It arrived last night. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier full trailer is finally here and unlike WandaVision, it appears to be a head-on action-thriller fiesta with less room for head-scratching mysteries. In fact, its trailer has even put the stamp of confirmation on the much-anticipated arrival of the X-Men in the wide world of the MCU and maybe, just maybe, set the stage for Wolverine as well. 

Much of the action-packed trailer focuses on the aftermath of the Avenger: Endgame scene which saw an elderly Steve Rogers pass on the shield to Sam Wilson. We get to see Falcon using the shield for the first time, though in another scene both Sam and Bucky Barnes are seen practicing with the shield. As we already know, Daniel Bruhl's Baron Zemo is back along with his comic book accurate mask. But looks like he is not going to be the only villain in the story as Bucky is seen having a particularly life-threatening tussle with a group of masked guerrillas. While Wyatt Russell's debut as John Walker, an US Agent assigned to take Captain America's place, is yet to be seen, the trailer does hint at his presence. 

But what we zeroed on is the brief glimpse of a mysterious city on a sea's shore, a place that before 2019 Marvel Studios couldn't integrate in the MCU- the city of Madripoor, which shares deep ties to the X-Men. Now, long before the trailer had even released, there had been many set photos leaks, wherein popular locations from Madripoor, like the Brass Monkey Saloon as well as the flag of the city (from Wolverine #6) were seen. 

Thus, it is pretty clear The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is going to give us more than the answer to the burning question of who will wield Captain America's shield and step in his place now. Its recently released trailer at the Super Bowl confirms that the fictional, lawless city of Madripoor is going to play a significant role in the upcoming Disney+ series. For Marvel Studios to merely pick such a crucial location that has a long history with mutants and also the X-Men as well, just for the sake of including it, doesn't sound right. 

What is Madripoor?

Marvel's Madripoor is the capital city of an island nation Southeast Asia located in the Strait of Malacca and is a bubbling hot spot for criminals as it doesn't allow other nations to extradite criminals for crimes they committed within their respective borders. The city, which first appeared in New Mutants #32 (October 1985), is divided into two areas- there is the Hightown teeming with the rich and is the home for the most notorious criminal empires. Then there is the Lowtown, which is plagued by extreme poverty and drugs. But this section of the city too is crawling with unchecked criminal activities. 

The Hightown was often visited by the X-Men and they even used it as their headquarters but the prominent member of the team who mostly frequented the seedy underbelly i.e., Lowtown of the city was Wolverine. He has a special fondness for the city in the comics and has spent a long time there, mostly as his other alter-ego, Patch. He also cleaned up Madripoor of its villainous elements, at least for a little while, and went up against many criminal overlords to protect the city. He even co-owns a bar in Lowtown, the Princess Bar. Most recently, the X-Men were in Madripoor when Wolverine's body mysteriously disappeared and they suspected Magneto of stealing the same. 

A member of the X-Men is already here...

We already have a mutant from the world of the X-Men films- Peter Maximoff who recently had a surprising debut in WandaVision as a replacement for Wanda's real brother, Pietro who is dead. Though there has been much speculation about whether it was really Quicksilver or instead someone else in disguise, all these theories can be put to rest if you just turn on the audio description of the episode and listen as the shocking arrival is described. 

"Seen from behind, a man with bleached blond hair stands on the front step... Wanda stares at the version of Pietro from the X-Men films," says the description. Now, if the showrunners wanted us to grab at straws and obsessively speculate about Peter/Pietro's arrival, the audio description wouldn't have been so explicit. For eg., we still don't know why that drone helicopter/toy helicopter remained in color after crossing into Westview, while the S.W.O.R.D. agent turned black-and-white. 

And there is still the chance that more characters from the X-Men films will be landing in the MCU through WandaVision after Wanda (or some either evil entity) brings about the possibility for multiple universes to bleed into one another. If that's indeed the case, the confirmation of the city of Madripoor's existence in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier widens the already open gates for the arrival of more mutants and hopefully, the MCU debut of the one with some particularly sharp adamantium claws.