YMMV / The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 5 "Truth"

• Epileptic Trees: The scene where Sharon is talking to Batroc caused some fans to speculate (as has been done since Episode 3) that she is the (still unseen) Power Broker.
• Genius Bonus: The large painting seen in Sharon's gallery is Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa which is about an incident where a French frigate was wrecked, and the officers and nobles aboard escaped on the lifeboats, leaving the commoners to fend for themselves on a drifting raft made of spare wood after a harebrained effort to minimise trips to shore using said raft slammed headfirst into reality. The painting and the utter shitshow that was Méduse's wreckage and its aftermath mirror the events of the series in two ways:
  • The painting proved controversial for its depiction of a black man at the center of the action and some effort was made to prevent its showing. This echoes both Isaiah, as a black super-soldier erased from history, and Sharon, a lesser person abandoned while her betters got away.
  • The circumstances leading to the wreckage and the severe but still inadequate consequences the captain faced when word got out mirror Walker and his fall from grace. Méduse was captained by an Upper-Class Twit who had barely sailed for the better part of 20 years, making him completely unfit to captain a ship, yet was given command entirely because of his Blue Blood and loyalty to the recently-restored French monarchy, and he made several stupid decisions before and after he ran her aground that eventually led to one infamous act of cruelty; for this, he was given three years in prison for crimes that legally should have warranted the death penalty. Meanwhile, Walker, an unstable white man who represented the type of soldier Erskine wanted to avoid, was unfit for the mantle of Captain America yet was given the mantle over Sam, a black Nice Guy chosen to take the mantle by Steve Rogers himself, entirely because of racial politics and, after multiple mistakes resulting from his own ego and anger problems, ended up tarnishing the shield with blood; for this, he was given an Other Than Honorable discharge, the worst punishment a military officer can receive without the court martial and minimum at best imprisonment that cold-blooded murder should have warranted.
• Questionable Casting: Surely, few people expected Julia Louis-Dreyfus, known for her over the top comedic roles, to be cast as international spy Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Sure enough, she feels like she stepped out of Seinfeld, and she really clashes with the rest of the tone of the episode.

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