"Captain America 3: Civil War"

Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Sebastian Stan, 
Jeremy Renner, Scarlet Johanson, Colbie Smulders, Don Cheadle, 
Elizabeth Olson, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Anthony 
Mackie, Paul Rudd, Tom Holland, William Hurt, Martin Freeman, 
Marisa Tomei, Emily VanCamp. With appearances by almost 
everybody else who has been introduced so far. Except Sam 
Jackson for some reason.



The thing I love about recapping a series is that I don't have 
to spend a lot of time on intros and exposition because 
everybody knows who most of these characters are now and what 
happened to them prior to the particular installment I'm on. I 
can just launch right into the recap. However, I will repeat 
something I have mentioned before in previous recaps of this 
series because it affects this movie most of all. Marvel spent 
basically most of the latter half of the 20th Century getting 
their asses kicked by DC Comics. Which makes sense really 
because DC came first and had Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman 
while Marvel had basically cheap rip-offs of those same 
characters. They expanded the universe and added a bunch of new 
characters in the 60s, but still. By the 90s they were broke 
and had to sell off some characters to avoid bankruptcy. They 
chose to sell of the X-Men, which became so wildly popular that 
they were able to tentatively start up this franchise with Iron 
Man. Except they weren't quite able to buy back the X-Men, 
which was happily creating its own franchise entirely 
independent of every other character in the Marvel comics 
universe. All that leads to the biggest problem with this 
movie, which is that the Civil War was supposed to include ALL 
branches of the Marvel universe, but the movie could not even 
mention the X-Men for legal reasons or the Fantastic Four 
presumably because those movies were box office bombs that they 
would rather forget they ever made. Also I guess they would 
have to deal with the fact that the Human Torch looks EXACTLY 
like Captain America. So. With that in mind...

We begin in 1991 in what looks like Siberia. A soldier opens a 
secure HYDRA vault to find a file on Bucky. Scientists thaw him 
from his cryogenesis and start screwing with his head. Some guy 
named Karpov wanders around reciting what sounds like random 
words in Russian. "Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. 
Furnace. Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight car."
   Chrissy: Bingo!
He stops in front of Bucky, who announces in Russian that he's 
ready for his orders. Karpov is like ‘good, because we have a 
mission'. "Sanction and extract. No witnesses."

And we cut to him intercepting a car on motorcycle, forcing it 
to crash into a tree. He pops the trunk and pulls out a case of 
what looks like blue blood bags.

This time instead of a title card, we get the Marvel studios 
intro. This was probably the last time it featured flipping 
comic book pages on the sides of the letters that spell 
"Marvel". Later versions feature images from these movies 
instead.

Present day Lagos. We open on Scarlet Witch sugaring up her 
coffee at a café. Steve's voice comes over the comm to ask what 
she sees. She looks at the officers hovering outside the police 
station across the street and says just some beat cops on a 
quiet street, which makes it a good target actually. Steve 
notes that there's an ATM on the corner and the cross streets 
are both one way and prompts her to tell him what that means. 
She says there are cameras and no easy escape route. Steve says 
yeah, the guy they're looking for isn't afraid of being seen or 
"making a mess" on his way out. He points her toward the truck 
up the street. Natasha, from a couple tables over, cuts in to 
note that it's bulletproof, so their guy must have private 
security with their own guns. Wanda is like ‘okay, but you guys 
remember I'm telekinetic, right?' Natasha is like ‘sure, but 
you need to learn tactical skills and strategies anyway'.
   Chrissy: Pfffffftttttt. Buzzkill.

Falcon, from the roof of a building, asks if anybody ever told 
Natasha she's a wee bit paranoid. She's like ‘sure, but they 
didn't live long.' Steve orders everybody to focus again 
because "this is the best lead we've had on Rumlow in six 
months. I don't want to lose him." Ah, right. He survived the 
destruction of SHIELD HQ in the last Captain America movie 
despite all odds. Steve sees a garbage truck barreling down a 
street and draws Sam's attention to it. A drone flies off Sam's 
back and he steers it underneath the truck, x-raying up into 
it. He announces that it's loaded to max capacity and the 
driver is armed. Natasha concludes that it is being used as a 
"battering ram" and Steve orders them to move in now. Wanda is 
like ‘wait, what? What are we doing?' Sam runs right off the 
roof and unfurls his metal wings.

As the truck approaches the gates of a secure facility, the 
driver jumps out. The driverless truck rams into the gate arm 
and the truck flips and takes out the top of the arch over the 
entrance. Two more u-haul-like trucks drive right in behind it 
and armed men pile out of the backs, shooting anything that 
moves and firing smoke bombs into the windows of the building.

Steve leaps in suddenly and starts taking out the guys left to 
guard outside while the rest disappear into the building. He 
tells the rest of the team what kind of armor and weapons the 
bad guys have. Sam lands on the roof, drop kicking two bad guys 
and shooting a third in the standard cool-but-impractical two 
fisted move all action heroes employ. Wanda flies over his head 
– because apparently she can fly although I don't remember this 
ever being established before – and shoots balls of energy at a 
fourth guy, flipping him up into the air for Sam to mow down.

Sam's drone hovers in front of the building's windows and he 
announces that he can see Rumlow on the third floor. Steve 
tells Wanda to do it just like they rehearsed. "What about the 
gas," she asks bafflingly. He says get it out, then leaps off a 
truck toward the building. She boosts him with her magic ball 
of energy, catapulting him right through a third floor window.

A couple guys make it to a biohazard safe and one of them 
orders the other to "pack up" the little tube of yellow fluid 
inside.
   Chrissy: Actually, that might be the color of the tube 
    itself. The contents are the red stripe in the middle, 
    so probably blood.
   Diandra: Ah. Okay.

Steve takes out about twelve of the original ten guys who 
entered the building (ever notice how bad guys seem to multiply 
in action movies?) and pushes toward the safe, which is already 
empty.

Wanda pulls all the smoke bomb gas out of the front doors and 
spirals it up into the air where it dissipates. Falcon shoots a 
couple guys with rockets launched from the apparently 
inexhaustible arsenal strapped to his back.

Steve announces that Rumlow has a biological weapon. Natasha is 
like ‘copy, I'll get him!' She drives her brand new (probably) 
motorcycle up to the building, sends it into a slide and jumps 
off, letting it sweep one of the approaching guards. Then she 
runs flat into the next one and kicks the guy behind him before 
body slamming him into the ground. 
   Chrissy: I'm sure you opened yourself up to a lot of 
   criticism in that last recap when you complained about 
   how lame Hawkeye is, but...you know...he will never be 
   this badass. 
She proceeds to kick a truck door into one guy's face, knee 
another in the balls and disarm everybody with her mad ninja 
skills. She finally pulls out a weapon – a sort of wrist strap 
she uses to zap a guy – and then a bad guy gets the jump on 
her, dragging her onto the roof of the truck. They fight for a 
bit and she jams the electrobracelet thing into his neck. He 
scoffs that she really thinks that will work on him and throws 
her into the truck with two other guys and a grenade. She 
fights the two guys and gets to the back of the truck as the 
doors blow out. Steve comes out onto a balcony and looks down 
at her laying in the grass coughing smoke. The guy who threw 
her in jumps into a tank and starts firing its guns at him. He 
runs along the whole floor and jumps out the window at the far 
end, hitting an awning and a truck on the way to the ground.
   Chrissy: This is probably how Mofftiss think Sherlock 
    and John survived that bomb in "The Final Problem". 
   Diandra: Ugh. Must you remind me of that train wreck?
   Chrissy: Sorry.
He gives Sam the last known heading on the tank as he peels 
himself painfully off the ground.

In the tank, Rumlow (?) sticks the biohazard tube inside a 
flask and hands it to a skeptical guy, ordering him to take it 
to the airstrip. Then he tells the rest of the men with him 
that they're going to have to ditch the tank. Apparently, the 
driver interprets this to mean "drive into the nearest farmer's 
market and then get out". As they're emerging, one of his guys 
asks where he's going to meet up with them. Rumlow says he 
wasn't planning on it and does something to make metal armor 
come up over his hands before stomping off.

Falcon lands on the roof of the market and scans the crowd, 
identifying the men who are splitting up and heading in several 
directions. Natasha rides up on her bike, crashing it between 
two cars and jumping up onto the hood, grunting that she'll 
take the two guys over here.
   Chrissy: She must go through a LOT of motorcycles.
   Diandra: Wonder if the dealers can see her coming by 
    now.

Steve runs up to the truck and finds a pile of equipment the 
men just ditched. He says one of the men has the weapon. A bomb 
zooms out of the crowd and attaches to his shield. He throws it 
into the air before it explodes and then Rumlow bursts out to 
fight him, cackling that he's been WAITING for this as he 
punches him repeatedly with his metal fists.

Sam takes out two of Rumlow's men and searches them. Neither of 
them have the weapon. Or, as he puts it "I'm empty".
   Chrissy: WAKE ME UP INSIDE!
   Diandra: I'm surprised you didn't say some lewd thing 
    about Steve being able to fill him up.
   Chrissy: Why would I do that? Get your mind out of the 
    gutter, jeez.
   Diandra: Oh, is that how you're going to play it now? 
    I'm the dirty minded one and you're just along for the 
    ride?
   Chrissy: I have no idea what you're talking about.

Natasha fights two guys who are bigger than her and ALMOST 
takes them down, but instead winds up in a Mexican standoff 
with her and one of them pointing guns at each other and the 
other guy holding up the test tube and ordering her to stand 
down before he drops it. Sam flies his drone in and shoots him 
in the neck. Natasha shoots the other guy and catches the tube 
before it hits the ground. She looks at the drone and thanks 
Sam for his help. "Don't thank ME," he says. She grumbles that 
she's really not going to thank "that thing". "His name is 
Redwing," Sam presses. She's like ‘yeah...no.' Sam invites her 
to pet him because "he's cute".
   Chrissy: Okay, dude? We need to have a discussion 
    sometime about what does and doesn't constitute sexual 
    harassment.
   Diandra: Although the fact that you are no longer calling it 
"Little Falcon" is an improvement, I guess.

Steve is still getting thrown around by Rumlow, who broadcasts 
his intent to payback Steve for "dropping a building on my 
face" before attempting to stab him with a short sword. 
   Diandra: Why are you giggling now?
   Chrissy: Nothing. If you didn't catch it, I'm not 
    pointing it out.
Steve rips the entire metal glove the sword sprang from off 
Rumlow's arm and throws it down. Another sword springs from the 
other glove and Rumlow swings it at him. Somehow Steve gets the 
upper hand and knocks him down. Rumlow removes the mask he's 
been wearing this whole time and Steve hesitates as he sees the 
scarring and mutilation covering half of Rumlow's face. Rumlow 
is like ‘what do you think? Am I still pretty?' Steve recovers 
and asks who the buyer for the biological weapon is. Rumlow is 
like ‘I'm pretty sure you knew him from when you guys used to 
[cough] shine each other's shoes in the military. Name's 
Bucky?' Steve is like ‘MY EX WOULD NEVER...wait...what?' Rumlow 
says yeah, he got really "weepy" about it until they scrambled 
his brain again. He gave Rumlow a message: "he said ‘please 
tell Rogers: when you gotta go, you gotta go.'"
   Chrissy: Of course, he had just downed an entire Big 
   Gulp, so that might not mean anything.

Rumlow finishes that Rogers is coming with him and pushes the 
button on a control hidden in his hand. A ball of energy 
appears around him, trapping the blast and Steve looks over to 
see Wanda controlling it. She grunts and yells and tosses 
Rumlow up into the nearby building, blasting a chunk from the 
corner of it. People scatter, screaming, and she and Steve 
stare at the damage. Steve tells Sam to call fire and rescue 
and dramatic music plays to convey the idea that – even though 
this is only a fraction of the damage they have done in just 
about every other movie to date and this wasn't even really 
their fault – this is a BIG DISASTER.

Et alors, nous coupons à...I'm sorry, I seem to have 
accidentally switched the language track for a moment there. We 
cut to a Hey It's That Lady: Hope Davis, playing the piano and 
singing. Hey It's That Guy John Slattery pokes at a lump on the 
couch behind her and she stops singing to tell the lump to wake 
up and say goodbye to dad. A de-aged Tony in a Santa hat crawls 
out from under a blanket and jokes that he loves coming home 
for Christmas because it's just before his father leaves town. 
Mom, trying to head off the coming argument before it starts, 
tells Dad to be nice because "he's been studying abroad." Dad 
asks what the broad's name is. "Candace," Tony says without any 
irony. Dad takes the hat off his head and tells him to make 
sure he doesn't burn the house down before Monday. Tony says 
oh, you're coming back Monday? Good, now I know how to plan my 
weekend. He asks where they're going. Mom says to the Bahamas. 
Tony says yeah, with a quick pit stop at the Pentagon, right? 
Hope you like the food in their cafeteria. Dad sneers "they" 
say sarcasm is a "metric for potential. If that's true, you'll 
make a great man someday." Ha.
   Chrissy: Good news, Dee, we're gonna be awesome someday.
   Diandra: Or great men, which is kind of...alarming.

Dad goes to get the luggage and Mom comes over to say that Dad 
really does miss Tony and he should understand that he's going 
to miss them too because this is the last time they will all be 
together. "You know what's about to happen."
   Chrissy: I thought you were kidding when you said you 
   planned to murder him.
She encourages him to say something lest he regret this 
forever. He turns to Dad as he re-enters the room and says "I 
love you, Dad. And I know you did the best you could." Mom 
kisses his cheek and both parents walk away, revealing present-
day Tony standing in the corner. "That's how I wish it 
happened," he says. He calls what's going on here "Binary 
Augmented Retro-Framing" which he belatedly realizes makes the 
acronym BARF and grumbles that he really needs to come up with 
a better name for it. He says basically, it hijacks the 
hippocampus to clear out traumatic memories. It's really 
expensive and it doesn't change anything, but... He takes off 
the fancy looking glasses he's wearing and the scene melts away 
in digital code like he was plugged into the Matrix.
   Chrissy: And in conclusion, we have made great 
    improvements to our CGI capabilities since that 
    flashback scene in the X-Men where we made Patrick 
    Stewart and Ian McKellan look like androids.
   Diandra: Now it just looks like we airbrushed the living 
    hell out of Robert Downey Jr's face and then used the 
    same CGI we used on Chris Evans in the first Captain 
    America movie to put his head on a scrawny ass body.

It turns out he's standing on the stage in an auditorium at 
MIT. A banner notes that he is the guest alumni speaker. He 
says this little experiment costs more than 600 million 
dollars, so no one in their right mind would ever fund the 
project to develop it. He starts rambling about MIT's mission 
statement and commitment to dealing with the challenges of the 
modern world. He thinks the challenges they are facing today 
are greater than ever before, so he took it upon himself to 
fund every one of the projects they are working on right now. 
He calls it reframing the future. He blinks at the teleprompter 
where a line introducing Pepper as the head of his foundation 
has appeared. He swallows, looks like he might cry for a 
second, then ignores the prompter and ends his speech with "go 
break some eggs." Everyone politely ignores that he just stared 
into space for a minute there like he forgot what he was saying 
and applauds. 

Backstage, a lackey fawns over Tony like I imagine Steve Jobs 
paid somebody to do every time he gave a speech. Oh, you're so 
brilliant!  We are all not worthy to bask in the glow of your 
genius! And you're so handsome and generous and speaking of 
which, are faculty getting any of that money you're giving out? 
He starts rambling about this idea he has for a self-cooking 
hot dog and Tony cuts him off like ‘yeah, I have to go drain 
the lizard. Bye!' A woman runs up to apologize for not updating 
the teleprompter. He brushes it off, says he'll be right back 
and disappears into the next hallway. He stands in front of the 
men's room for a second, then goes further down the hall where 
Alfre Woodard is waiting. She makes possibly coded chit chat 
about what a nice gesture that was giving those students all 
that money and "they say there's a correlation between 
generosity and guilt" but hey, he has enough money to assuage 
the massive amounts of guilt he's obviously feeling. 

He gives her a pained smile and pushes the button on the 
elevator she is standing in front of. He asks if she's going up 
even though she was obviously just waiting for him. She reaches 
into her tiny clutch purse and he panics and tries to stop her. 
She stares at him like ‘get your hands off me, asshole' and he 
apologizes. "It's an occupational hazard." She says she's just 
a grunt for the state department, which probably explains why 
her spy skills are seriously lacking. Her job is mind-numbingly 
boring, but it gave her the security to raise her son. She 
slaps a picture into Tony's chest and finishes with "you 
murdered him. In Sokovia. Not that that matters in the least to 
you."
   Chrissy: Okay, so you DO see why he thought maybe you 
   would try to kill him?

She rants about how he and his spandex asshole brigade think 
they're fighting for the little guys, but they really aren't. 
They don't give a shit about the little guys. Nobody is going 
to "avenge" her son and she holds him entirely responsible for 
his death. She storms off and Tony looks pained.

New Avengers Plaza. A television is tuned to a news broadcast 
about a confrontation that killed eleven Wakandans. It turns 
out to be about the "we kept the bad guy from the last Captain 
America alive so we could kill him in the first few minutes 
here" incident. Which took place in an actual Nigerian city, 
but the anchor explains that the Wakandans were there on an 
outreach mission. They cut to "King T'chaka" of Wakanda at the 
UN raving about Wakandan blood being spilled on foreign soil 
and how the people who are supposed to protect the innocent are 
just as guilty as the criminals they were trying to stop. If 
you're keeping track (and acknowledging The Incredible Hulk as 
an installment in this series like I forgot to do), we are 
thirteen movies into this canon and just now seriously 
addressing how destructive the heroes can be and how that 
affects the lives of everybody who lives in this universe. 
   Chrissy: And this movie came out the same year as 
    "Batman VS Superman", which basically did the same 
    thing.
   Diandra: Did they? I seem to remember them making a half 
    ass attempt at addressing the issue and then just going 
    about their business and nuking an entire island to 
    stop the villain.
   Chrissy: Pretty much.

"Victory at the expense of the innocent is no victory at all," 
the king concludes. It turns out to only be Steve watching 
this. He mutes the TV and angsts all over the place. Then he 
realizes he can still hear the broadcast coming from another 
room in the facility. It's Wanda's. He sneaks in and mutes hers 
too as the commentator is questioning why someone like her has 
the authority to go after bad guys on foreign soil. Oh, now 
we're going to argue jurisdiction? She moans that it's all her 
fault. Steve says no, he should have figured out Rumlow had a 
bomb before she had to intervene to save his ass.
   Chrissy: Guys, calm down. There's plenty of blame for 
   both of you.
Steve rambles that he was distracted because Rumlow said the 
magic word "Bucky" and suddenly he was having flashbacks.
   Chrissy: This would double nicely as his safeword.
   Diandra: Aaaaaaaaannnnnnnd you're back. You had me 
    worried there. 

Steve sits on Wanda's bed beside her and waxes philosophical 
about how they try to save as many people as they can with this 
job, but they can't save EVERYONE. And they have to make peace 
with that. Vision walks through the wall suddenly (since when 
does he have this ability?) and Wanda chastises him that they 
talked about this habit he has of invading privacy. He points 
out that the door was open, though, so...Steve asked him to 
tell him when Tony arrived. Vision offers to use the door to 
leave if it will make them more comfortable, then remembers to 
add that Tony brought a guest: the secretary of state. In this 
universe, the secretary is Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross and he 
is played by William Hurt and he was in the movie I didn't 
realize was an official installment of the MCU because some 
idiot assured me it could totally be skipped.
   Chrissy: The fact that Robert Downey Jr was in the post 
    credit scene didn't tip you off?
   Diandra: I'm pretty sure I didn't know about post credit 
    scenes yet back then, so I might not have stuck around 
    to watch it.

In a conference room downstairs, Thunderbolt is telling the 
story about how a heart attack interrupted his golf game five 
years ago. It took 13 hours of surgery and a triple bypass and 
gave him some much needed perspective on life. Getting to the 
point, he says the world owes the Avengers for all the times 
they've saved their asses, but not everybody sees them as 
heroes. Some use the word "vigilantes". Personally, he thinks a 
US based group of people with enhanced abilities and no 
international decorum is dangerous. Also, the fact that they 
don't seem to care about how much destruction they leave behind 
is alarming. He pulls up examples of that damage and 
destruction on a screen: footage of Hulk smashing buildings in 
New York in "Avengers", helicarriers crashing in "Winter 
Soldier" and all of Sokovia being ripped out of the ground and 
blown up in "Age of Ultron". And then there's the stuff we just 
saw from Lagos, which looks pitiful by comparison. Steve begs 
him to stop. Thunderbolt is like ‘yeah, obviously I was done 
already if I'm not allowed to talk about things that happened 
in movies Captain America wasn't in'. He says they've been 
operating with unlimited powers and no immunity for four years 
and everyone thinks it's time to reign that in a little.

He pulls out a fat government document titled "Sokovia Accords" 
and plops it in front of Wanda, declaring that it is the 
"solution" to the problem.
   Chrissy: We decided on the name "accord" because it 
    tested better than "civic" or "CR-Z".
   Diandra: Har, har.
He says it's already been approved by 117 countries and 
stipulates that the Avengers are no longer a private 
organization, but a sort of military arm of the UN. Steve 
argues that the Avengers were formed to keep all the world safe 
and he thinks that's exactly what they've done. Thunderbolt is 
like ‘uh-huh...do you happen to know where Thor and Hulk are 
right now?'
   Chrissy: Um...either on Asgard trying to kill Thor's 
    sister or some garbage planet somewhere fighting each 
    other for Jeff Goldblum's entertainment. 
   Diandra: Either way, I don't see how it is relevant to 
    what is going on here now so I'm just going to assume 
    you mentioned it so you can establish a timeline for 
    these movies.
Thunderbolt thinks not being able to track those two is 
equivalent to misplacing a couple megaton nukes. Uh...except 
they are intelligent life forms that can be reasoned with. And 
in a few years you're going to face a bigger potential threat 
from an orange skinned bully with a Twitter account having a 
temper tantrum. Thunderbolt says the world works via systems of 
compromise and reassurance and this IS a compromise solution.

James – or, since I'm doing silly nicknames, Rhodey – prompts 
that there must be contingencies in this fat ass document. 
Thaddeus is like ‘why don't you go ask the UN when they meet to 
ratify it in three days'. He thinks they should talk it over 
among themselves. Natasha asks what happens if they make a 
decision he doesn't like. "Then you retire," he says flatly.

Cleveland. A car crashes into another parked car outside 
Karpov's house. The horrible driver tries to hail him, offering 
to "take care of it" instead of calling the police. This whole 
scenario being understandably suspicious, Karpov eyes his gun 
and debates with himself. But he opens the door anyway and gets 
knocked out.

Sometime later, the agent with the flimsiest ploy to break into 
Karpov's house that somehow still succeeded unearths the stuff 
on Bucky from where Karpov hid it in a wall. There is also 
stuff on Karpov in there. He menaces in the direction of 
Karpov, who is hanging upside down over a tub filling with 
water. Karpov demands to know who he is. The horrible but 
incredibly lucky agent says his name is Zemo.
   Chrissy: He's looking for his son. Have you seen him? He 
    has one arm shorter than the other...
   Diandra: That's Nemo.
   Chrissy: I thought that was the bad guy from the first 
    "Star Trek" reboot.
   Diandra: That's Nero.
   Chrissy: Ah, yes. Nero Mostrel.
   Diandra: That...was an actor and his name was Zero.
   Chrissy: Well, that would be a more appropriate name for 
    this schmuck.
   Diandra: I have a headache.
   Chrissy: Well, I would have just gone with "you killed 
    my father, prepare to die", but you objected last time 
    I shoehorned that joke in.

Zemo announces he will repeat his question. There was a 
question in there? Oops. "Mission report. December 16, 1991." 
Karpov asks how Zemo found him. Zemo reminds the audience that 
Black Widow released all of HYDRA's data to the public when she 
and Captain America took SHIELD down. Most of it was encrypted, 
so it was still basically unreadable to most people, "but I 
have experience and patience." You really expect us to believe 
a seasoned spy who was able to decrypt secure files just got 
the better of a paranoid Russian agent by crashing into the car 
parked outside his house like the world's worst driver? He 
repeats his "question" and Karpov tells him to go to hell. Zemo 
turns off the water dripping into the tub and does his best to 
look menacing, telling Karpov he really doesn't give a rip 
about HYDRA or Karpov and he could kill him without a second 
thought, but it would make his mission a lot more difficult. 
Karpov glowers at him and Nemo turns the water back on. Karpov 
says "hail HYDRA" before basically committing suicide because 
it's pretty obvious the top of the tub was only covering his 
nose and not his mouth and he has to work to get his whole head 
submerged.

Back at Avengers Plaza, the team members are arguing while 
Steve flips through the accord. Sam asks how long after they 
agree to something like this it would take before they are 
lojacked and treated like they're under permanent house arrest. 
James reminds him that over a hundred countries are ready to 
sign this thing and the man who gave them a head's up has a 
congressional medal of honor. Because they're both military men 
so I guess that would make an impression on them. Vision pipes 
up that he has an "equation". He says in the eight years since 
Tony revealed himself to the world as Iron Man the number of 
"enhanced" people has grown exponentially. Also, not at all 
coincidentally, the number of catastrophic, potentially world-
ending events has increased along with it. Steve asks if he's 
suggesting this is all their fault. Vision is like ‘not 
intentionally, maybe, but the more of us there are, the more of 
an appealing target we become to antagonists'. 
   Chrissy: Huh, so you're saying the more enhanced people 
    there are, the more enhanced people will be drawn in to 
    test their abilities? Why don't we just create a 
    registry of all known people with enhanced abilities 
    then?
   Diandra: Yep. If this whole thing sounds familiar, it's 
    because it's effectively the same as the plot of the 
    second X-Men movie. How much more awesome this movie 
    could have been if Marvel hadn't sold off the X-Men for 
    over a decade before finally bringing them back under 
    the same control we'll never know.
   Chrissy: Storm would be joining her husband Black 
    Panther, Wolverine would be joining the avengers to 
    track down Zero (who would actually be an enhanced 
    named Nitro for exactly the reasons you think) and 
    Deadpool would be hunting down people who failed the 
    sign the registry until being kidnapped and tortured 
    and switching teams.
   Diandra: Okay, so I guess we do know. It would have been 
    way more awesome. 
   Chrissy: But if you included ALL the characters involved 
    in the Civil War in the comics, that would probably be 
    enough names to bankrupt Marvel again, so...

Natasha notes that Tony is being unusually silent, having 
hovered in the background during Thaddeus' entire speech AND 
however long they've been arguing after it. Steve thinks that's 
because he's already made up his mind about this. Tony grumbles 
that he just has a headache and stomps over to make himself 
coffee, getting upset when he finds coffee grounds in the sink 
disposal.
   Chrissy: As long as we're entertaining possible 
    alternatives to this thing...is it possible this is 
    just a spat between roommates on some level?
   Diandra: If we're going to go ahead with that headcanon, 
    why stop at roommates? Why not assume Pepper left 
    because she caught Tony in bed with Steve when they had 
    what they assumed was just a drunken one-night stand 
    and now Tony is pissed that he lost her and SOMEBODY in 
    the house that Steve and Natatsha technically run is 
    leaving dirty dishes in the sink and flushing condoms 
    down the toilet and CHARLES XAVIER NEVER HAS TO PUT UP 
    WITH SHIT LIKE THIS.
   Chrissy: That's...quite an elaborate headcanon. Are you 
    writing a fic or something?
   Diandra: No. Stop giving me things to write. I can 
    headcanon stuff without having to actually write a fic.
   Chrissy: How's that pregnant Loki story going, by the 
    way?
   Diandra: Shut up. I hate you.

Tony projects the picture of Alfre's son from his phone to show 
them all and recites a bunch of stuff about him he probably 
researched since. He was brilliant, but he decided to spend the 
summer before he graduated college in Sokovia building houses 
for poor people and the Avengers dropped part of the city on 
him. Well...technically Ultron did that, but you built him and 
this all just reinforces Vision's suggestion that heroes breed 
villains, so... Tony has come to believe that they DO need 
somebody checking their behavior and if they can't accept 
limits and boundaries then they are no better than the people 
they fight. Steve frowns and notes that you don't just "give 
up" when a kid dies on your watch. Tony says he isn't. Steve 
argues that agreeing to these "limitations" just means they're 
shifting the blame for their actions onto somebody else, who 
gets to decide what actions they can and can't take. James 
thinks Steve is being "dangerously arrogant" because they'd 
answer to the United Nations, not HYDRASHIELD or a war council 
of elders of the sacred order or something. Steve says no, but 
it's "run by people with agendas" which can change at any time. 
Um...so is literally every other human-run agency. Tony argues 
that if he hadn't changed the purpose of his father's company, 
Stark Industries would still be making weapons instead 
of...technology that can totally be weaponized in the wrong 
hands. Steve thinks that kind of reinforces his point, because 
that was TONY'S decision and with this treaty they would 
forfeit their right to make their own choices. However flawed 
they are, he still thinks they're better off not having to run 
everything by a committee. 

Tony tries to reason via the argument that if they don't agree 
to this now, they'll be FORCED to agree to it later. Wanda 
jumps in to make it about the Nigeria incident again: they 
would come for her. Vision argues that they would protect her. 
Natasha, seeing alliances forming, argues that Tony is right 
because "if we have one hand on the wheel we can still steer. 
If we take it off..." Wait...isn't that what Steve is saying, 
not Tony? Sam reminds her that she was the one who told the 
government to kiss her ass a few years ago. She says yeah, 
well...they've made a lot of public mistakes since then and 
they need to win back "their" trust. Tony is like ‘wait, you 
agree with me? Really?' Natasha grumbles at him to not make her 
regret it. 

Before they can argue any further, Steve's phone rings. It's 
Peggy's...daughter was it? Nurse?...telling him she died. He 
drops everything and storms out.

London. A children's choir sings as pallbearers (one of which 
is Steve) carry Peggy's casket – draped in a Union Jack - down 
the aisle of a church. The priest announces that Sharon Carter 
would like to say some words. In the pews, Sam elbows Steve 
like ‘dude, did you know the girl you have the hots for was 
related to your girlfriend from WWII?' as Agent 13 takes the 
podium. 
   Chrissy: That's actually not at all surprising in the 
   world of Science Fiction.
Sharon begins by establishing that Peggy was her aunt. She 
looks pointedly at Steve and then continues talking about how 
Peggy had this picture in her office of herself with JFK which 
was cool and everything, but it was also daunting so she never 
told anybody she was related to Peggy.
   Chrissy: Um...sure. 
   Diandra: In other words, we just decided this and needed 
    a way to explain why she didn't mention it before.
   Chrissy: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

Sharon talks about how she discussed the fact that Peggy was 
both a diplomat and a bad ass spy at a time when women were 
expected to stay barefoot and pregnant at home. Peggy told her 
to "compromise where you can", but...you know...don't take shit 
from people when you can't. "Even if everyone is telling you 
that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole 
world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself 
like a tree, look them in the eye and say no." She looks right 
at Steve, who must be getting a headache with all these anvils 
falling from the sky on his head.

After the funeral, Steve meets up in the empty church with 
Natasha, who was apparently in there somewhere. He says when he 
was first thawed out he thought everyone he had once known was 
dead and he was so happy to find out that Peggy was still 
alive. Natasha smiles and notes that they were lucky to have 
each other. Steve asks how many of them signed after he left 
the room. She lists the obvious ones: Tony, his friend James 
and his android formerly known as JARVIS. Steve asks about 
Clint for some reason. Natasha says he's supposedly retired. 
Wanda hasn't made a decision, but Natasha is going to go to 
Vienna and sign the regi- ACCORD. Sorry. She invites Steve to 
come along because "just because it's the path of least 
resistance doesn't mean it's the wrong path."
   Chrissy: Just...usually.
She thinks it's important they all stick together in whatever 
form they have to take. Steve reiterates the giving up freedom 
of choice view and says he can't sign. She sighs that she knew 
that, but she didn't want him to be alone today. Um...he 
wasn't. Sam was sitting right next to him.
   Chrissy: And Sam has always loved him with fewer 
   conditions anyway.
Natasha hugs Steve and we cut to Vienna.

Vienna. Home of the sausage.
   Chrissy: No, it really...no. Please tell me you didn't 
    just use that as setup for a joke about somebody having 
    an enormous sausage or something.
   Diandra: What? No. Why would you assume such a thing?
   Chrissy: Oh, I see. This is payback for earlier. Touche.
   Diandra: I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking 
    about.

On a balcony somewhere, a man I really don't feel like 
pretending I don't know is Black Panther is watching all the 
reporters on the ground discussing the signing of the accord. 
He goes back inside where Natasha is signing some paperwork. He 
notes that she seems to be doing okay with the public attention 
considering her last trip to Washington where she made her 
feelings about politicians very clear. Oh, is that why we 
brought that up again earlier? Okay. She's like yeah, my 
opinion hasn't changed that much. T'challa says that's a 
relief, actually, because he might agree with the accord, but 
he's not so sure about the politics of this. "Two people in a 
room can get more done than a hundred." You should write 
fortune cookies, dude. His dad is passing by at that moment, 
overhears and adds "unless you need to move a piano."

Natasha formally apologizes to the King for what happened in 
Nigeria. T'chaka thanks her for that and her agreeing to join 
them on this initiative, but notes his disappointment in 
Captain America.
   Chrissy: Yeah, in about a year the whole world will be 
   voicing disappointment with ALL of America, so...
She leaves as the assembly is called to order and the king and 
prince switch to their native Wakandan (otherwise known as one 
of the dialects of South Africa). Dad notes that Jr. is getting 
pretty good at diplomacy for someone who claims to not believe 
in it. T'challa just smiles and they share an "I'm proud of 
you, son" moment. Except they don't actually say the words 
because men.

Apparently T'chaka is giving the speech here too as we cut to 
him saying the people of Wakanda were forced to question their 
legacy when they found out their stolen super strength metal 
was being used to make a super weapon and then their people 
were killed in that goodwill mission in Nigeria, so...that was 
kind of the final straw. But they're going to keep fighting to 
better the world they've basically ignored forever and he 
thanks the Avengers for supporting this initiative. 
   Chrissy: Well...SOME of them.
T'challa, up on a walkway, sees some suspicious activity 
surrounding one of the news vans outside. Namely that people 
seem to be fleeing it. He yells at everyone to get down and 
runs toward the podium, not quite reaching it before an 
explosion takes out the whole wall behind his father. The whole 
street outside turns to a cloud of black smoke. 

As the dust settles, T'challa reaches his father in the rubble 
and cradles his dead body, crying.

Sharon and Steve are walking through what looks like a hotel 
lobby. She says yeah, her mom tried to talk her out of it when 
she decided to enlist, but Aunt Peggy bought her a thigh 
holster. They stop at an elevator. She pushes the button and 
they stand around awkwardly like ‘soooo...you live around 
here?' She says she's stationed in Berlin as part of the joint 
terrorism task force. He's like ‘oh, okay...neat...um...' He 
finally broaches the subject of that time she was spying on him 
as Agent 13 and asks if Peggy knew about that operation.
   Chrissy: It was her idea, actually. She assured me you 
   were a hopeless virgin who would never be able to work 
   up the courage to ask me out, so I could do my job in 
   peace.
Sharon says no, she didn't want Peggy to have to keep another 
secret from Steve. They stare at each other as the elevator 
arrives and, as if sensing this is dangerously close to her 
inviting him up to her room, Sam appears to pull him aside with 
a vague "there's something you need to see."
   Chrissy: It's in my room.

No, of course it's the news story about the explosion. But 
apparently they did all go up to Sharon's room to watch it 
because she's pacing back and forth talking to somebody on the 
phone urgently.
   Chrissy: Well, this evening isn't going to go how 
   ANYBODY was hoping.
Reporter says 12 are confirmed dead and dozens more are 
injured. One of the dead is King T'chaka. Also, they have 
footage of the man they suspect planted the bomb. His name is 
James Barnes, aka, Bucky, aka the Winter Soldier. Steve gulps. 
Sharon gets off the phone and announces that she has to go to 
work.
   Chrissy: You guys can have the room. You know...in case 
   you need to do some life affirming once it sinks in that 
   either of you could have been there.

We jump right to her marching around near the explosion site, 
giving people orders. She walks past a traumatized T'challa 
sitting on a park bench and the camera stays with him. Natasha 
sidles up to him and offers sympathy. We focus on his hands 
worrying the ring his father was wearing as he says that in his 
culture death isn't an end. It's the point where Bast and 
Sekhmet escort you to the "green veldt where you can run 
forever". Natasha says it sounds "peaceful". That's because it 
sounds just like every life-after-death myth from every world 
religion throughout history. T'challa says his father thought 
so too, but... "I am not my father." He puts the ring on. 
Sensing where he's going with this, she reminds him that the 
task force will decide who brings in Bucky. He's like ‘yeah, 
they won't have to bring him in after I'm done with him.'

Natasha just watches him go and gets distracted when Steve 
calls to check on her. She looks around to make sure nobody is 
eavesdropping and is like ‘look, I know you have a whole love 
affair thing with Bucky, but you need to stay away from this.' 
He asks if she's threatening to have him arrested. She says no, 
but somebody else will because those are the new rules. Steve 
argues that if Bucky did this, he's gone totally off the deep 
end and Steve needs to bring him in. She's like ‘what? Because 
he'll listen to you?' He says no, because Bucky is less likely 
to kill him. Or...at least succeed in killing him.

We see that Steve is standing across the street from her as he 
hangs up and goes into a coffee shop. Sam is waiting for him. 
He's like ‘she told you to butt out, didn't she? You know, 
maybe you should listen to her.' Steve argues that Bucky would 
do the same for him. Uh...if he remembers you, which you have 
no way of guaranteeing. Sam says he'd like to explore all the 
options here before jumping in the foxhole with Steve. Not that 
he won't do it anyway, just...you know... Sharon appears next 
to them and bemoans that everybody is suddenly spotting Bucky 
everywhere since that tip went out on the news. She hands Steve 
a file with the more credible leads and says he might want to 
get a move on because they have orders to take him down on 
sight.

In a hotel room, Zero is reading those random words in Russian 
from the beginning of the movie out of the book he stole. 
Homecoming, one, freight car... He is interrupted by a knock at 
the door and a woman telling him in German that she brought his 
breakfast. He opens the door, completely unworried, and answer 
is German that he could smell it thought the door. She rambles 
about how he always gets the same thing and offers to make him 
something different. It should be noted that we cannot see this 
woman or the tray of food she is ostensibly holding, which is 
probably why Chrissy is giggling right now.
   Chrissy: I'm just saying this totally sounds like the 
    kind of code words a spy would use to order a hooker. 
    Extra bacon...black coffee...make the eggs a little 
    runny if you know what I mean. And make sure the toast 
    doesn't have anything on it because last time it had a 
    lot of hair. I mean cinnamon. Sorry, I'm new to this.
   Diandra: Ew.

She offers to bring it in, but he takes it and shoos her away 
before she can come in. The camera backs up so we can see the 
large device just in the next room. Okay, so...when was this?

Elsewhere, Bucky is speaking Romanian to a fruit vendor. The 
chyron belatedly tells us we're in Bucharest. He spots a news 
vendor staring at him before dropping his paper and running 
away. He goes to pick up the guy's paper and sees the headline 
about the Winter Soldier.

Bucky's apartment. I'm assuming. Steve wanders through, taking 
in the complete lack of anything that makes it look like it's 
actually a place that somebody lives aside from the slightly 
rumpled sleeping bag on top of a bare mattress. He pulls a 
notebook from on top of the refrigerator and finds a picture of 
himself in it.
   Chrissy: Definitely Bucky. Bet it's a little sticky.
Sam warns him over comms that German special forces are 
approaching them, but completely fails to notice that Bucky has 
returned to the apartment and is standing right behind Steve. 
Steve turns, startles slightly and then just stands there 
looking Bucky up and down.
   Chrissy: Man, you've really let yourself go.

He asks if Bucky recognizes him. Bucky says yeah, he read about 
him in that museum exhibit. Steve ignores Sam's continued 
status updates on the German troops and tells Bucky. "I know 
you're nervous. And you have plenty of reason to be."
   Chrissy: Oh, did we switch scripts? This sounds like a 
    porno.
   Diandra: It won't hurt if you relax, I promise! 
Bucky says yeah, okay, he's a little more up to date than that, 
but that wasn't him in Vienna because he doesn't do that sort 
of thing anymore. Sam announces that the Germans are entering 
the building. Steve says the people who think he DID do that 
Vienna bombing are coming for him right now and they have 
orders to kill. Bucky is like ‘yeah, okay. That makes sense.' 
Steve says it doesn't have to end like this and reminds Bucky 
that he saved him in the last non-Avengers movie. There must 
have been a reason, right? Bucky claims to not remember why he 
did it. Steve says he does.
   Chrissy: Oh, right. I keep forgetting this isn't the 4os 
   anymore and we can talk openly about that time we gave 
   each other handjobs without shame.

A smoke grenade comes through one of the windows. Steve smacks 
it back out. Another launches at Bucky, who kicks it to Steve. 
Steve slaps the shield over it, containing the explosion. Bucky 
flips a table to block a door the troops are trying to come 
through, then flips the mattress as well for no obvious reason. 
He and Steve fight the guys who come through the windows. Bucky 
opens a door and Steve tries to stop him from running. Bucky 
knocks him to the floor and punches through the floorboards by 
his head, unearthing a backpack. He mutters that he's not going 
to kill anyone and tosses the backpack through the door. Steve 
jumps up and uses his shield to protect Bucky as the soldiers 
start shooting. Bucky seems to throw Steve at one of the 
soldiers, then knocks down the other with a cinder block that 
was just lying around for some reason. He continues fighting 
right out the front door, using his metal arm as a shield and 
the troops' battering ram as a weapon. Steve trails behind him, 
snatching a walkie from one of the troops before he can finish 
telling his boss that Bucky is getting away.

They fight for a while before Bucky jumps over the railing on 
the stairs and falls several floors before catching the rail 
again with his metal arm. He runs right out the nearest window, 
leaping to the roof of the next building, which turns out to be 
where his backpack landed. He grabs it and starts to run before 
a black human figure swoops in and kicks him back down. He 
blinks as Black Panther – in full body leotard - strikes a 
fighting pose in front of him, claws springing from the tips of 
his fingers. They fight.

Just as Bucky is seemingly losing, Steve arrives at the hallway 
he jumped from, takes stock of where everybody is, including 
Sam flying in the distance, and takes a running leap across to 
the roof. Sam asks who the hell the new guy is. Steve says he's 
working on it. Black Panther is distracted when a helicopter 
flies by and shoots at them. Sam takes out the helicopter in 
much the same way any other bird would take down a flying 
machine – by flying into it. Bucky makes a run for it, Panther 
and Steve giving chase. They make it to the ground and then 
jump down into a traffic tunnel and run among the cars driven 
by people who are no doubt sick and tired of bullshit like 
this. A police SUV gives chase, the driver yelling at Steve to 
STAND DOWN. Steve jumps on the SUVs hood to stop it, throws the 
driver out and steals the SUV.
   Chrissy: Yeah, he still doesn't have a lot of respect 
   for German authorities.

Panther, somehow behind Steve, leaps onto the back of the 
truck. Steve swerves a couple times, then tells Sam that he's 
having trouble shaking him. Several more cop cars appear and 
Steve has to swerve into oncoming traffic to dodge them. Bucky, 
meanwhile, runs free of the tunnel and grabs the first guy on a 
motorcycle he sees, knocking him from the bike and flipping it 
around and jumping on in one slick move. Somehow, Steve is 
still following. They enter another tunnel because Europeans 
love their traffic tunnels. Panther jumps from the SUV onto the 
bike. They grapple and Bucky manages to throw him off. Panther 
gets his bearings and goes to leap back into the fray just as 
Sam flies over, hitching a ride on him. Sam looks down like 
‘oh, hell no! Some guy dressed like catwoman did NOT just hitch 
a ride on the dude with wings'. 

Bucky tosses a bomb at the overhang at the end of the tunnel. 
Sam pulls up short to avoid the blast and Panther leaps free, 
tackling Bucky from the bike. Since this chase didn't have 
nearly enough stunts yet, Steve arrives at the blast zone and 
just leaps from the SUV, running from it as it flips over the 
rubble and tackling Panther from Bucky. Cop cars and a 
helicopter surround them as they finally stop fighting. James 
flies in in full War Machine armor, points his shoulder gun at 
them and orders them to stand down. Steve puts his shield on 
his back and James congratulates him on becoming a criminal. 
Sam wanders out of the rubble like ‘yeah, okay, I surrender.' 
T'challa retracts the claws and takes off the Panther mask. 
James is like ‘um...sorry, your highness, but you're still 
under arrest.'

Back at the Avengers complex, Vision is trying to follow a 
recipe, pinching paprika into something bubbling on the stove 
while a jazzy piano song plays on a stereo. Wanda comes in to 
ask if he's making paprikash. He says yes, he was hoping making 
a traditional food of her homeland would cheer her up. She goes 
right up to the pot to taste it. He apologizes that he's never 
actually tasted food before, so he's not really sure what it 
should taste like. She grabs a spice jar and he backs up to 
leave her to it. Then he launches into a conversation awkwardly 
with "no one dislikes you, Wanda." 
   Chrissy: Yeah, except nearly everybody on Tumblr.
She's like ‘oooookay. Thanks?' He says no, it's an involuntary 
response in their brain. They are afraid of her. As he's not 
human, Vision doesn't have this response. She laughs for...some 
reason...and rambles some philosophical stuff about her ability 
CHANGING her fundamentally and she's not totally sure she's 
still HER and whatever everyone else sees her as is definitely 
not really her. Or something. The dialogue in this movie is 
kind of weird.

Vision touches the stone in his forehead and says he's not 
totally sure what it is aside from some otherworldly thing that 
powered a staff used by Thor's younger brother and Strucker 
used it to give her and her brother their abilities. And it's 
part of him now. She asks if he fears it. He says he wishes to 
understand it because the more he understands, the less it 
controls him. How very human. He hopes to maybe one day control 
it. Wanda, redirecting the suddenly heavy conversation, notes 
that whatever he put in this thing she's doctoring isn't 
paprika so she's going to go to the store to...get 
some...maybe. He zooms in front of her to stop her lame exit 
and offers to order pizza instead. She asks why he's trying to 
stop her from leaving. He ducks his head and admits it's a 
safety thing. She reminds him she can protect herself. He says 
no, not HER protection. Tony is trying to avoid her getting 
into another public "incident" while they're still negotiating 
the terms of the mutant regi-accords. 

Berlin. Bucky is being transported via armored vehicle full of 
armed men in combat gear. The truck is being escorted by 
multiple squad cars. This does not seem excessive given the 
difficulty with corralling "enhanced" people so far. In another 
less-armored car, Steve, Sam and T'challa are making awkward 
small talk. "So," says Sam. "You like cats?" Steve chastises 
him and T'challa just continues to stare into space like ‘I 
WILL MURDER ANYONE WHO STANDS IN THE WAY OF ME GETTING JUSTICE 
FOR MY FATHER and yes, cats are badass and adorable and when I 
was a child I begged my father for a pet tiger.'
   Chrissy: You're still confusing this with both "The 
    Watchmen" and "The Walking Dead."
   Diandra: Okay, fine. A lion.

After a pause, Steve notes that T'challa's suit is made of 
vibranium. T'challa non-answers that the Black Panther has been 
the protector of Wakanda for several generations. Sort of like 
Batman is for Gotham.
   Chrissy: [exasperated sigh]
   Diandra: I know. Different universe. Whatever.
Basically, he was already the Black Panther, but now because 
his dad was murdered, the country's protector is also it's 
King. "So I ask you as both warrior and king: how long do you 
think you can keep your friend safe from me?"
   Chrissy: He's not their friend. May have once been 
    Steve's lover, but...
   Diandra: Nah. But he probably lost his virginity to him, 
    yes.

They all arrive at a facility that seems to be the American 
Embassy or something and the three in the separate car get out 
while Bucky is just shuttled in in a glass cage. Steve marches 
up to Martin Freeman – who is standing next to Sharon Carter – 
and demands to know what is going to happen to Bucky. Martin, 
in a much better American accent than he used in "Fargo", says 
psychological evaluation and extradition, which is what they 
SHOULD be doing with the three of them too, but whatever. 
Sharon is like ‘okay, I guess I have to do the introductions 
here.' She introduces everyone to Everett Ross, the Deputy Task 
Force Commander. Steve asks if they can talk to a lawyer. 
Everett is like ‘yeah, right. Fuck you.' He orders the armed 
men hovering behind them to put all their "weapons" in lockup 
and escorts them to their "office", which he would like them to 
basically think of as a swanky cell they are not actually 
allowed to leave. Natasha sidles up to them as they're striding 
past and mutters to Steve that THIS is what she meant when she 
asked him to not make things worse and he should try really 
hard not to make things worse while they're trying to fix it.

Tony is already in the room, on the phone with somebody arguing 
about the accords and what happened in Romania, which James is 
currently helping clean up. "Consequences? You bet there'll be 
consequences," he snaps before hanging up and sauntering up to 
Steve. Steve asks what sort of consequences he's talking about. 
Tony says Thunderbolt wants them prosecuted, so he's trying to 
talk him down by promising to do SOMETHING. 

Meanwhile, outside somewhere, a van pulls up to a power 
station. This cannot lead anywhere good.

Steve wanders over to see some men plugging Bucky's glass cell 
into a power source in the basement somewhere. Tony comes up to 
show him "something cool" he found in his dad's archives. He 
opens a case with a couple fountain pens FDR used to sign the 
"lend lease bill" to provide support to the allies back in ‘41. 
Steve notes that some could argue that "support" just brought 
the country closer to war. Tony says he's trying here. This is 
an olive branch. Steve asks if Pepper is around here somewhere. 
   Chrissy: Uh, no. She's probably off dealing with the 
    fact that she might have superpowers now after she was 
    injected with some bullshit in the last movie.
   Diandra: You think they'll actually follow through on 
    that? You have more faith in the writers than I do.
Because it has apparently become a thing that they need to 
explain the absence of all the female characters in these 
movies, Tony awkwardly says they're kinda...um...taking a 
break.
   Chrissy: Yeah, Ross and Rachel tried that too. It didn't 
   work.

Tony says he almost lost her a few years ago and responded to 
it by trashing all of his suits. And then there was the whole 
HYDRA thing and the whole Ultron thing "and then I never 
stopped because the truth is I don't wanna stop. I don't want 
to lose her. I thought maybe the Accords could split the 
difference."
   Chrissy: Yeah, I think she'd rather have the Civic. Much 
    sleeker design.
   Diandra: Or, you know, a completely different make 
    entirely like a Toyota.
"In her defense, I'm a handful," he tosses in as a massive 
understatement. He grumbles that his dad was a "pain in the 
ass" too and his mom made it work. That's because she didn't 
exactly have any other choice at the time, sweetie. Steve pipes 
up that he's glad Howard found somebody because he only knew 
him when he was young and unattached. Tony is like ‘oh my god, 
you knew my dad?! Really?! I had no idea because he only 
mentioned if five thousand times while I was growing up!' Yes, 
you will be a great man someday, Captain Sarcasm. He grumbles 
about how he always hated Steve. Until, you know, these last 
couple movies where they teamed up and worked together pretty 
well. And this scene kind of reflects that because the look on 
Tony's face when he showed him the pens was totally ‘we still 
cool?'

Steve sighs and says he's not trying to make things difficult 
but he just can't ignore bad situations. "Sometimes I wish I 
could." "No, you don't," Tony says. "Sometimes I want to punch 
you in your perfect teeth. But I don't want to see you gone. We 
need you, Cap."
   Chrissy: I need you. You make me a better man. You 
    complete me. I mean the team. You complete the team.
   Diandra: You know, I just had a thought...
   Chrissy: I thought I could see smoke coming from your 
    ears.
   Diandra: Shut up. The fandom always defaults to romantic 
    pairings, right? The tension between Steve and Tony is 
    sexualized. But what if Tony sees him as a sort of 
    father figure? Or an uncle? Someone he was expected to 
    be like and resents because he knows he'll never live 
    up? Someone he still sort of looks up to despite all 
    that?
   Chrissy: I'm pretty sure the fandom would just turn that 
    into Daddy Steve spanking Tony for being an insolent 
    brat, but yes. 

Tony tries to encourage Steve to sign the accord because 
nothing that has happened YET can't be undone. It will 
legitimize everything that has happened in the last day and 
Bucky will be transferred to an American psych ward instead of 
a Wakandan prison. Yeah, I'm not sure T'challa was planning to 
take him alive, but I get your point. Steve picks up one of the 
pens and contemplates it. He says it isn't IMPOSSIBLE, but 
"there would have to be safeguards". Tony says yeah, sure. 
Whatever. They can amend the accord to their hearts' content 
once the media circus calling for their heads on a platter dies 
down. He can even get Steve and Wanda reinstated to the group. 
Steve is like ‘wait...Wanda?' Tony says she's confined to the 
Avengers compound right now. 
   Chrissy: Yeah, and your android is totally putting the 
   moves on her and you'll probably find him in her bed 
   when you get back.

Steve starts getting upset that Tony is holding her prisoner. 
Tony thinks confining her to an enormous facility with a pool 
and a movie theater is hardly holding her prisoner. He's 
protecting her. Steve is like OH REALLY?! Tony argues that 
she's not even an American citizen and she's basically a weapon 
so it's not like she's going to get a visa and STOP CRITICIZING 
HIM HE'S DOING THE BEST HE CAN HERE. Steve mutters "you keep 
telling yourself that", gives him back the pen and storms out.

In a viewing room somewhere, Everett, Natasha and a bunch of 
suits are watching via video as Bucky is questioned...by Zero. 
Oof.

Sharon finds Steve in the room right next door with Sam, 
watching on another screen. She hands Sam a "receipt" for his 
gear, which he notes is described as a "bird costume".
   Chrissy: Well, that is basically what it looks like in 
    the comics, so...you know...be grateful it is at least 
    a little more cool.
   Diandra: And let's not even get into how stupid 
    Hawkeye's costume is supposed to be.
Sharon sees Steve watching the silent feed and surreptitiously 
pushes a button so he can hear the sound, then pretends nothing 
happened.
   Chrissy: Yep, she's definitely related to Peggy.

The guy in the van gets the guard at the power station to come 
out and help him unload a very large box. It turns out it's a 
delivery for him. The guard looks confused, but signs off on 
it. 

Steve asks Sharon why the task force released that picture she 
gave them. She suggests they wanted as many eyes as possible 
looking for Bucky. Steve says yeah, it's a good way to flush 
somebody out of hiding. "Set off a bomb, get your picture 
taken. Get seven billion people looking for the Winter 
Soldier." For the slower audience members, Sharon points out 
that he's suggesting somebody framed Bucky just to flush him 
out of hiding.
   Chrissy: Yes. You might even know who did it. They might 
    even be ALREADY IN THE ROOM WITH HIM AT THIS EXACT 
    MOMENT.
Steve and Sam have been looking for Bucky for two years, but 
they weren't crazy enough to try bombing a UN meeting and 
blaming him for it. Sharon notes that that would guarantee THEY 
would capture him, not whoever is looking for him.
   Chrissy: I mean, unless we have a mole, but that would 
    be ridiculous. 
   Diandra: I mean, we're not the CTU or anything.
Sharon frowns and they all look at the UN interrogator 
suspiciously. 

Zero notes that Bucky has seen an awful lot, hasn't he? Bucky 
growls that he doesn't want to talk about it. Zero asks if he 
thinks talking about it will just bring back all the horror. He 
taps a button on a tablet in front of him.

At the power station, the guard opens the box to find an 
enormous bomb beeping and just has enough time to ask the 
delivery guy what the HELL this is about before it goes off. It 
turns out it isn't a regular bomb, though. It's an EMP. The 
wave shorts out the power grid and all the lights in and around 
the embassy whateveritis go out. 

Everett grabs a walkie and yells for somebody keep an eye on 
Bucky. Tony calls Friday to trace the outage to a source. 
Sharon directs Steve to the room Bucky is being held in.

Zero pulls the notebook from his bag and starts reciting the 
Russian code words like they're a magic spell. Bucky starts 
wincing and begging him to stop. He doesn't. Bucky screams and 
breaks free of his restraints, beating on the cage. Zero 
finishes just as Bucky breaks the door and falls out. Except 
it's too late because then he just stands up and says in 
Russian that he's ready for his orders. "Mission report. 
December 16, 1991," Zero says again. Oh, so maybe we'll finally 
get an answer to...nope, we're cutting to Steve and Sam. 

They arrive sometime after to find everyone in the room outside 
the holding area unconscious and Zero alone on the floor acting 
like he was attacked too. Steve is not buying this bullshit. He 
drags Zero upright and slams him against the wall, demanding to 
know who he is and what he wants. "To see an empire fall," Zero 
replies.
   Chrissy: What? America? I've got news for you...you're 
    too late.
   Diandra: Or just a little too early, but yeah. It's 
    already started.

Bucky appears from the corner and attacks Sam as he enters the 
room, throwing him against the glass cage. Then Bucky and Steve 
fight...again...until Bucky punches Steve through the closed 
elevator doors into the shaft and down a couple floors to where 
the elevator is stopped.
   Chrissy: You could say he gave him the shaft.
   Diandra: Ahem. Yeah, I guess.

Sam comes to with alarms going off and sees Zemo peaking 
through the hole in the elevator doors. He yells "hey" and then 
gives chase.

Back in the command center, Everett is still yelling orders and 
Natasha is asking if Tony brought a suit. He starts describing 
the tailored three-piece suit he brought, then snaps that he's 
an active duty non combatant here so NO. Sharon runs up and 
tells them to follow her.

They wind up down in the building's cafeteria where Bucky is 
fighting guards. Tony hides behind a wall and taps his watch, 
converting it into a streamlined sort of half-Iron Man glove. 
Then he jumps out and starts firing blasts at Bucky, dazing 
him. They start hand to hand combat and at one point Bucky 
draws a gun and fires just as Tony gets the hand with the glove 
over the barrel. Tony blinks like ‘huh...guess it works better 
than I anticipated. Also, I need to change my underwear.'

Bucky knocks him off and Sharon and Natasha tag team him with 
their pretty evenly matched ninja skills. Sharon doesn't last 
all that long, but that's to be expected. Bucky slams Natasha 
on a table and starts strangling her with the metal hand. She 
gasps that the least he could do is recognize her.
   Chrissy: Why are women always saying this to me?
And then T'challa arrives and knocks Bucky off of her. They 
fight. Bucky tries to run away after knocking T'challa down, 
but T'challa just manages to bounce back in front of him and 
keep going. This goes on a while longer and for a second 
T'challa gets hold of the metal arm and seems to come to a 
realization. Then he kicks Bucky over a railing, where he 
promptly disappears.

Sam loses Zero in the crowd of frantic people fleeing the 
building.

Bucky finds a helicopter on a launch pad on the roof and climbs 
in. Steve arrives just as he's taking off and tries to hold him 
to the ground by the helicopter's skids. Just before this 
actually works, Bucky tilts the helicopter and Steve has to 
roll to avoid the blades and tail as it crashes and spins to a 
stop. Then Bucky punches through the windshield to drag Steve 
with him as the wreck falls off the side of the platform into 
the...river? Bay? Reflecting pool? Something. Crashing into 
water seems to be a major theme with this series.

The chopper sinks to the bottom and then Steve pops to the 
surface with an unconscious Bucky.

And now for some random exposition on Zeddo. He is in a café, 
listening to a voicemail from what is obviously supposed to be 
his wife. Their son is asking when he's coming home, she loves 
him, blah blah bad guys are people too. He sees a TV screen 
turned to the news announcement that Bucky has escaped custody 
and Steve and Sam have gone missing. So he goes right to the 
airport and catches the first plane back to Russia.

Bucky wakes up in a warehouse with his metal arm trapped in a 
large vice as an impromptu restraint, which...is probably 
pretty effective unless he decides to just rip it off or 
something. Sam and Steve hover over him and Steve asks which 
version of his former friend he's talking to. Bucky starts 
listing random facts about Steve like his mother's name and the 
fact that he used to put newspaper in his shoes. This reassures 
Steve as he doesn't think Bucky could have gotten this from the 
museum exibit. 
   Chrissy: The newspaper thing? Maybe not. His mother's 
    name? Uh...you could get that anywhere.
   Diandra: Yeah, but while Sam is there he probably 
    doesn't want to bring up mole patterns or whether he is 
    circumcised.

Sam notes as much. That's it? He remembers a couple little 
details from when you were a teenager and we're supposed to 
forget he's been trying to kill us for months? Bucky groans and 
says he knew this would happen eventually because everything 
"HYDRA put inside me" is still operational. That's...a weird 
choice of words.
   Chrissy: I mean, normally I'm cool with guys putting 
   things inside me, but...you know...it's more fun when 
   you can remember it.
Anyway. Basically, Bucky's programming allows anyone who knows 
the code words to hack him. Steve asks who that "doctor" was 
who hacked his system and broke him out because he created a 
LOT of destruction just to do it. Bucky strains to remember and 
says the guy kept asking about Siberia. Specifically, where 
Bucky was being held while he was programmed. Steve asks why he 
would need that information. "Because I'm not the only Winter 
Soldier," Bucky says and ominous music crashes us back to 1991.

1991. We watch a repeat of Bucky forcing a car to crash into a 
tree and pulling blue blood bags out of the trunk. Cut to a 
"medical" facility where a group of men and women are getting 
this strange blue fluid dripped into their arms. A guy has what 
looks like an adverse reaction and is thrown into a separate 
room, strapped to a bed and left to possibly die. Sometime 
later, when he stops screaming, Zemo goes to check on him and 
finds he has broken his restraints. Then we cut to that guy 
fighting with Bucky, showing off his new superhuman strength. A 
doctor goes to check on the guy and gets slammed face-first 
into the floor with his neck possibly broken. All hell breaks 
loose and Bucky and Zemo escape while the supers kill all the 
guards trying to keep them in line.

Back in the present, Steve is like ‘ooookay. Who are these 
people now?' Bucky says they're HYDRA's "elite death squad" – a 
fearsome bunch before they injected themselves with 
supersoldier serum. Steve asks if the doctor could control 
them. Bucky is like ‘meh...sort of.' But they "can speak thirty 
languages" and are super competent spies who can totally carry 
out any assassination right under authorities' noses. "They can 
take a whole country down in one night and you'd never see them 
coming."

Sam sidelines Steve and mutters that this would have been 
"easier" a week ago. Steve suggests they could call Tony. Sam 
scoffs that Tony would never believe them and the Accords might 
not let him help anyway. Steve concludes they're on their own 
then. Sam says he might know a guy...

Back at headquarters, Thunderbolt is asking if Tony knows where 
Team Cap is. Tony thinks they can bring them in because they've 
got everybody out looking. They can handle it. Thunderbolt says 
it's not Tony's problem to "handle" and since he has proven he 
can't be objective about it, they're calling in Special Ops. 
Natasha pipes up from her seat that this could get Steve killed 
in the inevitable crossfire. Ross shrugs like ‘yeah...well...if 
he keeps protecting Bucky we'll probably have to consider him 
an enemy of the state and just as culpable in the deaths of all 
the people we think Bucky killed'. Tony says wait, no...going 
in with guns blazing isn't the answer here, as it hasn't been 
in literally every movie so far. Ross says yeah, well, efforts 
to bring him in alive haven't exactly been successful. Tony 
begs for 72 hours to try again. Ross sighs and knocks it down 
to 36 and reminds him that he needs to get all three of them. 

Ross stomps off and Tony massages his chest and asks Natasha if 
his left arm going numb should be alarming. She comes over to 
pat him on the shoulder and mutters that they are seriously 
"understaffed". Tony mutters that it'd be great if they had the 
Hulk right now and seriously, does she know how to get hold of 
him?
   Chrissy: Well, if he dropped the shield on the ship 
   maybe, but the long distance bill would be MASSIVE.
Natasha isn't so sure he'd be on their side anyway. Um...pretty 
sure Banner would be all about checks and balances on mutants. 
Er...enhanced...beings... 
   Chrissy: Actually, I think he was on Cap's side in the 
    comics.
   Diandra: What?! Why?
   Chrissy: How would I know? Anyway...it doesn't matter 
    because we know that in this canon he's too busy 
    playing heavyweight champion to Jeff Goldblum, waiting 
    for Thor to show up.
   Diandra: We are going to have that movie half recapped 
    by the time we get to it, aren't we?
Natasha says she has another idea though. Tony says he does 
too. And since Natasha never gets a say in things really, we're 
going to go with his idea.

Queens. Peter Parker - who I forgot was going to be introduced 
in this movie - enters his apartment, throws his backpack down 
and, upon prompting, tells Aunt May that school was "fine". He 
asks what that "crazy" car parked outside is about, then 
notices that she is sitting on the couch with Tony. He stammers 
and awkwardly introduces himself like a fanboy meeting his hero 
in person. Tony is like 'yeah, hi Peter, I'm Tony. Have you 
been getting the emails I've been sending you?' Peter is like 
‘uhhhhhhhhhhhhhsqueak'. May bemoans that Peter never told her 
about the grant he'd won. "The September Foundation," Tony 
prompts. Peter is like ‘oh, the...yeah...um...'
   Chrissy: Can I just go outside and start this whole 
    thing over again?
   Diandra: Will you be my new dad? I mean...ahem. What?

Tony reminds Peter that he applied for the grant and his 
application was approved. May is befuddled that Peter didn't 
tell her any of this. "You keeping secrets from me now?"
   Chrissy: Uh...we have a whole two hours coming up where 
   we can explore all the things he's hiding from you. 
   Might want to slow down.
Peter is like ‘um...it was going to be a surprise. Surprise? 
Uh...why don't you tell her what I applied for Mr. Stark.' Tony 
says that's what he's here to talk to him about, actually. Then 
he turns to noting how hard it is to believe that this 
beautiful woman is someone's aunt.
   Chrissy: I mean, it seems like just yesterday I was 
    chasing a girl who looked just like her around Rome...
   Diandra: Was that before or after he was reincarnated 
    from Maddie Hayes dead lover?
   Chrissy: You realize that, like, two people got that 
    reference, right?
   Diandra: Yeah, well, you're one of them, so we're good.

Peter is like ‘okay, stop flirting with Aunt May and go back to 
why you're here.' Is there money involved in this grant? Tony 
is like ‘uh...yeah. You do know I have money basically coming 
out of my ass, right?' He asks Aunt May to give them five 
minutes alone. Aunt May says sure and Tony goes back into 
Peter's bedroom with him and locks the door.
   Chrissy: Yeah, that's not...that's not something you do 
   in this day and age lady.
Tony spits a mouthful of the date loaf Aunt May was feeding him 
into Peter's trash and then gushes over the "retro tech" on 
Peter's desk including what might be one of the first computer 
models EVER.
   Chrissy: That is somehow still working despite being an 
    Apple.
   Diandra: You know...I seem to remember they USED to make 
    things that lasted more than a year. Back when 
    companies didn't make EVERYTHING to be disposable to 
    inflate sales. What I'm saying is I'd believe that 
    would work before I'd believe one from 2012 would.

Tony asks if he got this stuff at a thrift store or the 
Salvation Army or something. Peter says he got it from the 
garbage, actually. And back to the point of that conversation 
out there, what is this grant you're claiming I won that I 
totally didn't apply for? Tony projects an image from his phone 
of Peter in his spider suit taking down a thug. He says this is 
him, right? Peter tries to stammer a denial, but Tony just 
switches to a video of him stopping a car from ramming a bus. 
Peter points out that those videos are on YouTube and you can 
totally fake stuff like that. Tony says yeah, uh-huh. He picks 
up a broom handle laying nearby and jabs at a trap door in the 
ceiling. The spider suit tumbles right out. Peter lamely tries 
to hide it and pretend it's nothing like a teenager whose stash 
of porn has been found. Tony invites him to give up this little 
dance and just admit that he's Spider-Boy. "Spider-Man," Peter 
mutters defensively. Yes, you will be once your voice drops, 
sweetie. He grumbles about how he WAS having a really good day 
until Tony showed up. Tony asks if anybody else knows this 
little secret. Like maybe his "unusually attractive" aunt.
   Chrissy: Seriously, I'm pretty sure I once dated a girl 
   who looked JUST LIKE HER.
Peter says NO, and if she found out she would freak, so...DON'T 
tell her! 

Tony turns to this webbing stuff Peter uses with the amazing 
tensile strength and asks who manufactured it. Peter says he 
made it himself. Tony asks how he climbs walls the way he does 
in those videos. Adhesive gloves? Stealing tech from Ethan 
Hunt? Peter says it's a funny story, actually, and possibly 
starts to explain the whole ‘bitten by a radioactive spider' 
thing, but then the writers acknowledge that everybody freaking 
KNOWS this backstory by now and Tony cuts him off to marvel at 
his ability to see through the goggles in his ridiculous mask. 
Peter says yes, because his senses have been dialed to eleven.
   Chrissy: Which is better than ten because it's one more.
   Diandra: Yes, thank you Nigel.

Tony thinks Peter needs a major upgrade in his gear. Then he 
asks why Peter is doing this in the first place. What is his 
‘MO'? What drives him? 
   Chrissy: Please summarize your entire character 
    backstory so we don't have to do an entire movie about 
    it for the third time in the past couple decades and 
    can just skip right to the fun part.
   Diandra: Yeah, that.
Peter exposits that he's had his powers for six months and he 
would love to use his newfound strength to play football or 
something instead of resigning himself to continuing to be a 
nerd, but... "Look, when you can do the things that I can, but 
you don't and then the bad things happen...they happen because 
of you." Tony concludes that he wants to do his part to make 
the world a better place and all that clichéd bullshit then. 
Peter is like ‘yeah! That!'

Tony sits beside Peter and asks if he has a passport. Peter 
says he doesn't even have a driver's license yet. Uh...not the 
same thing. You can get a passport ANYTIME. Have you never even 
gone to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls? Tony declares he 
will LOVE Germany. Peter is like 'what? I have HOMEWORK. I 
can't just blow off all my responsibilities and fly to Germany 
because my hero asked me to.' Tony is like 'pffffttttt, 
responsibilities. I'm just going to go tell your hot aunt I'm 
taking you on a field trip.' He goes to grab the door handle 
and Peter shoots a web, trapping his hand. He says fine, he'll 
go, but DON'T TELL AUNT MAY.
   Chrissy: It's better if she finds out after it's too 
   late that I died in a foreign country in a full body 
   leotard fighting guys with superpowers.

Avengers plaza. Vision is floating in mid-air, apparently in 
stand by mode, when he's woken by an explosion outside. Wanda 
appears at the nearest window to see what's going on. Vision 
tells her to stay put and flies off. She hears something behind 
her and sends a knife from the kitchen flying nearly into 
Clint's face, stopping just short of killing him. "Guess I 
should've knocked," he jokes. Uh...yeah? Or, you know, just not 
tried to sneak up on somebody with superpowers who could 
totally kill you? She asks what he's doing here. He shoots a 
couple arrows around the room, says the Captain needs their 
help and starts to take her with him. Vision reappears, 
morphing right through the wall and says Clint shouldn't be 
here and he should consider the consequences of showing up now. 
Clint says he already has. Vision steps between the arrows 
Clint fired and they create some sort of electrical field that 
traps him. Clint starts to make a run for it before realizing 
Wanda isn't following. She says she's "caused enough problems 
already". Vision breaks from the trap by blasting a beam of 
energy at the nearest arrow and sucker punches Clint. Clint 
pulls out a baton and tries to fight, which goes about as well 
as you would expect a fight between the weakest member of the 
team and an android to go. Vision gets him in a headlock and 
calmly reminds him that he can't beat him. Clint says no, but 
Wanda can. Wanda spins a ball of energy between her hands and 
orders Vision to let him go. Vision says he can't let her 
leave. Well, she wasn't planning on it, like, less than a 
minute ago, but whatever. Apparently she's changed her mind 
already. She does something that causes Vision to drop Clint 
and fall right through every floor of the building. Clint looks 
at the gaping hole where Vision just was like 'ooookay...can we 
go now?'
   Chrissy: Or do you want to switch allegiances again? You 
    have made up your mind, right?
   Diandra: Yeah, I feel like we are seeing the strain of 
    the writers trying to alter backstories but still stay 
    sort of close to the comics. I don't see any evidence 
    of Wanda being on EITHER side of this war, but 
    Quicksilver was on Cap's team, so...
   Chrissy: As are Wolverine, Magneto and all of the 
    Defenders.
   Diandra: And Black Panther. Because T'chaka was supposed 
    to be killed by somebody else entirely at a completely 
    unrelated event so his son doesn't have this vengeful 
    need to kill Bucky.
   Chrissy: Look who's learning the canon.
   Diandra: I'm a librarian. I can research. But I still 
    don't see any evidence that Hulk was on either side in 
    the comics. I figured he was neutral like Thor and 
    Doctor Strange.
   Chrissy: Huh. I thought...
   Diandra: Wait here it is: "During Marvel's Civil War 
    published in 2006, Thor was dead and Hulk was busy 
    being a space gladiator on an alien planet in a series 
    titled Planet Hulk."
   Chrissy: ..............well, that explains everything. 

Meanwhile, T'challa meets with Natasha in the basement/parking 
garage of the building they were all being held in. He is 
joined by a fierce bald woman who growls at Natasha to "move or 
you will be moved". T'challa is like 'yeah, much as I'd love to 
place bets on that fight, stand down.' Natasha asks if he 
really thinks he can "find him". Because it took 70 years for 
Bucky to be found the first time. He asks if she knows where 
"they" are then. She says she knows somebody who does.

Steve meets Sharon under a bridge somewhere. Going by the cars 
and license plates, they're still in Germany, but I'm honestly 
struggling to keep track of where everybody is now.
   Chrissy: Oh, honey. You know it's only going to get 
    worse from here, right?
   Diandra: That's what I'm afraid of. My recap of 
    "Infinity War" (assuming I'm still able to recap by 
    then) is just going to be one long string of "what? 
    Who? Where? What are we doing now?"
She pops the trunk on her car to reveal all the gear that was 
taken from him and Sam. In Steve's car, Bucky asks from the 
backseat if Sam can move his seat forward a little to give him 
some room. "No," Sam growls.
   Chrissy: So...you like birds?

Bucky moves to the other side of the car. Back outside, Sharon 
looks at the two men glowering at nothing in there and reminds 
Steve that Bucky did sort of try to kill her.
   Chrissy: He's tried to kill a lot of people. You're not 
   special.
Steve notes that she's putting herself at risk by stealing this 
stuff for them. He thanks her and then they just...kiss with no 
further preamble. He apologizes for that being at least a year 
late and she's like 'yeah, I'll see you later then' and goes to 
get back in the car in a daze. Sam and Bucky both smirk at 
Steve proudly and it's kind of weird.

The boys meet up with Clint and Wanda in the airport parking 
garage. Steve asks about the "other recruit" and Clint pops the 
back door on their van to reveal Scott "Ant Man" Lang.
   Chrissy: It's like Steve is determined to recruit all 
    the lamest characters possible.
   Diandra: Yeah, at least Wanda has an actual ability. All 
    these other guys are dependent on technology to do 
    anything. 
   Chrissy: Ant-Man being the worst because he literally 
    has nothing but a suit that alters his size. His entire 
    movie was spent basically trying to figure out how the 
    suit works.
   Diandra: Which is why we didn't recap it. 
   Chrissy: Right. Sorry. Continue.
Scott blinks blearily at Clint and asks what time zone they're 
in. Then he stumbles over to Steve and fanboys over getting to 
meet Captain America, shaking his hand excitedly and then just 
grabbing at his pecs because JESUS GET A LOAD OF THOSE THINGS. 
   Chrissy: Okay, well, even if his character is lame he 
    still does exactly what we would do.
   Diandra: I'd probably squeeze harder and make 
    embarrassing noises though.

Scott seems to have an awareness that he is the weakest link 
here as he acknowledges that Steve must know a LOT of supers 
and enhanceds and he called Ant-Man anyway, so..."thinks for 
thanking of me."
   Chrissy: And I already screwed up. Okay. I'm just going 
   to go curl in a corner and die. Thanks.
Scott turns to Sam and says so...about what happened last 
time... Sam chuckles and says it was "a great audition, but 
it'll never happen again." Uh...yeah. Since I forgot Mackie had 
an appearance in "Ant-Man" and don't remember what the context 
of that was, I'm just going to rewrite it in my head as 'they 
kissed and it was awkward'.
   Chrissy: That's probably more entertaining anyway.
   Diandra: Do you remember what actually happened?
   Chrissy: Scott stole some tech from what he thought was 
    an old, abandoned Stark warehouse but turned out to be 
    the compound and Sam was on sentry duty. They fought. 
    Scott disabled his wings in ant-mode.
   Diandra: So exactly how two people whose abilities rely 
    entirely on tech fight. Is it any wonder I don't 
    remember that movie?
   Chrissy: Honestly, at this point I find it more 
    surprising when you actually REMEMBER something that 
    happened in one of these.

Steve asks if they filled Scott in on what they're doing. 
Scott, still staring at Sam like '.......bitch' focuses and 
says it has something to do with psycho assassins? Steve is 
like yeah, sure. Close enough. And they're working outside the 
law, so if Scott wants to join he will effectively become a 
wanted criminal. Scott is like 'yeah, well...beats having to do 
a movie about Evangeline Lilly's character. I mean, can you 
imagine? A whole movie devoted to a female superhero? Like 
anyone would want to watch THAT.'
   Chrissy: This is where I wish you readers could hear the 
    stuff we're saying instead of just reading Diandra's 
    transcript because the sarcasm coming off her when she 
    said that last line was gloriously salty.
   Diandra: I mean, really. Fans have been begging for a 
    Black Widow movie for HOW LONG? Marvel is supposed to 
    be the more progressive company, but it took DC 
    breaking every record with "Wonder Woman" for them to 
    say 'yeah, sure, I guess we can do a Captain Marvel'.

Clint announces that there's a chopper waiting for them just 
before an alarm goes off and a man comes over a PA to make an 
announcement in German. Bucky says they're evacuating the 
airport because Stark. Or something. The new recruits are like 
'wait...Tony? What?' Steve tells them to suit up. Once he's in 
full Captain America gear he runs out to the waiting 
chopper...just in time for Iron Man to hit it with an EMP and 
disable it. Tony lands in front of Steve, James right behind 
him, and cockily notes how weird it is that you always seem to 
run into people at an airport. Steve sighs and says if Tony 
would just listen a minute...that psychiatrist the UN 
supposedly sent in is behind the whole thing.

Black Panther leaps over a car onto the tarmac beside them and 
he and Steve formally greet each other as "Captain" and "Your 
Highness" before Steve turns back to Tony like ANYway... Tony 
says Thunderbolt gave him 36 hours to bring Steve in 24 hours 
ago, so... Steve says they're chasing the wrong guy here. Tony 
is like 'yeah, well, forgive me if I think your judgment might 
be a little clouded because the bad guy used to be your 
boyfriend.' Steve is like 'he's not my BOYFRIEND. Jesus. Can't 
a guy put his dick in another guy 70 years ago without 
everybody jumping to conclusions?' But getting to the point: 
there are five other supersoldiers nobody knew about and Zelko 
is looking for them. Natasha announces her presence behind him 
suddenly and asks if Steve really wants to "punch his way out" 
of this fight. It's what he DOES, Nat. He's too old for you to 
change him now.

Tony announces that he's run out of patience and yells 
"Underoos!" Before we can wonder what the hell sort of weird 
form of Tourette's this is, a web shoots over Steve's hands, 
binding them, and another one rips his shield away. Spider-Man 
flips over his head, catching the shield before landing on top 
of a baggage truck. "Nice job, kid," Tony says. Peter is like 
'well, I could have done that landing better, but I LOVE YOU 
WILL YOU ADOPT ME AND BE MY NEW DAD? Ahem. I mean, thanks.' He 
blames his minor awkwardness on getting used to the new suit. 
Not that there's anything wrong with the suit. Did he mention 
he loves the suit? Tony is like 'can we not have this 
conversation right now?' Peter is like 'yeah, sorry.' Then he 
turns to Steve and does a similar fanboy dance, introducing 
himself. Tony is like 'LATER!'
   Chrissy: Don't make me regret inviting you!

Steve, trying not to laugh at this ridiculous play, is like 
'sooo...been busy recruiting have you? At the local high school 
apparently?' Tony is like 'shut up, criminal. You basically 
kidnapped Wanda from the bunker she was perfectly happy staying 
in.' "I'm trying to keep you from tearing the Avengers apart." 
Steve thinks tearing them apart is what Tony did when he signed 
the Registry that calls itself an Accord. Tony snaps at Steve 
to come with them NOW because he will be better than the guys 
they will send to collect him and his merry band of fugitives. 
Steve pretends to consider this until Sam announces that he's 
spotted the quinjet in hangar five over his comm link. Then he 
holds up his hands for Clint to shoot an arrow through the 
webbing and gives Scott the green light. Peter looks down to 
see Ant-Man crawling on Cap's shield and starts to raise an 
alert. Scott launches into the air and shifts back into his 
normal human size mid-flip, kicking Peter in the face.

James asks what the hell just happened. Scott hands Steve back 
his shield. Tony groans and scans the parking structure, 
locating "two of them" and announcing he's going to go after 
Wanda. James identifies Sam and Bucky in the terminal. Hearing 
Bucky's name, T'challa is like 'that motherfucker is MINE!' and 
runs off. Steve throws his shield at James. Peter asks Tony 
what he should do. Tony says he should DO WHAT THEY ALREADY 
TALKED ABOUT. Jesus. Tie them up with the webbing and fall 
back. DON'T DO ANYTHING STUPID THAT MIGHT GET YOU KILLED 
BECAUSE I'M STILL HOPING TO GET INTO YOUR AUNT'S PANTS.

Steve runs after T'challa, knocking him down. T'challa is like 
'okay, well, I don't want to fight you, but if I have to go 
through you to get my vengeance, so be it.'

Natasha blinks at the guy in the funny helmet apologizing that 
he doesn't want to hurt her, but... She's like 'yeah, that 
won't be a problem, bug boy' and kicks him in the crotch. She 
starts mopping the deck with Scott, but he goes ant-size and 
knocks her over. There was some long-winded bullshit about the 
physics of his strength when he's ant-size, but I really can't 
be bothered with it. He pins her somehow and she uses her 
zapper bracelet thing to blast him into the side of a truck 
where he comically slides to the ground, still ant-sized.
   Chrissy: So does that make up for the lack of a Black 
    Widow movie?
   Diandra: Almost.

Peter leaps onto the terminal building and crawls along the 
glass ceiling of the hallway Bucky and Sam are running through. 
Bucky looks up and laughingly asks what THAT thing is about. 
Like...is Comic Con in town or something? Sam grumbles about 
everybody having to have a "gimmick" now. Peter throws a web 
and uses it to sling through one of the windows right into Sam. 
He catches Bucky's metal arm as he goes to punch his puny ass 
and gushes about how freaking awesome it is while Bucky blinks 
in shock like 'the scrawny weirdo in the onesie has super 
strength?' Sam grabs Peter and flies off.

Back outside, Clint and Wanda are running, ducking explosions 
created by Tony. Tony flies down and tells Wanda that she "hurt 
Vision's feelings". She channels her inner bratty teenager and 
sneers that he LOCKED her in her ROOM. He says he did NOT lock 
her in. Jesus. Drama queen. He restricted her to the compound. 
For her safety. Clint shoots an arrow at Tony, which he 
deflects. Tony notes that he's losing his touch and Clint 
claims he was just trying to provide a distraction (sure). 
Wanda rips cars out of the parking garage, raining them down on 
Tony. He dodges and blasts a couple but winds up pinned to the 
ground under a couple of them. "Multiple contusions detected," 
FRIDAY cheerfully informs him. He grumbles that he detected 
them too. 

Steve and T'challa are still fighting. James flies in to 
provide backup, slamming Steve's shield with what looks like a 
baton.

Back with Spider vs Birdboy. Peter ducks to avoid Bucky's 
shield, then throws it back at him and goes back to grappling 
with Sam. He discovers the general rule that most of Team Cap 
can be crippled by disabling their tech and uses a burst of web 
to disable Sam's wings. Then he uses a couple more blasts to 
tie Sam to a railing. He hovers to curiously ask if the wings 
are carbon fiber. Sam ignores the question in favor of his own: 
does this web stuff come out of his body? Like...how grossed 
out should he be right now? Peter starts babbling about Sam's 
tech...I hope...because he's talking about rigidity...and Sam 
is like SHUT UP ALREADY YOU TWINK. Bucky comes running up and 
Peter swings down, knocking them both over and webbing them to 
the floor. He apologizes that he'd love to stay and keep 
fighting them, but he has to do the job Tony gave him because 
he has to impress his would-be daddy. Sam taps something on his 
wrist under the webbing and his drone Redwing flies by, 
latching onto Peter's wrist and flying him out the nearest 
window. "You couldn't have done that earlier," Bucky asks 
dryly. "I hate you," Sam groans.

And now we finish the Steve/T'challa fight outside where James 
realizes his baton has been broken. Scott runs up, tossing 
Steve a miniature truck. While Steve is wondering what the fuck 
this is about, Scott holds up one of his trigger buttons that 
controls his suit and instructs Steve to throw the truck at it. 
He tosses the button, Steve tosses the truck and when they 
meet, the truck blows up to regular size and falls on James, 
bursting into flame. "Oh, man, I thought it was a water truck," 
Scott moans.
   Chrissy: Remind me why you're here again?
   Diandra: Because they had to scrape the bottom of the 
    barrel before they could justify using their female 
    superheroes?
Scott apologizes and he and Steve run off. James digs out from 
the wreckage and growls that NOW he's pissed off. Tony flies up 
to help Natasha up from where she landed trying to get away 
from that explosion. Because I guess she's been just hovering 
nearby since smacking Scott off her like the annoying bug he 
perfectly embodies. She asks if this was part of the plan. Tony 
says the plan WAS to go easy on them, but...fuck the plan.

Steve's team all meet up on the tarmac, running heroically 
toward the waiting Quinjet which is parked just past what looks 
like the Bluth's staircar for some damn reason. If you don't 
understand that reference, do yourself a favor and go watch 
"Arrested Development". But, just like "Sherlock", don't bother 
with season four. The team is stopped when Vision appears and 
blasts a line on the pavement in front of them.
   Chrissy: You know, I know we just did a whole battle 
   over this, but...Ultron was right. Humans are morons who 
   don't deserve this planet. Have you SEEN the political 
   bullshit going on right now? And my projections say 
   there's a high probability that two of the English 
   speaking countries are about to go completely insane and 
   possibly start another world war. Your species cannot be 
   trusted with free will.
No, he actually booms that he knows Steve THINKS he's doing the 
right thing right now, but he should really surrender for the 
"collective good". The iron men arrive, Tony casually dropping 
off Natasha on the other side of the line, James dropping off 
T'challa. Peter parkours in. 

And we get establishing shots of both sides facing off in 
perfect lines broken only by Vision hovering behind Team Iron 
and Wanda sort of hanging behind Team Cap. Sam asks Steve what 
they should do. Steve gives the answer he basically always 
defaults to: fight. He charges forward. Natasha groans, mutters 
that this isn't going to end well and joins Tony's line 
marching forward. Once they start running toward each other, 
all the heroes that can fly take off, which, again, apparently 
includes Wanda now. And the battle that is as close to epic as 
this series can get with only less than a dozen available 
characters to fight begins. Wanda throws cars at Peter, 
T'challa does his very best to try to kill Bucky and Natasha 
and Clint pause in their fight so Natasha can ask if they're 
still friends. He says it depends on how hard she hits him and 
they go right back to it. She goes to kick him in the face, but 
Wanda wraps a ball of energy around her ankle and flips her 
into the staircar. She tells Clint to stop "pulling your 
punches" and stalks back into the fray.
   Chrissy: You would never make it in the Russian army!
   Diandra: Nope. You would have been shot.

Bucky finally just tells T'challa that he didn't kill his 
daddy. T'challa asks why he ran then. Um...gee, maybe because 
he's still a wanted criminal? T'challa pins Bucky to a truck 
and goes to slice him with his claws, but Wanda appears to 
fling him back just like she did Natasha.
   Chrissy: Basically, they needed her to be the Deus Ex 
    Machina of the battle.
   Diandra: Huh. Sort of the equivalent of Homer using gods 
    and goddesses every time a battle started going badly 
    to explain how they got out?
   Chrissy: Okay, I know what you meant, but when you said 
    "Homer" my mind went in a completely different 
    direction and now I'm picturing a fat, bald yellow guy 
    sending Athena onto the field to save Paris.
   Diandra: AND BRING BACK DOUGHNUTS THIS TIME! *lewd 
    drooling noises* Mmm...doughnuts... *more drooling and 
    gurgling*

Steve knocks Peter out of the air with his shield, which 
boomerangs back to him. Peter watches him attach it to his arm 
and announces that it does NOT obey the laws of physics in any 
way. Steve is like 'son...there are many things in this world 
you don't understand...and I'm really hoping my condescending 
tone masks the fact that I don't particularly understand how 
this thing works either.' Peter slings a web around the arm 
with the shield and the opposite leg, drags Steve toward him 
and kicks him into a truck. Then he takes a moment to brag 
about how Tony was right about aiming for Steve's legs. Steve 
runs to retrieve his shield and Peter webs both hands. They 
play tug of war with the webbing for a minute and then Steve 
does his sideways spin leap, winding the web around him and 
flinging Peter.

Tony is chasing Sam through the air. Sam calls on Clint to take 
care of it. Before we can wonder if he actually meant Wanda 
because she seems to be doing everything else around here, we 
see Clint aiming a bow with Ant-Man crouched on the tip. Ant 
Man says he's ready, calling Clint "Arrow Guy". 
   Chrissy: Um, no. That's another guy in the other comic 
    franchise and he's much more badass.
   Diandra: Well...I don't know if I would go that far. The 
    comic version of Green Arrow looks like a grizzled, 
    aging Robin Hood.
   Chrissy: Yeah, that sounds about right.
Clint fires and the arrow seems to explode before it reaches 
Tony, the pieces breaking around him. While Tony is busy 
blasting them, Scott leaps onto him and crawls under his armor.

Steve whacks Peter in the face with his shield. Peter spiders 
himself up onto some crates. Steve asks if Tony told Peter 
anything else. Peter says yeah, he says you're wrong, but you 
REALLY really believe you're right.
   Chrissy: Uh, yeah kid. You basically described every bad 
    guy ever. 
   Diandra: And honestly...Tony. Because let's face it: 
    even if it sounds like the "right thing to do", he's 
    creating a registry of people who are "different". When 
    has that ever been a good thing?
Peter slings down to attack Steve and Steve kicks him back. He 
destabilizes the crane holding up the container so it falls on 
Peter. Then they have an odd exchange while Peter struggles to 
hold up the container. "You got heart, kid. Where're you from?" 
"[gasp gasp grunt] Queens! [puff puff]" "[smirk] Brooklyn. 
[runs off to leave Peter to get himself out]"

Tony realizes his blasters aren't working the way they're 
supposed to suddenly. He asks FRIDAY what's going on. She says 
there are some weapons' systems off line. Scott, yanking wires 
inside his suit, pipes up that he's going to have to take this 
thing into the shop.
   Chrissy: WHAT THE?! Why is there another man in my suit 
   with me? Have the writers been reading too much fan 
   fiction?!
Tony asks who the hell that is. Scott says it's his conscience 
and they haven't been on speaking terms lately, but... He pulls 
a tiny plug and something else in Tony's suit goes dead. He 
calls Friday, who announces she's deploying the fire 
suppression system. A wave of smoke chases Scott through the 
metal "tunnels" until he flies right out of the suit, followed 
by a blast of flame.

Bucky sidles up to Steve and says Zippo is probably in Siberia 
by now while they're busy fighting each other. Steve is still 
focused on the battle. He says he'll take Vision and orders 
Bucky to get to the quinjet. Sam cuts in over comms to argue 
that they should BOTH get to the jet because "the rest of us 
aren't getting out of here." Clint pipes up that Sam is right: 
some of them are probably going to lose this battle.
   Chrissy: Well, that's what you get for bringing arrows 
   to a blaster fight, CLINT.
Probably because he's a former soldier and understands how 
Steve will probably react to this, Sam adds that this isn't the 
real fight anyway. Steve asks what the play is then. Sam says 
they need a BIG diversion. 

Scott announces that he has "something kinda big".
   Chrissy: Yes, I'm sure you'd like to think that, but...
   Diandra: But you did spend months devoted to making 
    yourself smaller.
Because this wasn't bad enough, Scott adds that he "can't hold 
it for long."
   Chrissy: What's the rating on this movie again?
He says when he gives the signal everybody should run like hell 
and don't look back even if he dies horribly by tearing himself 
in half. They can honor his heroic sacrifice later after his 
crazy but brilliant plan works.
   Chrissy: .........sorry, who are you again?
   Diandra: Who invited this guy?

Steve asks if he's sure he wants to do this. Scott says it's 
fine, he does it all the time. Or, you know, he did it once in 
a lab before passing out from the strain. Same thing. He runs 
across the top step of one of the mobile stairs, chanting "I'm 
the boss, I'm the boss, I'm the boss."
   Chrissy: Yeah, that didn't work with Evangeline Lilly 
   and it probably won't work now.
He flings himself off the step and lands on James as he does a 
flyby. He pushes some buttons on his wrist device, closes his 
eyes and slides off James' back as he goes from ant-sized to 
King Kong sized, catching James by the leg before he can 
escape.
   Chrissy: Speaking of King Kong...
   Diandra: No.
   Chrissy: You don't know what I was going to say.
   Diandra: Yes I do and the answer is no.

Everyone gapes at the ginormous version of Ant-Man, Peter 
yelping "holy shit!" Scott laughs like a crazy person. James, 
king of understatements, says "okay, tiny dude is big now. He's 
big now."
   Chrissy: Yes, we can see that and it's more of Paul Rudd 
    than anybody has ever wanted to see.
   Diandra: Somewhere his kid is probably still saying 
    "this is stupid" and denying that he's related.
Steve guesses this is the signal they're supposed to be looking 
for. Everybody responds to it instantly by...standing around 
and staring. Tony looks at Giant Ant-Man waving War Machine 
around like a baby rattle and says without a trace of irony 
"give me back my Rhodey!"
   Chrissy: Mine! He's my boyfriend! I mean...friend. 

Sam dive bombs Tony and Scott flings James away. Peter leaps to 
catch him with some webbing and just winds up slingshoting him 
back.
   Chrissy: When this is all over, Tony is going to get a 
    text from James that says "don't ever call me again."
   Diandra: Followed by one from Steve that says "you 
    realize I'm never going to let that 'my Rhodey' thing 
    go, right?"

Scott kicks a bus toward Black Panther and Vision steps in 
front of him, shattering it with his body. Scott rips the wing 
off the nearest plane and swings it at Tony as he chases Sam 
through again. Tony stops moving and asks if anybody on HIS 
side is hiding any abilities they'd like to reveal now. Dude, 
aside from Steve and Wanda, all the people on your side already 
have better abilities. They just got lucky just now. Sam sends 
Redwing flying into Tony's head, knocking him over. Scott goes 
to grab T'challa and James, dragging Peter behind him, flies up 
and blasts at his face. Peter flings onto his arm and starts 
wrapping webbing around it. Meanwhile, Hawkeye is...shooting 
arrows. T'challa catches two of them in his fists and the tips 
blow up in his face, producing seemingly nothing but harmless 
black smoke. He tosses them aside and faces Clint. Clint is 
like 'um...I don't think we've met yet. I'm the lamest Avenger. 
Hi.' T'challa is like 'whatever. Shut up.' Clint turns his bow 
into a fighting staff and tries some hand-to-hand combat.

Rhodey is still blasting at Scott and any object he grabs to 
use as a weapon. He gets clear only to have Wanda reappear and 
sling more stuff at him. Peter crawls onto Scott's helmet and 
Scott gets annoyed, flicking him off. Then Vision cannonballs 
into him, knocking him into a plane. Then he morphs right 
through Scott's chest. 
   Chrissy: Help! He's inside me! And not in a fun sense!

Black Panther drops Hawkeye easily and runs away because that 
was a horribly mismatched fight. Vision morphs through Scott' 
back and sends a laser into a tower, toppling it over the 
hanger where the quinjet is. Which Steve and Bucky are only now 
running toward. Sigh. Wanda, whose job it is to save their 
asses in lieu of Natasha apparently, uses her energy to slow 
the collapse. Then Rhodey flies up behind her and blasts her 
with an EMP or something and she loses her hold. Steve and 
Bucky barely manage to clear the falling tower. Natasha meets 
them on the other side. "You're not gonna stop," she notes by 
way of greeting. Steve says he CAN'T. It's just not in his 
nature, you know. She grumbles that she's going to regret doing 
this and raises her arm, pointing her wrist blaster seemingly 
at his head. Then she fires and it goes sailing past him to hit 
T'challa, who was apparently coming up behind them slower than 
usual. She orders Steve and Bucky to go and keeps blasting at 
T'challa as he tries to give chase.

Outside, Peter asks if any of his guys ever saw that "really 
old movie" Empire Strikes Back. Cut to Tony rolling his eyes 
like 'goddamn kids'. Rhodey asks how old this kid is anyway. 
Does it matter? Anyone younger than thirty thinks thirty years 
old is ancient. I had to get off the Internet for a while after 
I saw a Tumblr post where some Millenial had to remind people 
that life doesn't actually end at thirty. Tony admits he 
doesn't really know because he didn't "carbon date him". Which 
is ridiculous because everybody knows that's not how you 
determine a person's age. You have to cut them open and count 
the rings. Anyway, Peter starts swinging circles around Scott, 
wrapping webbing, as he yells about the ice planet and the 
"walking thingies". The Iron Men figure out where he's going 
with this and dive for Scott's face once Peter has his legs 
immobilized. Peter yelps victoriously and is immediately hit by 
one of Scott's flailing arms into a pile of crates.

When he hits the ground, Scott pushes the button to go back to 
normal size and groans in pain. He asks if anybody has any 
orange slices. I'm...not making that up.
   Chrissy: No, but we might be able to find a couple limes 
    and maybe a lemon.
   Diandra: ...you're referring to the citrus scale of 
    rating lewdness in fanfiction?
   Chrissy: Oh, good, you recognize it.

Tony lands and runs to where Peter is lying on the ground very 
still, looking a lot like a frantic father who fucked up big 
time and failed to keep the kid safe. He goes to touch him and 
Peter instinctively swings at him wildly, his mask half off. 
Tony sighs and yells that he's ON HIS SIDE and waits for Peter 
to recognize him. Peter is like 'oh...sure...I knew that.' Tony 
is like yeah, good job kid, but you're done now. Stay down. He 
offers to go call Aunt May while Peter yelps that he's FINE. 
Tony runs away and Peter tries to follow but decides that nope, 
he's not getting up. "Okay, I'm done," he moans, laying on the 
pavement.

Natasha is still zapping T'challa while Steve and Bucky take 
off in the jet. He tries to leap for the underside of it and 
slides right off the retracting wheel. "I said I'd help you 
find him, not catch him," Nat says.

Outside, Vision finds Wanda crumpled on the ground and 
apologizes. So does she.

Steve looks back to see James flying after him and speeds up. 
Tony joins James, Sam trailing them both. "Vision, I got Bandit 
on my six," James announces. Hey, that's no way to refer to 
your Ton...oh, you meant Sam. Sam starts shooting small rockets 
at him and James is like 'YO! VISION! LITTLE HELP HERE?' Vision 
looks up and tries to shoot at Sam's backpack with his forehead 
beam but Sam just curls in a ball and the beam sails past him 
and grazes James. James grunts, looses power and starts free 
falling. Both Tony and Sam dive to catch him, but they're too 
late. James passes out before he hits the ground. Tony lands 
and runs into the crater, retracting his faceplate and removing 
Rhodey's warily. James has a trail of blood coming out of a 
nostril. Tony orders Friday to check his vitals. Friday says 
she's detecting a heartbeat and she sent an emergency medical 
team already. Sam lands and apologizes even though that wasn't 
his fault. Tony just sends a blast into his chest that flips 
him backward. Oh, nice. You get that out of your system or you 
want to make sure the medical team has two emergencies to deal 
with?

Somewhere in Siberia...presumably because it's snowing outside 
and a guy who looks exactly like your stereotypical Russian 
enters a shop selling Russian nesting dolls. He passes Zippo, 
who is speaking German on the phone, apparently calling that 
hotel back in Berlin. The lady who answer is like 'oh, yeah, do 
you want your hooker...I mean...coffee today?' He says yes, he 
would. So in Germany, the room service lady brings up a tray 
and looks confused when the room is entirely empty and seems to 
have been for a while. Yeah. You might want to upgrade your 
phone system to recognize when a call is not coming from INSIDE 
YOUR BUILDING. The lady tentatively searches for Herr Muller 
and finds a body in the bathtub.

On the quinjet, Bucky asks what's going to happen to Steve's 
friends now. Steve just sighs and says he'll deal with it. 
Bucky questions whether he is worth this much trouble. Steve 
argues that it wasn't really HIM doing all those things he's 
done for the past several years. 
   Chrissy: Yeah, but can you really trust him? I 
   mean...anyone who figures out the secret combination of 
   Russian words could turn him into a mindless killer 
   again.
Bucky says yeah, but...he still did all those things, so...

Hospital. Tony and Vision hover in the next room while James is 
put into an MRI. Tony asks what happened, exactly. Vision just 
says he was "distracted".
   Chrissy: Sure. Blame the woman. 
   Diandra: Really getting this human thing down, aren't 
    you?

Tony goes out into the hall and runs into Natasha. They go to a 
balcony somewhere to talk in private and he reports that James 
has shattered his L4 through S1 vertebras. Which is basically, 
like, three vertebras, but they are the ones that control your 
bladder and at least part of your ability to walk, so...he'll 
be at least a little paralyzed. Natasha says yeah, well, if he 
and Steve don't stop this fight there's going to be a whole lot 
more where that came from. "We played this wrong." He asks who 
"we" is and notes that she must be having a really hard time 
shaking "the whole double agent thing". She asks if he is so 
incapable of letting go of his ego. Uh...have you guys met? 
   Chrissy: To be fair, Steve is pretty bad at that too. 
   All men really. I think it might be coded on the Y 
   chromosome. 
Tony shrugs and says well...T'challa told Thunderbolt about 
what she did, so they're coming for her. She says SHE'S not the 
one who needs to watch her back and stomps off.
   Chrissy: It should probably be noted that Tony is kind 
    of shaky and has his arm in a sling...you know, like 
    somebody who actually just went through a battle and 
    has injuries.
   Diandra: As opposed to how action heroes usually look - 
    just shaking it off and going right back to work?
   Chrissy: Yeah.
Tony gets a message on his smart watch with a picture of a dead 
body. Friday says it's from the Berlin police, so probably the 
guy in the hotel room. He orders her to get the helicopter 
ready.

On the way to...wherever...Friday explains that the task force 
called for a psychiatrist the minute Barnes was arrested and 
the UN sent a guy named Theo Broussard. She puts up a picture 
of him being met at the airport by Gekko. Tony asks if she's 
run facial analysis yet. "What do I look like," she snaps. 
Uh...a machine? Tony says he's been picturing a redhead, 
actually. Probably because of the accent, you know. She sends a 
picture of the man who presented himself as the psychiatrist: 
Colonel Helmut Zemo of Sokovian Intelligence. So...fictional 
KGB? He ran a secret team of killers known as the Echo 
Scorpion. That body in the hotel room was, of course, the real 
doctor. Also in the hotel room they found a wig and prosthesis 
that would have made him look like Bucky. You know, in case he 
needed to make it look like Bucky was doing something he wasn't 
that would make him a wanted criminal. Tony tells Friday to 
send what she's found to Thunderbolt.

Siberia. Gitmo pulls up to an ice hut in a tank. He chisels 
open a panel and finds an ancient looking code box, which he 
inputs some numbers from the book of the Winter Soldier into. 
The frozen doors to a bunker much like the one Steve and 
Natasha were buried in crack open and Zero searches through 
dusty storage stacks until he finds a box. Then he goes deeper 
into the bunker until he reaches what looks like a post-
apocalyptic version of the Harry Potter Experience set at 
Warner Brother's London. Except the whimsical looking buildings 
are actually cryo storage pods stacked up like the prison in 
Minority Report.

Tony's helicopter is still flying over water through what looks 
like a storm.
   Chrissy: And then Nick Fury suddenly appears to recite 
    the story of Icarus...
   Diandra: Stop it. We're not recapping "Kong".
A voice comes over the radio to announce that he is cleared for 
landing and we realize the helicopter has no human pilot, 
so...does Friday do that now too? A giant structure emerges 
from the water and Tony's helicopter flies through some open 
doors.

Thunderbolt greets him as he falls out of the chopper. Tony 
asks if he's got the files yet and launches into orders to 
reroute satellites and start looking for Zinio. Thunderbolt is 
like 'yeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhh, I don't take orders from you.' 
Especially not after what just happened in Germany. I should be 
taking you and all your other superhero friends prisoner. He 
escorts Tony deeper into the facility, passing security screens 
where Tony can see they are already holding Wanda.

Tony goes to the holding area at the center of the structure, 
where all the participants in their little skirmish are being 
held in cells around a circular platform. Clint starts 
applauding him and sarcastically announcing him as the 
"futurist" who "sees all" and "knows what's best for you". Tony 
says come on, buddy. It's not like he KNEW they would wind up 
in cells on some "super max floating ocean pokey". Usually they 
reserve places like this for the worst serial killers. 
Incidentally, when we're through with this, the guys from 
"Criminal Minds" need to use it for some big reveal that all of 
the worst killers they've caught over the past decade all wound 
up in the same prison.
   Chrissy: Oh, is that where I've seen this location 
    before?
   Diandra: Probably. I'm just guessing because it looks 
    like the same place.

Clint gets right up on the other side of the glass and says 
yeah, well, apparently they're criminals now. Tony says well, 
they DID break the law. Yeah, the one you made, like, a few 
weeks ago? Tony tries to play the 'you have RESPONSIBILITIES' 
card. Clint has a wife and children and he chose to fight this 
battle and break the brand new laws. "I don't understand. Why 
didn't you think about them before you chose the wrong side?"
   Chrissy: Ahem.
   Diandra: Yeah, why don't you say that when there isn't a 
    wall of unbreakable glass protecting you from all these 
    people?

Tony moves on to the next cell, where Scott mutters that Hank 
Pym always said the Starks couldn't be trusted. "Who are you," 
Tony asks and Scott groans. "Come on, man."
   Chrissy: No, really, I know Tony is being an asshole 
   right now, but...who are you?

Sam is in the next cell. He asks how James is. Tony says 
they're flying him into Columbia Medical tomorrow and they're 
hopeful. He tries to be nice to Sam - probably feeling guilty 
for that misplaced revenge hit - by asking if he needs 
anything. Food? What does he eat, like...suet? Sam raises his 
eyebrows and asks if Tony is trying to play good cop now. Tony 
says he just wants to know where Steve went. Sam is like oh, 
okay. Should have tried the bad cop approach then because fuck 
you. Tony taps on his smart watch and mutters that he just 
killed the audio on the surveillance equipment pointed at them 
and they have 30 seconds before somebody figures out it isn't a 
glitch. Sure enough, upstairs Thunderbolt yells at the guys in 
the control room to get the sound back.

Tony shows Sam the picture of the real psychiatrist who was 
sent for Bucky and admits he made a mistake. But..."Cap is 
definitely off the reservation, but he's about to need all the 
help he can get." He starts to acknowledge that he and Sam 
don't really know each other very well, but...Sam sighs and 
says he'll tell Tony, but Tony has to go alone as a friend. 
Tony says yeah, sure.

Thunderbolt catches Tony as he's headed back to the chopper and 
asks if Sam told him anything about Steve. Tony is like 'who? 
What? No, they all told me where I could shove it in varying 
degrees of colorful language. I'm going home.' He tells 
Thunderbolt he can call him anytime. "I'll put you on hold. I 
like to watch the line blink." The chopper takes off in the 
driving rain and Thunderbolt glares at it like 'why do people 
put up with this asshole?'

Once the chopper is clear of the submersible prison, Tony takes 
off the sling, pushes a button and the Iron Man suit forms 
around him as he falls through a trap door. He takes off to 
heroic music. And then a plane comes through the clouds, 
following him. T'challa is flying it.

Steve lands right next to the truck Aldo drove in on.
   Chrissy: Okay, I have to ask. Why do you keep changing 
    his name?
   Diandra: Who?
   Chrissy: Zero. Or...whoever.
   Diandra: Oh. I keep forgetting what his name is, so 
    rather than look it up every time, I've decided to just 
    come up with a new one every time I draw a blank. It's 
    been getting more pronounced since he disappeared for, 
    like, a half hour and I stopped caring.
   Chrissy: Uh-huh. Wasn't Aldo a character from Lost?
   Diandra: I thought it was a brand of dog food.
   Chrissy: That's Alpo.
   Diandra: Huh. That's right. *shrugs*

Bucky grabs a rifle from the back and as the bay doors are 
opening Steve asks if he remembers that time they rode in the 
back of a freezer truck together from Rockaway Beach.
   Chrissy: You mean when we had to cuddle up together and 
   share body heat?
Bucky is like yeah..."was that the time we used our train money 
to buy hot dogs?"
   Chrissy: Um...sure. "Hot dogs". Right.
Steve adds that Bucky blew three whole dollars trying to win a 
stuffed bear for a redhead. Bucky asks what her name was 
because he's forgotten. Then he realizes it doesn't matter 
because she would be a hundred years old by this point. Steve 
says yeah, so are they, technically. He reaches over to pat 
Bucky's shoulder and they share a MOMENT. Then they shake it 
off and get on with the mission.

They creep into the open bunker, Steve noting that Zeppo 
couldn't have been here more than a few hours. Bucky thinks 
that's plenty of time to have woken the rest of the super 
soldiers. They go down to the subbasement level and poke around 
a little before a door starts to open. They brace themselves 
for attack and then boggle as Iron Man walks through. The 
faceplate comes down and Tony says 'so...um...is that a rifle 
or are you just happy to see me?' Steve asks what the hell Tony 
is doing here. Tony thinks maybe the story Steve told isn't so 
crazy after all. He says Thunderbolt doesn't know he's here and 
he'd like to keep it that way before he has to have himself 
arrested or some bullshit. Steve is like 'yeah, the paperwork 
on that would be a nightmare.' He drops his shield and says 
it's good to see Tony. Tony is like 'yeah, me too, honey. I 
mean...sweetie...I mean...can you call off the Manchurian 
Candidate back there?'
   Chrissy: He really is the Sawyer of these movies. He has 
    snarky nicknames for everybody.
   Diandra: That's what I'm looking forward to most about 
    him meeting Doctor Strange, I think. I don't give a rip 
    about the fact that they've both played Sherlock Holmes 
    variations. I want to see what sort of nickname he 
    gives a guy who is so much like him that they can only 
    be either fast friends or mortal enemies.

The three go deeper into the building, Black Panther following 
at a distance, still somehow unseen. When they enter the 
Wizarding World of Minority Report room, Tony announces that 
he's reading heat signatures. Steve asks how many. "Uh...one."
   Chrissy: And weirdly it's behind us.
As they go deeper into the room, the lights in the cryopods 
come on. Elmo's voice comes over the sound system to assure 
them that all the people they're looking at right now died in 
their sleep.
   Chrissy: Oh, thanks. Now I'm picturing that said in a 
    high, squeaky voice, followed by a giggle and "that 
    tickles!"
   Diandra: You're welcome.

Bucky creeps closer to a tank to find it pierced by a bullet 
that went straight into the occupants head as the voice 
continues "did you really think I wanted more of you?" Harpo's 
face appears in a window at the far wall and Steve 
instinctively responds as he always does: by throwing his 
shield at it. The shield bounces off the glass and returns to 
him. Zeppo is like 'please, the soviets built this to stand up 
to nuclear fallout and you think that Frisbee can penetrate 
it?' 

T'challa creeps around the corner just as Steve asks if Zero 
really killed all those people in Vienna just to bring them 
here. Zero says everything he's done this past year has led to 
this moment. He's been watching them.
   Chrissy: You should really consider covering the webcam 
    on your computer, Steve. I know you're new to the whole 
    technology thing, but...I'm not sure it's healthy for a 
    guy to masturbate THAT much.
   Diandra: And almost exclusively to videos of beefy blond 
    military guys spanking snarky dark-haired nerdy guys 
    like...wow that plot bunny came back to haunt me.
   Chrissy: You're welcome.
He says now that Steve is standing right in front of him though 
he realizes "there's a bit of green in the blue of your eyes."
   Chrissy: Seriously, turn off the webcam.
He considers this a flaw, which I guess means he's a Nazi. I 
mean HYDRA agent. Whatever. Let's just say he'd totally be pro-
registry.

Steve notes that Helmut is Sokovian and asks if that's what 
this whole thing is about. Zero says nah, Sokovia was turning 
into a shithole long before they destroyed it. He says he made 
a PROMISE. Steve prods: so he lost somebody? Zero says 
yeah...someone. Or everyone. But enough chit-chat, watch this 
video. A display comes on near Steve that says "September 16, 
1991" in Russian. "An empire toppled by its enemies can rise 
again," he adds. "But one which crumbles from within? That's 
dead. Forever."
   Chrissy: This will turn out to be more prescient than 
   anybody could have expected.

Tony comes over to look at the video, which is just a 
surveillance camera pointed at the street we keep seeing in 
flashbacks of Bucky crashing the car into a tree. He looks at 
the date, eyes wide, and asks what the hell this is about. On 
screen, the car crashes and Bucky loops back.

Then we cut to the actual night as the significance of that 
earlier scene with Tony's parents is revealed. Tony's dad 
crawls from the driver's seat and begs somebody to help his 
wife. Bucky strolls over and pulls him up with a fistful of 
hair, then hesitates. Howard Stark blinks at him and says 
"Sergeant Barns?" Mrs. Stark starts calling his name. Bucky 
punches him a couple times in the face and lets his lifeless 
body drop. Then he places him back behind the wheel and calmly 
circles to the passenger seat to strangle her. 

Tony watches the footage, seething. And then, just in case he 
didn't see the guy's face clearly enough, 1991 Bucky walks 
right up to the camera to shoot it out. Steve stares at Tony 
like 'oh, honey...' Tony lunges toward Bucky and Steve catches 
him. Tony turns to face him and asks if he knew about this. 
Steve weakly says he didn't know it was Bucky. Tony is like 
FUCK YOU ANSWER THE QUESTION. Steve says yes. Tony shoves him 
away like 'don't EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN.'
   Chrissy: I can't believe I had dreams about you offering 
    to help me in my shop and getting all sweaty and having 
    to take your shirt off.
   Diandra: Um...okay.
   Chrissy: Sorry. Trying to break the tension.

Tony seems to calm for a second, then suddenly hits Steve so 
hard he flies backward. His armor comes up and he turns to 
Bucky, blasting at him and then grabbing him by the throat and 
flying them across the room, pinning him to the ground by his 
metal arm. Steve recovers and whacks him with his shield before 
shoving him from Bucky. Tony knocks him back and shoots some 
metal pieces from his wrist that clamp around Steve's ankles 
like shackles.
   Chrissy: Well. That adds an unexpected element of kink 
    to the fantasy.
   Diandra: Really?
   Chrissy: Sorry, I promise that was the last one.
   Diandra: No, I meant "unexpected"? Really?

Tony goes back to fighting Bucky until Bucky clamps down on his 
hand so hard that the weapons system shorts. Tony tries to 
blast him right in the face before it fails completely and 
Bucky wrenches his arm sideways so the blast goes into one of 
the columns of cryotanks. Steve gets his manacles off and all 
three of them scatter as the column comes down. Steve tells 
Bucky to run and blocks Tony's attempt to chase him. He tries 
to reason with Tony that it wasn't really Bucky - it was HYDRA 
mind-controlling him. Tony is like 'move it or lose it, 
Spanglepants'. He starts to fly past Steve, but Steve grabs his 
leg and smashes the rockets in his boots with his shield. Tony 
blasts a wall, causing it to collapse between them and turns 
his attention back to Bucky. Except now he can't fly very well. 
He manages to get just enough blasts to jump between platforms 
on this circular...whatever it is Bucky is climbing. He manages 
to corner Bucky, but Steve shows up somehow again to deflect 
the blast.

Bucky keeps climbing out into daylight while Steve and Tony 
fight each other again. Tony knocks Steve's shield away and 
blasts the hatch opening, keeping Bucky from escaping. He flies 
up to grab Bucky, demanding to know if Bucky even remembers 
them at all. Bucky gives the wrong answer at the moment of 
'yes, I remember ALL of them' and all three of them go right 
back to scuffling. They fall down the hatch, Bucky landing on a 
platform and Steve and Tony hitting the ground. And now we're 
finally at the big face off. Tony glowers at 
Steve...presumably...his face plate is down, so it's kind of 
hard to tell. Steve pants that killing Bucky won't change 
anything. Tony says he doesn't care because that son of a bitch 
killed his mommy and he will HAVE REVENGE. He starts beating 
the shit out of Steve until Bucky recovers the dropped shield 
and joins in. Tony holds his own despite being outnumbered, but 
he's lost the upper hand. Bucky does the same move when he 
tries to use his wrist blaster, carving a line in the wall and 
ceiling. Then he pins Tony to the wall and gets hold of the arc 
reactor, trying to rip it from Tony's chest. Tony sends a blast 
through it, knocking him down and blowing his metal arm right 
off.

Steve gets up again and rushes at Tony and there's a cool 
moment where Tony's blasters meet Steve's shield and it looks 
like they're creating this ball of energy in the air between 
them.
   Chrissy: See? There's still sparks between us.
   Diandra: [snort]

Outside, Zhelko is listening to the same message from his wife 
about his son. T'challa creeps up, claws out, and takes a 
moment to take his mask off before announcing his presence. "I 
almost killed the wrong man." Yeah, well, it seems Tony is more 
than willing to take up that slack for you. Bippo says yeah, 
but he's not exactly an innocent man either. He glares at his 
phone, where a "message deleted" window is displaying. T'challa 
asks if this is all he wanted then: to see those three battle 
each other to the death? 
   Chrissy: Eh. I was tired of all the tension between them 
   and it was easier to get them to burn it off this way  
   than by fucking.

Zeffo says his father lived outside of Sokovia proper and he 
figured they would be safe at his place while all that shit 
with Ultron was going down. They watched from that distance, 
which he assured his wife would be safe, because his son was 
excited to see Iron Man in action. He doesn't say what happened 
exactly, but he says it took him two days to find their bodies. 
Including his father's. And the Avengers just declared it a win 
and went home. So basically, he's the Sokovian version of Alfre 
Woodard's character. He knew he wasn't strong enough to kill 
them, but he figured he might be able to get them to kill each 
other.
   Chrissy: So the plot of "The Sum of All Fears", 
    basically.
   Diandra: Was that the one where they tried to get the 
    USA and Russia to fight each other?
   Chrissy: I think so. Although come to think of it: 
    that's a pretty common plot.

He apologizes for killing T'chaka, who seemed like a good man. 
But...you know...all in service to the plan. "Vengeance has 
consumed you," says the guy who has spent the entire movie so 
far trying to avenge his father's death despite everyone 
telling him this very thing. Apparently he's having an epiphany 
because he says it's consuming those men in there too and he's 
ready to let his own need for vengeance go. He retracts his 
claws. "Justice will come soon enough." Geiko says "tell that 
to the dead" and goes to shoot himself. T'challa tackles him, 
knocks the gun away and says the living aren't quite done with 
him yet.

Back underground, Tony and Steve are engaged in a fistfight 
that Friday informs Tony he can't possibly win. Tony orders her 
to analyze Steve's fighting pattern. She does while Tony takes 
several more blows, then announces that she has countermeasures 
ready. As Steve is swinging his shield, Tony catches it, knocks 
it away and blasts Steve in the chest. They go another round 
and Tony drops Steve to his knees, gasping...
   Chrissy: [giggle]
   Diandra: Yeah, yeah...
Steve looks up at him, pleading, and says Bucky (who is still 
unconscious from the last time he was thrown apparently) is his 
friend. Tony is like 'yeah? Then what was I?' He punches him a 
couple more times and flings him to the ground. Then he begs 
Steve to stay down this time. As this is something Steve is 
basically incapable of doing, he staggers upright, raises his 
fists and gasps "I could do this all day."
   Chrissy: Yeah, that's it. Show off your amazing stamina. 

Tony goes to blast him again but Bucky suddenly wakes up and 
grabs his leg. Tony kicks him in the face, becoming distracted 
long enough for Steve to decide on a new tactic: picking Tony 
up and holding him over his head like a prize trophy. He throws 
him down and goes back to punching, then slamming him with the 
shield until he can get the helmet off. He raises the shield 
over his head again and Tony, expecting a death blow, covers 
his face, but he just drives the edge of it into the arc 
reactor.
   Chrissy: Which, up until the last Iron Man, WOULD have 
   been a death blow.
The suit powers down and they stare at each other, gasping and 
panting. Then Steve just removes the shield, staggers upright 
and goes to help Bucky up.

Because he just has to get the last word in, Tony rolls onto an 
elbow and calls that that shield technically doesn't belong to 
Steve. He rants about his father making it and now he's 
protecting the guy who killed him and he DOESN'T DESERVE TO 
WEILD IT.
   Chrissy: Yeah, well, unfortunately it doesn't have a 
    magical lock code like Mjolnir.
   Diandra: Magical lock code?
   Chrissy: [sigh] Just...
   Diandra: Watch the first "Thor" again. I know. I 
    remember the "he who is worthy" part. I'm just 
    questioning that wording.
Steve agrees with that part, so he pauses long enough to drop 
the shield before hobbling away with Bucky. Tony just sits on 
the ground and contemplates whether they will ever be able to 
speak to each other again.

After being absent for most of it, Martin Freeman would like to 
remind everyone that he is still, technically, in this movie.
   Producers: Sorry, Martin. We promise we'll give you a 
    bigger part in the next movie.
   Martin: The next movie is Doctor Strange. I am NOT 
    playing second banana to Benedict Cumberbatch in 
    ANOTHER GODDAMN FRANCHISE.
   Producers: Damnit. How about Black Panther? You cool 
    with waiting a couple years?
He enters the supermax dangerous criminal with superpowers 
holding cell they were keeping Bucky in, which is now housing 
Fizbo.
   Chrissy: You do know that's the clown character one of 
    the guys from "Modern Family" plays, right?
   Diandra: Is it?
Everett tells Fizbo he will get meals at set times during the 
day, followed by "toilet privileges". If he even thinks of 
raising his voice to anyone or touching the glass of his cell 
he will get an electric shock. And if he gets out of line, 
Fizbo will have to deal with him, which he would really enjoy 
actually.
   Chrissy: Oh, please. Like I'm afraid of a hobbit.

Everett is clearly enjoying this, so he just stands in front of 
the man in a cell built for someone twenty times stronger than 
him and asks how it feels to have spent all that time and 
effort just to watch it fail so spectacularly. "Did it," Zero 
asks, smirking slightly.
   Chrissy: Also, I will murder you one day.
   Diandra: Assuming whatever bullshit T'challa drags you 
    into doesn't get you killed first.

Tony pulls up to the Avengers plaza in a fancy orange sports 
car. Somewhere possibly in the facility, he helps James do some 
physical therapy with some fancy braces helping him walk. He 
asks for any feedback James can think of for tweaking the 
design of the brace. Does it need better lateral movement? 
Shock absorbers? A cup holder? James says now that he mentions 
it, it could use some air conditioning in the... He stumbles 
and falls before he can finish the joke, but I imagine he was 
about to say something like "groin area". Tony tries to help 
him up, but James waves him off and Tony just frets silently 
while James sits on the floor. James snorts and says he flew 
138 combat missions when he was in the military and any one of 
them could have killed him. But he did it anyway "because the 
fight needed to be fought."
   Chrissy: I know you think you're helping, but I'm not 
   sure some of the shit our government sends men to die 
   for is worth their lives.
He likens this thinking to the Accords, which he signed because 
it was the "right thing to do". And this particular outcome 
sucks, but it hasn't changed his opinion on that. Then he 
quietly adds "I don't think."

Tony offers to help him up again and this time James lets him. 
Any further bonding is interrupted by a knock on the window. 
They frown at Stan Lee, standing outside wearing a FedEx 
uniform. "Are you Tony...Stank," he asks, squinting at the name 
on the package in his hands. James laughs and says yes, he 
definitely has the right address. This cracker next to him is 
Tony Stank. Also, thanks for that. That totally made his day 
and he plans to tease Tony about it indefinitely.

Cut to Tony opening the package. There is a note addressed to 
him, which Steve reads in voice over.
   Chrissy: I was just remembering all the good times we 
    had before you decided people with special abilities 
    needed to sign a registry...
   Diandra: And then realized too late just how far the 
    authorities would take that because they ALWAYS DO, but 
    then got distracted by the Bucky killing your mom thing 
    and went right back to fighting me.
He rambles about how glad he is to hear Tony has returned to 
the compound because holing himself up in his mansion alone 
wouldn't be healthy and he needs his "family".
   Chrissy: And even though I can never forgive you for it, 
    part of me still loves you.
   Diandra: A really big part if you know what I mean.
   Chrissy: Come on, dude, I'm trying to be romantic and 
    sweet here.
   Diandra: Sorry.

He says the Avengers are Tony's more than his. Even though he 
was in charge of training them and Tony spent years calling him 
the "boss". Then he starts rambling about how he's been on his 
own since he was 18 and never really "fit in" but he BELIEVES 
in people and that's why he had to fight Tony on this. "Locks 
can be replaced, but maybe they shouldn't."
   Chrissy: So...are we supposed to think this is about the 
    locks on the cells of the people we've been montaging 
    over while he talks or the lock on his heart to keep 
    Tony out?
   Diandra: Sure.
"I know I hurt you, Tony," he finishes. He says he thought he 
was SPARING him that hurt by not telling him about his parents' 
murders, but he realizes now he was just being selfish and he's 
sorry.
   Chrissy: This is starting to sound like a breakup 
    letter.
   Diandra: You can have custody of the kids. And the 
    shield. I'll just go live in a cave somewhere and feel 
    sorry for myself. Probably grow a beard.

He says he hopes one day Tony understands, but he really can't 
come around to agreeing with him on the registry thing. He can 
only respect that Tony really thinks he's doing the right 
thing. Tony shakes a cell phone out of the box and smiles 
wistfully.
   Chrissy: We'll always have New York. And Sokovia. And 
    that one time we were alone on the jet somewhere over 
    the Midwest when Jarvis had to take over flying because 
    my hands were too busy...
   Diandra: And probably that one angry time in Berlin when 
    we tried to patch things up.
   Chrissy: Yeah. I ever tell you you're hot when you're 
    angry?
   Diandra: Are we actually playing Steve and Tony right 
    now or are we just riffing?
   Chrissy: I don't know, I'm just following your lead.
   Diandra: Oh, so I'm the boss now?
   Chrissy: I thought you always had been. You're the 
    recapper. I'm just here to entertain you.
   Diandra: Huh. One problem: how do we roleplay this when 
    we're basically both Tony?
   Chrissy: I'll leave that to you to figure out by the 
    time we get to the next Avengers.

His musings are interrupted by Friday, who announces that 
Thunderbolt is calling about a breach at the underwater super 
prison, which is apparently actually called the "Raft" prison. 
Because "Peakaboo Alcatraz" was deemed too stupid, I guess. 
Tony says put him through. Thunderbolt gets out his overture of 
"we have a problem" and Tony immediately says "please hold" and 
pushes the button so he can watch the line blink. Because 
annoying people amuses him.

On the Raft, Sam turns to see Steve approaching his cell in 
civilian clothing and smiles. Steve's voice over concludes that 
if Tony ever needs him...or them...he'll be there. And we smash 
to credits.

Mid-credit scene. A doctor is working on Bucky, who is sitting 
next to a cryo tank, when Steve comes in the room. Steve asks 
if he's sure about "this". Bucky says he can't trust his own 
mind, so until they figure out how to deprogram him he's just 
going to go back under and spare everybody. Steve watches as 
they seal him up in the chamber, then goes out to stare moodily 
out a window. T'challa finds him and Steve thanks him for doing 
"this". T'challa says his father and Steve's friend were both 
"victims", it turns out. At least he can help the one still 
living find peace. Steve says if "they" find out where Bucky 
is, they'll come for him. "Let them try," T'challa says and we 
pan out the window to show the African jungles of Wakanda.

Somewhere toward the end of the credits, the hero music 
switches to a rock song that sounds like it's from the Vietnam 
war era, but...isn't.

And then we're in Peter's room. From elsewhere in the 
apartment, Aunt May asks, obviously not for the first time, who 
hit him. He says it was just "some guy" and geez mom quit with 
the third degree already I said I don't want to talk about it! 
Most of that is subtext. He's fussing with an electronic 
doohickey strapped to his wrist and just as he is answering 
Aunt May's question about "some guy"s name (Steve somebody from 
Brooklyn), laser lights shoot out of it. He gapes at the 
display, then tucks the wrist under his arm as May comes in the 
room. She says she hopes he at least got a few hits in himself 
as she hands him an ice pack. He says yeah, actually, which is 
impressive because Steve's friend is "huge".
   Chrissy: Pfffffffttttttt, no he isn't. He just sometimes 
   enhances himself artificially.

May is like 'okay, sure. Love you!' and leaves the room. Peter 
projects the laser lights on the ceiling again and grins 
stupidly at it. It is a giant logo of the face of his spider 
suit. So basically, Marvel's version of Batman created a bat 
signal...for Spider-Man.
   Chrissy: Except he gave it TO Spider-Man, so I'm not too 
    sure what he's supposed to do with it.
   Diandra: Nothing. Tony is a tech guy. They love shiny 
    useless gadgets. 

And then we get a black screen that says "Spider-Man will 
return", which...sounds like a threat.
   Chrissy: As will Black Panther, but apparently we didn't 
    find that relevant to mention.
   Diandra: I'm hoping that's just because his movie is so 
    much further down the pike.
   Chrissy: Yeah. Hopefully.

I want to officially apologize for the dry, almost humorless 
nature of my last couple MCU recaps. I felt like they weren't 
as fun as the first two in this series. Whether that's because 
they were more serious in and of themselves or because I was 
cranky from working on the season four "Sherlock" recaps at the 
same time I'm not really sure. Somewhere during this recap I 
seem to have found my footing again and remembered that these 
things are supposed to be fun. Which is good, because the next 
four are going to have a lot more comedy and I look forward to 
having fun with them.
   Chrissy: Of course, the next one is an origin story for 
    a character based in a small part on Sherlock Holmes 
    and played by Benedict Cumberbatch, so if "Sherlock" 
    was really the problem...
   Diandra: Fuck.