn't feel the impact of those words. Again, I'm speculating here, but I believe they wanted the impact of Captain America and the Winter Soldier to land. And I do think that had they done Captain America and the White Wolf, it might not have been as emotional of a landing because it's too much math and too much evolution. I got blindsided by that while watching the cut – but I loved it."

I have no dog in this fight (I didn't watch Falcon and The Winter Soldier), but I personally think Winter Soldier is a much cooler name than White Wolf, so I think Bucky should stick with that. Yes, I know it has a lot of traumatic associations for him. But also, it sounds cool! So you need to pick your battles here, Bucky. Do you want a redemptive name, or a cool name? You decide.