'The Falcon And The Winter Soldier' Will Reinvent Characters From The Earliest Marvel Movies, Says Writer Derek Kolstad

We're still not sure exactly when Marvel Studios' The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is heading to Disney+, but here's another reason to be intrigued by the live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe series. In a new interview, writer Derek Kolstad (John Wick) revealed that the series is going to revisit – and reinvent – some characters who appeared in early MCU films. Read his quote below.

Speaking on the newest episode of the Script Apart podcast, Kolstad teased a little about how The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will make its lead characters more compelling and bring back familiar faces from the MCU:

"It's going to be f***ing cool," Kolstad said. "I'm very proud of and honored by what it came to be. Here's what I'll say: growing up, everyone would give someone like [Batman's sidekick] Robin shit. But Robin's pretty badass, and became pretty badass in the comics. [We're] taking secondary characters and putting them in the primary roles, and [as a result] they're cooler. They're more interesting. There's more humanity, more longing, more suffering and coming to grips with who and what they are. What I will say is that there are characters from the earliest Marvel movies that are coming back. We're layering them in and reinventing them in a way that's gonna shift the storytelling structure. It's f***ing awesome."

The idea of revisiting characters from earlier Marvel movies was briefly explored in last year's Spider-Man: Far From Home. That film brought back the engineer (Peter Billingsley) who was yelled at by Jeff Bridges' Obadiah Stane and made him an integral part of Mysterio's disaffected band of former Stark Industries employees.

As for what other characters from early MCU movies are still alive to be reinvented, the biggest option that jumps out to me is Sam Rockwell's Justin Hammer, who appeared in Iron Man 2 and didn't have nearly enough to do in that disjointed movie. Reporter Christine Everhart (Leslie Bibb) seems ripe for reinvention, as does Raza (Faran Tahir), the leader of the Ten Rings terrorist organization – although if Marvel were to bring him back, maybe he'd be better served in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) seems unlikely to reappear due to the complicated rights issues regarding The Incredible Hulk and Universal, but if they could work something out on that front, maybe Tim Roth's aggro-soldier Emil Blonsky could come back from that film, too.