Warning: This article contains spoilers about it Falcon and the Winter Soldier’s Episode 5 “Truth”.
There was a buzz on the way to Season 1’s penultimate episode The Falcon and the Winter Soldier that a new character would appear that we haven’t seen in the MCU before, and she did.
Eleven Primetime Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus made her Marvel debut as the enigmatic Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, appearing before recently canceled Captain America John Walker as a possible rescue to revive his fallen superhero career.
“You can just call me Val, but don’t call me Val, just keep it in your head,” she instructed Walker in episode 5.
“I would have killed that bastard too,” the Contessa tells Walker of the flag destroyer he hit with The Shield, “You did the right thing by taking the serum. It has made you valuable to certain people. “
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She also instructs Walker to “answer the phone when I call you” and that “She will contact you.”
And just because the US government wants to take The Shield away from Walker, they can’t technically: Per Contessa they don’t have it, and it’s “a legal gray area.”
So, who is the Contessa and what does she really want?
Chances are, she’s not the big bad guy Power Broker we’re waiting for.
What she could be is a point person to General “Thunderbolt” Ross (played by William Hurt in the Hulk movies) and the menacing anti-Avengers Thunderbolts team he’s assembling. According to Marvel canon, she’s not affiliated with him, but MCU is always twisting comic book history so fans aren’t quite sure what’s next. Disney + has not officially greenlit a Thunderbolts series, but a Thunderbolts team has been rumored to have Zemo (Daniel Bruhl’s character), Walker and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh’s Black Widow character). In Marvel lore, Walker technically fought the Thunderbolts as part of the Jury, an armored vigilante group. The jury was ordered to take down the Thunderbolts (led by Hawkeye), but lost to the group.
Contessa is a Russian double agent, a former agent of SHIELD, a veterinarian for the assault team Femme Force, and was once called Madame Hydra. She was also a love interest of Nick Fury at one point. It’s likely she could provide Walker for work with Fury on the upcoming Disney + Secret invasion.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier Malcolm Spellman also reportedly hinted that he would like to see Contessa (who he didn’t specifically mention) mate with Thor.
We’ll just have to wait and see. This Friday is the last episode of Marvel’s Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Marvel’s Loki will be released on the streaming service on June 11.