The outcome is only uncertain for those who disbelieve.

#there is no heterosexual explanation for this

Then finish it, cause I’m with you til the end of the line.

Deleted scene for Captain America: Civil War

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

the russos really thought steve lifting mjolnir, saying “avengers assemble,” and giving sam the shield would distract us from how bad the end of his arc was, huh?

it just blows my mind how they were also behind catws and yet still gave us endgame, because tws steve & the way he was consciously trying to integrate himself into the 21st century was so good. we saw glimpses of him struggling to adjust at the end of catfa & in a1, but tws really had him try and endgame just breezed right past that. tws steve was finding space in his brand new world & making it where he couldn’t. tws steve was coming to terms with the fact that whatever world he knew had now moved on without him, he was coming to terms with the fact that peggy had moved on, had a husband she grew old with, and had children that she loved. endgame could’ve shown us steve getting a full new life – instead, they send him back for a dance and a kiss. there’s cacw “selfish,” in that he wanted to be the one to bring bucky in because he still believed bucky had a chance & bucky was literally his last connection to before; and there’s endgame selfish, where he finally has his best friends & his new family back and he still creates a divergent timeline knowing full well that peggy had already lived her life. that… just doesn’t sit well with me.

does steve deserve a happy ending? of course. but i wish he got a good ending, too. now steve’s aged & back in the present, having lived a whole life that had just been out of his grasp in his original timeline–but that was the big tragedy of it!! he had just missed that life, he had sacrificed that life so that others could have theirs. tws made it clear that that life hadn’t been meant for him. it wasn’t meant to be his life because that opportunity had passed, but now he had a brand new chance, and he had peggy’s blessing. his opportunity for growth came in the acceptance that he could not go backward, only onward: aou steve was aware he wasn’t the same man that went down in the ice, or the same man that had been thawed out. he didn’t have to be. how could aou steve get that point right, and endgame steve couldn’t? so: steve gets his girl, peggy gets her dance, but bucky loses steve and sam loses steve. bucky who conquered his brainwashing and was starting to find peace, sam who got back into the fight because he saw that steve needed help–and they just lose steve to those years like that? steve gets 70 years and bucky and sam get five minutes and a moment by the water? they all deserved better than that.

AND ONE MORE FUCKING THING. the fakeout of the elevator scene???? hello???? there i was, expecting another brilliantly choreographed elevator fight scene with steve walking out of those doors with the sceptre, and instead, i get punched in the throat by a reminder of n*ck sp*ncer’s h*dra!cap, even if it was fake? seriously? SERIOUSLY?

THE ELEVATOR FAKEOUT IS THE RUDEST GODDAMN THING, IMMA DIE MAD ABOUT IT

also yes, all of this, Steve’s arc in this movie is such trash

What really bothers me about it is that, as someone who’s ace and values friendships more than romance, it implies that the only worthy happy ending is a romantic one.

And you can’t tell me that Steve lost Bucky a bunch of times and went through all that shit to get him back just to nope out and go back to the past.

I mean, that’s really the crux, ain’t it?

Marvel spent all 3 Cap movies showing us just how important Bucky Barnes was to Steve Rogers and vice versa and then sometimes between CACW and Infinity War, they went, “but not really,” and then we got interactions like these two were barely good friends instead of the “Us vs The World” mentality that we got from the Cap movies

Steve went on a ONE-MAN SUICIDE MISSION just on the possibility that Bucky was still alive in the First Avenger

He was 100% the thing that broke the Soldier’s programming in the Winter Soldier

He dropped everything to FIND Bucky at the end of tWS

He became an international fugitive just to protect Bucky in Civil War

…but all of that and now y’all are trying to tell me that Steve–knowing what it’s like to be a man outta time–would put two middle fingers up to his best friend, say, “you’re on your own,” and go to a time where he knows Bucky is being tortured for 44 more years? And does nothing about it?

excuse me??? that’s not the Steve Rogers that you’ve given me over the course of these first 3 phases, how the fuck do you expect me to buy that with no issues????

♪  We didn’t start the fire     It was always burning     Since the world’s been turning     We didn’t start the fire     But when we are gone     It will still burn on, and on, and on, and on…  ♪

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) dir. Joe & Anthony Russo

A concept i’ve been thinking about since infinity war- Thanos using the reality stone to reverse the effects of the super soldier serum, causing Steve to revert back to his smaller, sickly self. It seemed to me like a good visual way to really shock an audience and bring an end to Steve’s character arc (a calling back to the themes of the first avenger and the idea that Steve was Captain America long before the serum, and allude to the Avengers 2012 quote “everything special about you came out of a bottle.” If Steve survives endgame this de-seruming may be taken as an opportunity to lead a more normal life, as was touched on in Age of Ultron, and allow the new generation of Avengers to take the lead.) Anyway, i had fun with this idea, hope you enjoy it.

Evans suggested that when they bump into each other, they do what friends often do after being apart for a while: assess each other’s haircuts. In some ways, they’ve swapped styles. Thor has gotten a clean-cut trim, while Cap is sporting the ragged locks and beard.

“I’ll be like, ‘Short hair now? Good choice,’” Evans says, while miming a right hook against an invisible Outrider.

“And I’ll go, ‘Yours too. The beard. Very ­rugged,’” Hemsworth says.

— Behind the scenes of Avengers: Infinity War, EW

Steve Rogers being completely done in Captain America: Civil War (2016) 

Nothing has changed. The body is a reservoir of pain. — Wisława Szymborska, “Tortures”

I am fully on-board with the MCU Bucky being a Bucky Barnes/Arnie Roth combo character as far as backgrounds go.

Personally, I figured Buck for another primarily Irish-stock kid, albeit better off financially and less fresh from the boat than the Rogers family, but I wouldn’t be in fandom if I didn’t love different character interpretations, and Jewish Bucky is totally valid, especially if you take the Roth influence into account.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Captain America lore, to me, is how often Cap has been mythologized in his own universe. In the earliest comics, Bucky is the child companion to super-soldier Steve Rogers. Which is… kind of bizarre and creepy given the WWII context? It didn’t take long for other writers to realize this, so in later iterations – like the Waid or Brubaker runs, for example – Bucky being a kid is ret-conned, except it’s framed in a way that doesn’t invalidate the earliest Cap stories. Rather, they’re treated as sanitized versions of the “real” story, which is that Bucky was either a war photographer who befriended Steve and/or at least 16 when he was sent out to accompany Captain America as an orphan who was raised on-base to become a specialist in scouting and wet-works, who did things in the dark that an icon like Cap wasn’t allowed to do in the light. SUBTEXT.

The result is a pretty amusing comics meta, where we get to see the “real” Bucky complain about his 40’s GEE WHIZ, CAP portrayal on-screen – or rather, on-panel – and in the MCU, we get to see kids grabbing at Captain America comic books generated while Steve is on his publicity tours, which are in fact reproductions of the actual Captain America Comics #1.

Published in our world in 1941, and yeah, he’s totally punching Hitler. Did I say meta? IT’S ALL VERY META.

Another example of an in-universe non-ret-con is when WWII ended and Steve Rogers was floundering as a character (what to do with a Hitler-puncher when you have no Hitlers to punch?) but the Cold War was gearing up and McCarthyism was hot, so the best (??? lol) way to make him relevant was to go anti-Communism. Cap was even billed as CAPTAIN AMERICA, COMMIE-SMASHER!! before the title was altogether cancelled in the 50’s.

When Stan Lee revived him in the 60’s, he decided that the REAL Steve Rogers had been frozen since WWII, and the Anti-Commie 50’s Cap was an impostor. 

But wait, this was about Bucky.

So, in none of the non-MCU iterations was Bucky actually Steve’s BFF from childhood. As of 1982, Steve DID have a childhood bestie, though. Arnold Roth. They met as weakling kids getting their respective asses handed to them in back alleys, then Arnie was like, “Screw this, I’m going to take up boxing.” So he did. And he got buff and used his new buffness to protect the still-sickly Steve Rogers from bullies on the daily. Thus continued their Best Friends Ever relationship, to the point where Steve considered the Roths a second family, and Arnold his biffle big bro. Also, Arnie developed a girl-chasing Romeo persona during their teens. I’m sure you can all see the parallels here. 

However. The lady-killer rep was due to Arnold realizing he was gay and trying to over-compensate to hide his real desires, resulting in him eventually drifting apart from the more quiet Steve.

He later joined the Navy during WWII, and a whole bunch of other junk happened, (GAMBLING! ABDUCTION! DEATH! FRIENDSHIP!) but 616 Arnie Roth is canon Jewish and canon Steve’s larger, stronger, brunet age-mate protector. Make of it what you will.

Super belated update, but I just realized @teaberryblue​ made the incredibly apt read that Arnold Roth may very well be bisexual, and I don’t want to invalidate his “girl-chasing” years as him just being thirsty to hide a gay identity. Based on what we’ve seen of him in the comics, there’s no reason to believe his affections towards both women and men aren’t legitimate. Whatever he identifies as, he’s got Captain America.

Here’s a more comprehensive dissection on the flawed but fascinating depiction of Arnold Roth as a queer character in comics, and Captain America’s defense and devotion to him even before explicitly “gay” stories were allowed.