The plight of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has certain similarities with our own.
Marvel's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier suffered a troubled production cycle due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the show's creator and head writer has now said these difficulties were a "blessing".
Filming on the action-packed drama was halted back in March 2020 as COVID-19 began spreading across Europe, which was particularly frustrating for the team as there had only been a few weeks of work left to complete.
This also meant that the show's initially planned launch date of August 2020 was missed, with WandaVision ultimately taking its place as Marvel's first Disney Plus series the following January.
Speaking to RadioTimes.com for the next edition of The Big RT Interview, writer Malcolm Spellman put a positive spin on the adversity, explaining it allowed time to fine-tune the script and adapt certain scenes to closer reflect our current crisis.
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He said: "[The delay] turned into a blessing because we'd already started off dealing with how... in the MCU, half the world's population has disappeared for five years and reappeared. That creates a global problem, right?
"That creates a problem that every single person on the planet must deal with rich or poor, Black or white," Spellman continued. "Then the pandemic hits and all of a sudden we're like, 'Oh my God, this mirrors what's happening to the real world,' and we were able to draw those lines even more clearly."
With every Marvel project shrouded in secrecy until the last possible moment, Spellman couldn't go into any more detail – but don't be surprised if pandemic-related themes begin cropping up across the six-part series.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will pick up with Captain America's BFFs after the cataclysmic events of Avengers: Endgame, which saw Steve Rogers aged up to an elderly man and retired from his superhero activities.
Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan reprise the title roles, while fans can also expect to be reintroduced to Emily VanCamp's Sharon Carter, Daniel Brühl's Baron Zemo and Don Cheadle's War Machine.
Read the full interview with Malcolm Spellman in The Big RT Interview, arriving on RadioTimes.com on Saturday.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is streaming exclusively on Disney Plus from Friday 19th March. You can sign up to Disney Plus for £7.99 a month or £79.90 a year now. Check out the rest of our Sci-fi and Fantasy coverage, or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.
David Craig is the Senior Drama Writer for Radio Times, covering the latest and greatest scripted drama and comedy across television and streaming. Previously, he worked at Starburst Magazine, presented The Winter King Podcast for ITVX and studied Journalism at the University of Sheffield.
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