Quote1 Don't look at me. I do what he does, just slower. Quote2
-- Sam Wilson src

Military Career

Sam Wilson was a United States Air Force pararescueman, and the operator of an Exo-7 Falcon jet pack, who separated from active service some time after a mission saw his best friend Riley being shot down alongside him. Having relocated to Washington, Wilson set up a support group for former soldiers struggling to adjust after their return to civilian life.

Meeting Captain America

While he was in a morning jog across the streets of Washington D.C., Wilson met Captain America, who was also jogging in the same route and manages to outrun him several times. After Wilson stopped to catch his breath, Rogers come and they talk about their statuses as veterans and their time serving the US Armed forces. Their conversation was interrupted when Rogers was being deployed for a mission.

Suiting Up

When Rogers learned that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been subverted by Hydra, he and his colleague Natasha Romanoff contacted Wilson for assistance, as he was a man that Rogers could be certain they could trust as he had no active role in S.H.I.E.L.D. Wilson agreed to join their effort, and asked them to procure a mothballed Exo-7 Falcon wing harness for him to help them with their plans.

Samuel Wilson (Earth-199999) from Captain America The Winter Soldier Poster 001

With the Exo-7 Falcon acquired, Wilson was able to help Rogers and Romanoff interrogate Hydra agent Jasper Sitwell.

Confrontation with the Winter Soldier

After interrogating Sitwell, Rogers, Wilson and Romanoff took Jasper Sitwell in the car and drove towards the Triskelion. However, they were ambushed by the Winter Soldier. Wilson gave Romanoff and Rogers a cover, by using a machine gun to fight and eliminate the Hydra agents.

After killing the Hydra agents, he took his Exo-7 Falcon Armor. Wilson saw Rogers battling the Winter Soldier, he joined in and kicked the Winter Soldier out of the way. Before they could leave, Wilson, Rogers and Romanoff, they were taken by Hydra infiltrators that were inside of S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Brock Rumlow.

Meeting Nick Fury

Although the trio were captured, they were rescued from a van they were being transported in by Maria Hill, and brought to Nick Fury, who had faked his death and had a plan to prevent Hydra from massacring millions of people. Fury wanted to disrupt the deployment of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s three new helicarriers, which involved replacing three targeting control chips, one for each vessel, and needed Captain America to complete the task. Sam readily took on the challenge to aid Fury's plan as well.

Falcon proved to be a valuable asset thanks to his ability to fly once the helicarriers took to the air. He drew fire from both helicarrier gun batteries and Quinjet attack, but with Captain America managed to reprogram two of the three helicarriers before they encountered the Winter Soldier in the third. One of Sam's wings was damaged by the Winter Soldier, and he was forced to land in the Triskelion using a backup parachute in his pack.

Duel with Brock Rumlow

As he got into the Triskelion, Sam encountered Brock Rumlow. The soldiers now engages into a brutal hand-to-hand combat. Rumlow managed to get an upper-hand against Wilson, due to his fighting techniques. Their battle was interrupted when Wilson saw the final helicarrier coming towards them. Wilson runs for his life, while Rumlow was buried in the debris. Sam managed to escape the collapsing Triskelion by leaping to a passing helicopter piloted by Romanoff.

Rogers had been grievously injured, and had subsequently almost drowned, from his battle with the Winter Soldier. Sam stayed by his hospital bed until he awoke.

After visiting Nick Fury's grave where they met Nick, who had kept his survival a secret, Steve and Sam were approached by Natasha, who gave Steve a dossier on Bucky and the Winter Soldier program as Steve wanted to start looking for him. Sam decided to follow Steve.[1]

The Hunt for the Winter Soldier

In the following months, however, Steve returned to the Avengers to help them hunt down the last major Hydra bases, leaving Sam to chase up potential leads on the Winter Soldier on his own. After the Avengers captured Baron Strucker and Loki's scepter from the last Hydra base, Sam was invited to the celebration at Avengers Tower, during which he teased Steve for their time apart but assured his friend that he understood Steve's need to be with the Avengers, even claiming that the role wasn't for him.


Sam was one of the heroes chosen by Steve Rogers to serve on the new Avengers roster, which included Steve, Natasha, Colonel James Rhodes (War Machine), Wanda Maximoff, and the Vision.[2].

Confrontation at the Avengers Complex

Months later, Sam was at the New Avengers Facility when the site's security system detected something anomalous. He went to investigate, and encountered Ant-Man attempting to access the facility unnoticed. Sam tried to grab the intruder, who called himself Ant-Man, but Lang resisted and fought him off. Sam was caught completely off-guard by his adversary's ability to grow and shrink at will, and ultimately proved unable to stop him from robbing the facility of an old piece of equipment stored there. Frustrated by the encounter, he researched the man further in a bid to track him down.[3]

Fight with Crossbones

Sam continued training as an Avenger with Steve and the rest of the team. His and Steve's strength as a partnership grew even stronger. One day, Sam informed Steve that an ex-Hydra agent was detected travelling through Africa, specifically to Nigeria. Sam and Steve assumed it was Bucky. They assembled the team and headed to Lagos, Nigeria to apprehend Bucky. However, as they were approaching, intel revealed the ex-Hydra operative to be Brock Rumlow, now going by the alias "Crossbones", instead.[4]

Samuel Wilson (Earth-199999) from Captain America Civil War 002

They arrived in Lagos, Nigeria, and began reconnaissance, looking for Crossbones. Natasha and Wanda took to the streets, while Steve led the team from a nearby apartment building. Sam scouted the location from atop a building, and was able to identify Crossbones' truck with his drone Redwing. Crossbones breached the Institute for Infectious Diseases Building, and attempted to release a deadly toxin, but the Avengers quickly went through his group of mercenaries stopped him. However, he distracted Steve momentarily by mentioning Bucky, allowing him to detonate a suicide bomb. Wanda quickly acted to save Steve by levitating Crossbones upwards, but that only caused the bomb to kill the people that were in the building near them. The Avengers aided the fire and rescue troops in rescuing the people affected.

The Sokovia Accords

The Avengers' actions in Lagos stirred up a lot of controversy among the people and the governments of the world. The following month, Tony returned to the Avengers base with Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross. Ross showed footage of the destruction caused by their battles in New York, Washington, Sokovia, and Lagos. He also presented to them the Sokovia Accords, a document of guidelines proposed by the United Nations in order to keep the Avengers in check at all times. The idea of allowing the government to control the Avengers was very divisive, with Sam and Steve strongly protesting it, while Tony, Rhodey, Vision, and Natasha all voting to sign it.

The Search for Bucky Continues

Sam accompanied Steve when he went to the funeral of his old flame Peggy Carter, and listened to her niece, Sharon Carter, give a eulogy. They later went to the hotel where Sharon was staying and found out that Bucky had resurfaced and had apparently bombed the United Nations conference in Vienna. Steve decided to go after Bucky, and Sam offered his assistance without hesitation.

They found Bucky hiding out in Romania. Sam guarded the building while Steve had a conversation with him. Sam informed Steve the Romanian police were closing in on them, but Bucky wouldn't leave with Steve. The two were chased out of the building by the police, and then they encountered the Black Panther. The chase led them to the streets, but was eventually stopped and War Machine came to arrest them. Sam was taken with the others to the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre in Germany. On the way there, Sam jokingly asked T'Challa if he liked cats. T'Challa revealed to them that the Black Panther was a mantle passed down from each generation of Wakandan kings, and since the Winter Soldier had killed his father in the Vienna bombings, he now was the Black Panther and was looking for revenge.

Apprehending the Winter Soldier

They arrived at the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre, and were greeted by Sharon and Everett Ross. Ross informed them that they were going to confiscate all their equipment. Sam threatened that he better not see anyone flying around in his suit. He was also annoyed that they tagged his flying suit as "bird costume". Later, they listened in on Bucky's interrogation with a psychiatrist. Steve started to grow suspicious about how quickly the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre was able to locate Bucky, as opposed to his and Sam's two-year hunt. During the interrogation, the power went out, which made the alarmed Steve and Sam rush to where Bucky was being kept. They found the psychiatrist on the floor asking for help, and Steve pinned him against a wall and asked who he was. He revealed he was someone who wanted to see an empire fall. Sam was attacked and knocked out by the Winter Soldier.

After this, Sam and Steve were held up in a nearby abandoned building, after they escaped the Joint Counter Terrorist Centre with Bucky. They questioned Bucky, who was brainwashed when he attacked the others. Bucky revealed that he believed the psychiatrist was looking to unleash the other Winter Soldiers from stasis in a base in Siberia. Sam said that their situation would've been a lot simpler before the Accords came into play. Steve suggested they try asking Tony for help, but Sam dismissed it as a bad idea. Sam called for the Avengers that were on Cap's side to assemble, while also telling Steve that he knew a guy that could help.

Confrontation with Iron Man

Samuel Wilson (Earth-199999) from Captain America Civil War 003

Sam and Steve called in Hawkeye out of retirement to retrieve Wanda from the facility, and Ant-Man from San Francisco. Sam introduced Ant-Man to Steve, and said that their encounter a few months earlier was a nice audition, but that "it'll never happen again." Steve told everyone the plan to get to a helicopter within the nearby airport, and also to suit up. Sam and Bucky went into the airport terminal to scout out for the Avengers quinjet. Iron Man's team of heroes went to arrest Captain America's team. Sam and Bucky were first attacked by Spider-Man. Sam scoffed at his suit and abilities, saying "everyone's got a gimmick now." However, Spider-Man did manage to trap both him and Bucky in his extremely tight webbing. Sam got out of webbing and joined in on the battle on the tarmac.

He mostly fought aerially with War Machine, Iron Man, and the Vision. Soon, he pointed out to Steve that not everyone was going to get out of the battle, so he pushed Steve and Bucky to be the ones to fly to Siberia and beat the psychiatrist. Steve took Bucky into the quinjet and flew away. Iron Man and War Machine gave chase, and Falcon followed after them. Falcon dodged a laser beam shot by the Vision at him, and it ended up shooting down War Machine. War Machine hit the ground at fully energy. Iron Man flew down and found him unconscious. Falcon flew down as well and apologized, to which Iron Man responded by shooting him with his repulsor beam.

Avengers Disassembled

Sam was later locked up with Hawkeye, Ant-Man, and Wanda in the Raft, under the supervision of Secretary Ross. Sam asked how Rhodes was when Tony came by his cell. Tony offered an update, and asked how Sam was. Sam questioned his good cop approach and told him he would have to go bad cop to get any information out of him. Tony turned off the security footage, and admitted he was wrong to Sam and that the man pretending to be Bucky's psychiatrist was the mastermind behind all of it. Sam told Tony where Steve was when he promised that he would go alone and as a friend.

Shortly after Iron Man confronted Captain America and the Winter Soldier in Siberia,[5] Rogers broke into the Raft and rescued his friends. While he parted ways with most of them, he partnered with Sam and Natasha to continue fighting terrorists in the shadows.[6]

Infinity War

In 2018, Sam, Rogers, and Romanoff were contacted by Bruce Banner to help Wanda and Vision, who had retreated to Scotland. The three Avengers arrived and rescued Wanda and Vision from Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive, who were under orders from Thanos to take the Mind Stone from Vision's head. With Vision damaged, Sam and the Avengers traveled to Wakanda, where T'Challa's sister Shuri offered to remove the Mind Stone from Vision's head. Though Sam aided the Avengers in fighting Thanos's forces to buy Shuri time, Thanos eventually acquired the Mind Stone and snapped half of the universe's population into dust, including Sam.[7]


Five years later, the Avengers underwent a Time Heist and resurrected the fallen with past versions of the Infinity Stones. After his resurrection, Falcon contacted Rogers and emerged from a portal on Rogers's left, alongside the resurrected and their allies. Falcon joined the Avengers in fighting a past version of Thanos, with the battle eventually concluding with Tony Stark using the Infinity Stones to snap Thanos's forces away at the cost of his own life.[8]

Succeeding Captain America

After attending Stark's funeral, Sam watched as Steve prepared to travel across time to return the past Infinity Stones to their proper times. However, Steve did not return after five seconds, much to Sam's concern. Just then, Bucky pointed out an elderly man in the distance, whom Sam realized was an elderly Steve.

The elderly Steve explained to Sam that after returning the Infinity Stones, he had returned to the 1940s and spent the rest of his days with the love of his life. Steve then bequeathed his shield and mantle to Sam.[8]


Counselling: Sam Wilson is an experienced counselor for ex-military personnel struggling to cope with the reintegration to civilian life.

Master Combatant: Falcon was trained in numerous forms of combat, specifically aerial and unarmed combat. Wilson's fighting style include a combination of firearm improvisation, flight maneuvers such as swooping and aerial grappling, and modern army combatives. Wilson's modern army combatives derive elements from Muay Thai, American Boxing, and Taekwondo.

Master Acrobat: In order to withstand the equilibrium shifting caused by flight, Wilson is an expert acrobat.


Exo-7 Falcon flight harness: Sam is able to fly using the Exo-7 Falcon, a jet pack with wings attached to it.[1]

Magnification Goggles: Sam has a pair of goggles that not only protect his eyes during high speed flight, but also confer high powered magnification, giving him both telescopic and microscopic vision.[3]

Redwings: A small, remote control drone that Sam uses for surveillance and combat. Stored in the back of his suit when not in use. He later seen using more than one Redwing during the Battle of Wakanda


Steyr SPP submachine guns which can be attached and detached to and from the wings.

  • Anthony Mackie originally auditioned to play the role of the Mandarin for Iron Man 3. His positive screen test eventually earned him the role of Sam Wilson.[9]
  • The sweater Wilson is wearing when introduced has the U.S. Air National Guard emblem on it.[1]

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