Former foes team up in Disney+'s 'The Falcon and the Winter Soldier'

With the shield and mantle of Captain America now his, Sam Wilson has a mighty task ahead of him in the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's action saga.

In “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” a six-episode series premiering Friday, March 19, on Disney+, Anthony Mackie reprises his role of Wilson/Falcon, who inherited the shield and mantle of Captain America from an elderly Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) at the end of the 2019 feature “Avengers: Endgame.”

Now teamed with former adversary Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan, also reprising his role from the film series), the pair embark on a global adventure that will test their abilities - and their patience - as they work to take down old enemy Baron Zemo (Daniel Bruhl).

Also starring Emily VanCamp and Wyatt Russell, the series is directed by Kari Skogland, whose TV credits range from historical dramas including “The Borgias” to more current-day fare such as “The Handmaid's Tale.” She's also no stranger to the Marvel Universe, having directed a 2017 episode of Netflix's “The Punisher,” so she was comfortable working in that realm again.

“It's been called a buddy cop movie and I think that's a fair assessment in the fun side of that,” she says of the new series, “where you have these two people who are not necessarily friends and they're flung together as a result of circumstance ... and both are in a place in their life where they're having to figure out how to go forward. And they never were really friends, but they have a common friend in Steve and common background through Steve. So as a result of that, they were sort of drawn together in a way that neither one of them really anticipates or necessarily even wants. But as it happens, they both, of course, have similar moral codes of conduct so when they have to face certain things, they are drawn together, even if it is reluctantly so.”

And that reluctance is teased in one humorous exchange in the trailer, in which the two are brought together in a room by a third party and the meeting devolves into an adolescent staring match. Skogland credits Mackie and Stan with bringing more to the scene than was on the page.

“Obviously we knew what the scene was going to be,” she explains, “and once we got into the fun of it and the two of them getting inside the scene, oh my God, we came away just having had a great day and enjoying in particular where the two of them are in the relationship in the story. Because up till that point, certainly we've had some time with them so that's kind of a big moment where the scene, when you see it in its entirety, it's as much a scene full of drama as it is a scene that's funny. So in that wonderful Marvel way, we get two sides of the coin.”