After travelling to Wakanda and living among its people, Bucky was given the "White Wolf" moniker. His Wakandan name only got a handful of throwaway mentions in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, but many fans have wondered why the series didn't wrap up with a title card reading "Captain America and The White Wolf" rather than "Captain America and The Winter Soldier."
Even going with "Captain America and Bucky" would have surely made more sense than the fully recovered HYDRA assassin still calling himself The Winter Soldier, but showrunner Malcolm Spellman has now confirmed that they did consider an alternate title card for the Disney+ series.
"I got to see that moniker [White Wolf] in watching one of the cuts, and man, it really affected me emotionally," he admitted. "The reason [the closing title card] still says The Winter Soldier is solely based on Marvel feeling like they needed to keep some of the original title in there to land that feeling. I don’t think it had anything to do with where Bucky is going or how Bucky evolved."
"I think that they felt like if they went too far away from the original title, you wouldn’t feel the impact of those words. Again, I’m speculating here, but I believe they wanted the impact of Captain America and the Winter Soldier to land. And I do think that had they done Captain America and the White Wolf, it might not have been as emotional of a landing because it’s too much math and too much evolution. I got blindsided by that while watching the cut - but I loved it."
It's easy to see where Spellman is coming from here, especially as the whole "White Wolf" moniker really hasn't been fully established in the MCU and may have confused a lot of viewers when it showed up on screen. Bucky has emerged as a superhero who has managed to overcome his past transgressions, so perhaps he's making "Winter Soldier" his own?
Either way, the title was clearly decided on by Kevin Feige if "Captain America and The Winter Soldier" took Spellman by surprise. What are your thoughts on the show's name change?
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