A pararescueman who ran a support group for veterans, went for a jog, and ended up carrying a shield he spent years deciding whether he was allowed to pick up.
Sam Wilson’s job before any of this was talking to soldiers about what happened to them. He was a pararescueman who tested an experimental winged suit and lost his partner Riley to a rocket-propelled grenade, and by the time Steve Rogers overtakes him on a running track he has built a life out of helping other people carry the same thing.
That is why the friendship works and why the eventual handover is not a formality. Rogers is a soldier who was made. Wilson is a soldier who chose to stop being one and then chose to start again, which is a harder position to hold and a much better one to give a shield to.
The films are also frank that the shield is not simply his because it was handed to him. He gives it to a museum. The government gives it to somebody else. Getting it back is a separate story with its own argument in it, and the argument is not about worthiness.
Show detailsRedwing
The drone is introduced in Lagos as a piece of kit and quietly becomes the thing that distinguishes him from every other flier in this material. Wilson does not have powers, so his advantage is that he is always looking at the fight from two places at once.