Coming back to an Isaiah Bradley thought I had during tfatws that I didn't post bc I didn't have tumblr:
I found it really interesting and impactful that both Sam and Bucky can each relate to and understand one significant part of Isaiah's trauma, but neither of them can truly fathom it as a whole.
Sam understands, for one, the racial aspect. The way it wears on a person through their whole life to be subtly or directly pushed down and out of things, always struggling to do the best thing you can do and being ignored or punished for it anyway. Living in distrust of the systems in place because they've always been designed against you, or choosing to risk trusting them for the sake of others and then getting burned. Existing in a place where a lot of people simply can't comprehend all the ways things are different for you.
In addition, he deeply understands losing people, losing time with people, and the way that grief can be unspeakable. Both Isaiah and Sam have lost so many people, both in the military and in their personal lives (as well as having kids in their family that they cared about and missing part of their upbringing), and I think that emotional understanding of loss isn't something that can be undone. They will always share that. For Sam, he keeps going. He's been beaten down by the world, and badly, but not so much that he feels he can't get back up. That's the difference. It's only through empathy that he can process Isaiah's inability to be passionate about that after everything he's been through.
Bucky, on the other hand, understands the torture, imprisonment and experimentation part, and the ugly and irreversible things that does to a person. What it's like to be treated as less than human, a lab rat, a tool in a machine, tortured and imprisoned for decades, having almost nothing left when he finally got out. The exhaustion. The emptiness. The disillusionment, wondering if it's worth it to hold on to anything anymore. It's a reality not everybody experiences, especially not to the extent either of them did. And I think that's why he understood that Isaiah didn't want to be revealed to the world. He was too tired for justice; he just wanted peace.
Sam wanted to have known about this guy, the legendary things that he did, and the tragedy he experienced, which is fair.
But Bucky wanted Isaiah to have what he himself was still trying to find.
Neither Bucky nor Sam had all the pieces to the puzzle. But I think both of them felt that there was an homage, maybe even something attempting to be justice for Isaiah in Sam becoming Cap. Even though it was Sam's decision and no one else's, there was definitely an element there of honoring the history, and the person left out of the books.
And of course, there's the fact that Sam got him an exhibit in the Smithsonian. That scene was just...special. Carl Lumbly's acting was subtle but very raw, and it was all just perfectly done. I'll never get over the way he was shaking while hugging Sam. Things like that scene are why tfatws came out on top to me out of the three shows. It wasn't huge and cosmic, it just dealt with very lifelike people and their struggles and their pasts. It was zoomed in to the finest detail, and that's part of what made it really work. It's probably why I am and still will be writing meta on it quite a while after it's been out.
