For those who want spoilers... Well this is pretty detailed. I can answer follow-up questions if need be. I feel like an ass dropping this now cause for those who aint seen it yet its hard to resist with the date coming up so soon lol.
The movie’s pre-credits scene opens in Siberia in 1991, where a bunch of Russian scientists in an underground, cold-as-fuck-looking facility are electro-shocking and brainwashing Bucky, much like the scene in Winter Soldier. A general comes up to Bucky and repeats a series of trigger words that complete his brainwashing, and then he asks if he is ready to comply. Bucky responds that he is, and he is given a mission to retrieve a biological weapon of some kind. The scene cuts to a dark forest road, where Bucky, on a motorcycle, chases an old-fashioned looking car, runs it into a tree where it catches fire, opens the trunk, and finds a suitcase containing five blue packets of something.
Roll the Marvel logo.
Lagos, present day. Wanda and Widow are sitting at crowded cafe where Widow is trying to teach Wanda how to spy on people without drawing attention to themselves. They’re on an open channel with Steve, who’s watching from a nearby hotel room, and Sam, who’s standing on a roof with a little red drone called Redwing. The New Avengers have been tracking Crossbones, who has been blowing up and stealing from local police departments. They catch sight of a suspicious van, which they follow into a CDC facility, where it blows up, causing a distraction, and two more vans spill onto the curb carrying mercenaries armed to the teeth, including Crossbones. They rampage into the facility with nerve gas, and Crossbones steals a vial of a bioweapon.
Outside, the New Avengers attack them (there was a short clip of this a few days ago). Wanda, Steve, and Sam take out all the armed guys outside, then Wanda propels Steve inside, where he takes out everyone except for Crossbones, who has a cool spring-loaded metal fist that punches Cap straight through a concrete wall and down thirty feet or so. Crossbones and his mercenaries make their escape into a crowded marketplace, where Crossbones gives the vial to one of his henchmen and tells them to take it to the buyer. He and Steve then fight, while Widow takes on two henchmen and Sam takes on two. Widow defeats her two, only to have one of the mercenaries threaten to break the vial. Fortunately, Redwing shoots the merc and Widow catches it before it falls. Meanwhile Crossbones attaches a sticky bomb to Cap’s shield, which he throws into the air a moment before it explodes, then Steve finally defeats him, takes off his mask, and reveals his true face, which is badly burned and very Jonah Hex-like. Crossbones taunts Steve that Bucky was his buyer, and that he has fully reverted back to his Winter Soldier persona. The moment Steve is distracted, Crossbones lights up a bomb, which Wanda catches at the moment it explodes, trapping Crossbones in a fiery ball where he burns to death. Unfortunately, Wanda can’t control the energy sphere, and she tosses it into the sky, right into— guess what?— a hospital, where there are at least 11 casualties and many more injuries. The New Avengers look horrified at what just happened, and Wanda breaks down.
Meanwhile, we cut back to Christmas morning, 1991, where a de-aged, teenage Tony Stark is lying on the sofa listening to his mother Maria play the piano. They share a tender moment where she urges Tony to tell his father he loves him (or something; it sounds like they were fighting before), before Howard Stark walks in the door, announces that he and Maria are going away for the holidays for a week, but that they have to drop by the Pentagon first. Tony makes a sarcastic comment and finally gives Howard a hug and tells him he loves him. Right at this moment, an older Tony, standing in the doorframe, reveals that the entire scene is an augment reality mental simulation for memory therapy, and he says, “That’s how I wish that scene had played out. But it didn’t.” Tony is revealed to be speaking to an auditorium full of people at MIT, where he announces that he’s funding all of the students’s thesis projects; all their projects are approved and fully funded as of five minutes ago. His teleprompter has a line in there about thanking Pepper; he pauses, ignores it, and wraps up his speech by telling them to break a few eggs. The dean of MIT thanks him (it’s a cameo from that weird bald guy from Community in a nice throwback to the Russo’s roots).
While looking for the men’s room after, Tony runs into Alfre Woodard’s character, who asks him what he meant by telling the students to break some eggs. She tells him about her son, who was volunteering in Sokovia after college and got a building dropped on him by Ultron. She tells him that she holds Tony directly responsible and leaves, and Tony is visibly shaken.
In the aftermath of the Lagos disaster, Steve comes to comfort Wanda in her room, where she is watching T’Chaka make a UN address condemning the Avenger’s violence in Lagos, where it turns out some of the casualties were Wakandan citizens, who were on a Peace Corps mission trying to do outreach. Vision phases through the walls, and Wanda snaps at him to use the door like a normal person, and he gets offended and says he only phased because he saw the door was open anyway, and tells Steve that Tony has arrived at the Avengers compound, with a guest.
We cut to Thaddeus Ross addressing the New Avengers (Steve, Widow, Wanda, Vision, Sam, and Rhodey) in the conference room, with Tony sitting in the back looking morose. Ross tells the Avengers that 117 member nations of the UN have drafted a treaty that all the Avengers will be forced to sign, stating that they will become a special UN task force, to be deployed only when deemed necessary by committee. Ross is surprisingly sympathetic to the Avengers, and acknowledges that it is not an ideal solution, but one that has become necessary after Sokovia and Lagos. He tells them to think it over and leaves, and the Avengers begin arguing about whether to sign it or not. Tony throws up a picture of Alfre Woodard’s son on the screen, and tells the Avengers that he was a kid who, after college, didn’t go to Vegas like Tony would have, but wanted to do good with his life. He reveals that the kid died in Sokovia after Ultron dropped a building on his block, and says that he feels directly responsible. He says that when he realized 8 years ago that Stark Industries was making WMDs for terrorists, he shut down the whole thing, and now he’s going to do the same with the Avengers unless they sign the treaty. Rhodes and Sam get into a fight about who has more credibility based on how many tours of Afghanistan they’ve each done, while Vision comes up with a formula that basically says that Tony’s route will lead to fewer casualties in the long run. As they’re fighting, Steve gets a text from someone that says that Peggy has died in her sleep.
Note: throughout the movie we cut to various scenes of a man named Zemo doing sketchy shit and basically trying to track down Bucky, but I forget where Zemo’s scenes are placed. He doesn’t become important until near the end anyway, but in our introduction to him, we meet an older version of the general from the opening scene who gave Bucky his mission, now living in a dilapidated motel room. Zemo hits his car, knocks on the door, and asks if they can work it out without the police. The general tepidly opens the door, and Zemo barges in, knocks him out, and that scene ends. In the next scene with Zemo, he has the general tied up upside down, with his head in a sink and the faucet running. Zemo asks about a mission from 1991, and the general tells him to go to hell. Zemo tells him that Hydra is dead and that if he keeps his secret, he will only be dying for his pride. The general still refuses to talk, and Zemo turns the faucet all the way on, drowning the general.
London, present day. Steve, Sam, and Widow attend Peggy Carter’s funeral, and Steve is surprised to see none other than Sharon Carter get up to deliver the eulogy. Sharon relays a story about how she once asked Peggy how she could balance being a woman in espionage at a time when there were very few roles for women in wartime, and Peggy (by way of Sharon) responds with a line-for-line rendition of Cap’s famous “plant yourself like a tree by the river of truth” speech from the Civil War comics. Steve is obviously affected by this, and after the funeral, Widow comes up and asks if he’s ready to go to Vienna to sign the treaty, and he says no.
In Vienna, everyone has gathered to sign the treaty. Widow introduces herself to King T’Chaka, who thanks her for her willingness to sign the treaty and right the Avengers’ wrongs. She is also introduced to T’Challa, who after a brief introduction speaks privately with his father, and T’Chaka tells his son he is proud of how diplomatic he has become recently, and that he will be a good king someday. During T’Chaka’s speech though, T’Challa and Widow notice a K-9 unit outside going crazy outside of a news van, and suddenly the room explodes. T'Challa dives for his father but is cast backwards by the blast. In the rubble, T’Chaka is dead and T’Challa grieves for him, taking a black ring from his finger. Security footage immediately places Bucky at the scene of the crime, and news around the world suddenly has Bucky’s face plastered all over. Widow comforts T’Challa outside, but he threatens to find Bucky and kill him in revenge, leaving in a rage. Steve calls Widow, who warns him not to get involved because of compounding damage from Sokovia, Lagos, and now Vienna. There’s a small scene in here somewhere, in which Vision is at home making some food with paprika to cheer up Wanda, and she’s enamored by his efforts until she realizes that Tony has instructed Vision to hold her prisoner inside the facility and not let her leave.
Bucharest. Bucky is buying plums from an outdoor market when he notices people staring at him. He goes to a newsstand and sees his face on a paper, so he rushes back to his apartment. Steve is already in his apartment, reading his diary, and does not notice Bucky entering. Steve asks which Bucky he’s speaking with, and then warns him the police are outside the building, about to break in with shoot-to-kill orders. Bucky claims that he wasn’t responsible for Vienna, and all of a sudden the police barge in, and Steve suddenly finds himself beating up cops. Bucky tries to run, and Steve follows, injuring cops but not killing them. Bucky flees across a rooftop when suddenly he’s accosted by the Black Panther, who slashes, cuts, and leaps like a cat. Steve makes the jump to the roof as well, and they both stave off Panther long enough for Bucky to jump down onto the highway, steal a bike from a motorist, and run. At this point there are literally dozens of cops following them, and Falcon is trying to keep track of what’s going on from above. During the chase scene, Panther leaps onto Falcon, disables his wings, then launches off a car to slash Bucky’s tires out, and suddenly they all find themselves surrounded. Cap, Bucky, Panther, and Falcon are arrested and brought to Berlin.
In the van in the ride to Berlin, T’Challa asks Steve why, if he couldn’t protect New York, DC, or Sokovia, does he think he can protect Bucky, and threatens to kill Bucky the moment he’s free. They are taken to the German Bundestag in Berlin, where they meet Martin Freeman’s character, called Everett Ross (no way that’s going to be confusing later on), who is flanked by Sharon, who takes their suits and gives them receipts for it. Tony arrives, furious, and asks what the hell is going on. He’s on the phone with Ross (the other one) and promises that there will be consequences. Tony and Steve fight about whether it was right for Steve to intervene, then the conversation takes a lull and Steve asks about Pepper. Tony replies that she broke up with him, and admits he can be a lot to handle at time, and wonders how his parents made it work with Howard being like he was. Tony and Steve share a memory of Howard, and Tony offers Steve the pen from WWII that Howard used to sign some peace treaty or other, so that he can sign the accords and Tony can wipe the whole incident behind them. Steve refuses and Tony sits down, exhausted.
Meanwhile, Bucky is being interrogated on tape by none other than Zemo himself, who says the same buzzwords that re-activates Bucky’s Winter Soldier persona. The Winter Soldier, enraged, rips his shackles and cage off and then says he is ready to comply. Zemo asks about a mission from 1991 and the scene cuts. Meanwhile, everyone else is freaking out about losing audio and video of the interrogation. When Steve gets down there, he finds a trail of bodies, including Zemo, who is feigning injury, and Steve leaves Zemo and runs after Bucky. In the lobby, Bucky is attacked by Tony, Widow, and T’Challa, who kicks his ass but still somehow escapes. He commandeers a helicopter, which Steve successfully pulls back to the building and subsequently crashes. Steve rescues Bucky from the river and takes him to an abandoned warehouse, where Sam meets up with him (this was the Ant-Man post-credits scene). Steve has Bucky’s arm in a vice, and he asks again which Bucky he’s talking to. Bucky says something only Steve would know, and says he didn’t do Vienna but that he was framed. Steve asks what Zemo asked him, and Bucky says that he was asking about a mission from 1991, where it’s revealed that the bioweapon Bucky stole back then was used to create more super-soldiers. There is a flashback, where Bucky narrates how they used the serum to create six new Winter Soldiers, all of whom are top assassins who speak thirty languages and can destabilize an entire government in a single night. He reveals that they are alive and are being kept in cryostasis in Siberia, and that he thinks Zemo is planning to unleash the six Winter Soldiers on the world. Cap asks Falcon if they can ask Tony for help, but Steve doesn’t think Tony will believe that Bucky is innocent. Sam says he knows a guy.
Tony, meanwhile, pleads with Everett Ross to let him be the one to bring in Steve and Bucky, and promises he can have them both in custody in 72 hours. Ross gives him 36 hours and tells him this is his last chance. Tony is hoping to avoid anyone getting hurt, and is frustrated that Steve is making his life so difficult by not understanding the hard place he’s in. Widow, who by this point is on Tony’s side, asks who they can ask for help in bringing in Steve. Tony says he knows a guy. Cut to Queens, NY, where we follow a teenager up a flight of stairs into his apartment, where he finds Tony sitting on the couch with his Aunt May. Peter Parker is stunned and basically asks what the hell Tony is doing here, and they improvise a spiel about Peter somehow winning Tony’s MIT grant and forgetting to tell Aunt May about it. Tony and Peter talk in Peter’s room, where Tony shows Peter proof that he knows he’s Spider-Man. Peter denies being Spider-Man until Tony pulls down on the attic string and Peter’s costume falls out. Tony asks Peter why he does what he does, and Peter says that he’s doing it to stand up for the little guy. He says that because he couldn’t be a football player before he got his powers, he shouldn’t be a football player now. He says it’s about being fair and using your powers equivalently. Tony asks if Peter’s ever been to Berlin before and Peter complains that he has an algebra test in the morning. Meanwhile, at the Avengers facility, Vision is housesitting still when he sees an explosion outside. He phases out to investigate, and suddenly Hawkeye shows up and breaks Wanda out. They’re almost clear when Vision phases back in and he and Hawkeye fight, with Hawkeye losing badly. Vision tells him he can’t win, and Hawkeye responds with, “No, but she can,” and Wanda suddenly manipulates the Soul Gem on Vision’s forehead and sends him crashing through the floor and down hundreds of feet into the earth. Hawkeye and Wanda escape.
Steve, Sam, and Bucky meet up with Sharon under a bridge, where she returns their gear and kisses Cap, to the approving nods from Bucky and Sam in the car. They then travel to a parking garage, where Cap, Falcon, Wanda, and Bucky meet up with Hawkeye, who has Scott Lang in the back of his van (this was another previously-released clip). With Captain America, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, and the Winter Soldier on one side, Steve details the plan. They need to get to Siberia to stop Zemo from unleashing the other Winter Soldiers on the world, but to do that they need to access a Quinjet that Tony has stashed at Leipzig Airport. They arrive at the airport and walk out onto the landing strip.
They are intercepted by Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Black Panther, Vision, and Spider-Man. Tony tells Steve he has less than 11 hours left to bring him in before Ross sends in an army, and he begs Steve to put his pride aside and just come with them so nobody else has to die. Widow also urges Steve to not let this turn into a fight, but he refuses, and the battle begins. Panther goes straight for Bucky’s throat, Cap and Iron Man clash, Falcon and War Machine go at it, Spider-Man and Ant-Man fight, Widow and Hawkeye fight, and Witch and Vision fight, although this changes frequently. Spider-Man in particular is amazing to watch, as he goes toe-to-toe with Winter Soldier effortlessly, grabbing his metal arm and asking him what it’s made out of. He webs both Winter Soldier and Falcon before Redwing blasts him out of the sky and Falcon cuts them loose. Bucky asks why he didn’t do that sooner and Sam says, “I hate you.” Spider-Man also goes one-on-one with Cap, who, after telling him he has a good heart but his faith is in the wrong person, throws an airplane on top of him, then asks where he’s from. Spider-Man says “Queens,” and Cap smiles and says, “Brooklyn.” After a few minutes of fighting, Cap tells his team that they need to get to the Quinjet, and Hawkeye suggests that maybe in order for Steve and Bucky to win, the rest of their side has to lose, and although Steve is uncomfortable with sacrificing his team, he agrees, and he and Bucky take off running. Scott tells Steve to make a run for it when he gives the signal, and then turns into Giant-Man, where he knocks War Machine and Spider-Man out of the sky. Spider-Man asks if anyone has seen “that old movie” The Empire Strikes Back, and Rhodey asks how old Spider-Man is, and Tony snipes back that he didn’t carbon-date him when he recruited him but that he veered on the younger side. Turns out Peter had a point, and he starts wrapping web around Giant-Man’s legs in order to trip him up, which reverts Scott back to normal size. Cap is almost to the hangar when the Vision intercepts them, slicing an air control tower off and dropping it in front of their path. They are able to slide through the rubble right as the door closes, only to find Widow waiting on the other side. She has a gun aimed at Steve then finally drops it and tells him to go, while she holds off Panther, who is also climbing through the rubble. She shoots a shock at him again and again, only momentarily tripping him up, but Cap and Bucky get away.
As they fly off, Rhodey attempts to catch the Quinjet, and Falcon tries to catch Rhodey, and Vision, from the ground, shoots a massive energy beam at Falcon to try to shake him off, only for Falcon to barrel roll out of the way and Vision’s beam hits Rhodey instead, knocking out all of his power systems. Rhodes is helpless and terrified as he falls hundreds of feet, with both Falcon and Iron Man diving to save him, only to miss by a few seconds. Tony finds Rhodey barely alive but unconscious, and as Falcon walks over to try to help Tony blasts him away in a rage. Rhodes is rushed to the ER, where it’s revealed that he’s paralyzed from the waist down. Vision apologizes for his part in this, and Tony tells him to go home and that he’s done letting other people pay the price for his mistakes. Cap’s team of rogue Avengers is locked up in a secret Interpol supermax prison, formerly SHIELD’s, called The Raft, which is a big floating dome that pops up out of the ocean. Scott, Wanda, Clint, and Sam are imprisoned here, with Wanda in particular looking terrible. Widow comes to Tony, and he confronts her about her betrayal, and he makes a biting personal attack that she couldn’t resist being a double agent, and she tells him that he has no shame. He says that now that Panther told Interpol that she betrayed Tony’s team, they’ll be coming for her next, and she tells him to watch his back. Spider-Man got to go home, as during the airport fight he broke several ribs and Tony managed to evacuate him.
Tony goes to the Raft, and on the way, Friday tells him that the psychologist that was supposed to interrogate Bucky back in Berlin was found dead in Zemo’s hotel bathtub, with a lifelike Bucky mask next to him, thus proving that Bucky was set up. Tony asks Sam where Steve and Bucky went, saying that he only wants to speak as a friend, but the other Avengers treat Tony like a traitor and call him names like backstabber, and Hawkeye says “Watch out, this guy will shoot you out of the sky.” After Tony reveals that he is muting the conversation with Ross, he says that he believes Bucky is innocent and only wants to help Steve, and Sam reveals their destination: Siberia.
Tony flies out to Siberia, where Steve and Bucky have already started poking around the abandoned compound. The three of them call a truce, and Tony reveals that he knows Bucky is innocent and that they’re all being set up, and together Cap, Iron Man, and Bucky poke around the facility, only to discover the six Winter Soldiers, still in their cryogenic chambers, each one shot through the head. The doors lock and Zemo reveals himself, saying that he never wanted more people like Bucky loose in the wild, and that it was only a ploy to get the Avengers to fight amongst themselves. He turns on a videotape, the result of his investigation into Bucky’s 1991 mission, and as the three of them watch it, Tony says, “Wait, I know that road. What is this?” He realizes that he is watching the security camera footage of his parents’ death. It flashes back to the opening scene of the film, where we see an extended version of the scene. After crashing the Starks’ car, Bucky pulls Howard out of the car, punches him in the face with his metal arm until he dies, then places him back in his car so it looks like an accident, then walks around to the other side, to Maria, who is crying out of fear, and strangles her to death. He then walks over to the security camera, so you can clearly see it’s Bucky, then shoots it, ending the video. Tony is stricken with rage and grief, and he asks Steve if he knew. Steve dances around the question, and finally reveals that he knew, but didn’t want Tony to get hurt.
Tony dons the full Iron Man armor and begins pummeling the shit out of Bucky. Steve intervenes and tries to distract Tony, telling Bucky to escape, but Iron Man bombs the exits and seals everything for they’re all trapped inside. Bucky and Steve double-team Tony, brutally beating each other to within an inch of their lives. Meanwhile outside, Baron Zemo has escaped the complex. He is sitting in the snow, listening to the same voicemail he’d been listening to throughout the movie. Suddenly Black Panther sneaks up behind him, and he listens to the voicemail too. It is Zemo’s wife. Zemo had been a Sokovian special forces soldier, and during Ultron’s attack, he evacuated his wife and son to his father’s house in the countryside. He thought they would be safe there, but then the Avengers dropped Sokovia on them. When they cleared the rubble weeks later, they found the bodies of his wife and son, protected by the body of his father. Zemo says that in a single day the Avengers took everything from him, and so he wanted to destroy not only the Avengers, but the governments that supported the Avengers. When he realized that stronger villains than he had failed to take down the Avengers, he decided to make them fight each other, which is why he was hunting the videotape of Bucky killing the Starks, which would turn the Avengers’ leader against it’s financier. He was never interested in the other Winter Soldiers. T’Challa listens quietly, then says that there is so much violence and retribution in the world, and he sees how it is consuming everyone else, and he refuses to let it consume him any longer. Zemo pulls out a gun and tries to shoot himself in the head, but Panther’s vibranium glove stops the bullet, and Panther takes him back to face justice.
Meanwhile, Steve, Tony, and Bucky are all nearly-dead. Bucky tries to rip out Tony’s Arc Reactor and it blows his arm off, knocking him out of the fight. Friday analyzes Steve’s fighting pattern and adapts, but Steve is still determined to protect Bucky to the end, and he beats Tony to within an inch of his life and then stabs his shield into Tony’s chest, killing the arc reactor. Steve takes Bucky and leaves. Tony shouts that that shield doesn’t belong to Cap, that it belonged to Howard, and Steve contemptuously tosses it away back at Tony.
In the aftermath, Tony is helping Rhodey learn how to walk again with an Iron Man-ish exoskeleton, when Stan Lee the Fedex driver comes to deliver a letter. It’s from Steve, and it’s basically an apology for hiding the truth from Tony, and Steve says he did it to protect himself, not Tony, and that he was sorry everything turned out the way it did. As Steve is voice-overing the letter, we see Steve breaking into the Raft and breaking out Wanda, Scott, Sam, and Clint, as he promises to always be there when he’s needed. Tony sets down the letter and looks off into the distance, upset.
In the one post-credits scene we saw, Steve and Bucky are recuperating at a highly advanced medical facility. Steve asks Bucky if he’s sure he wants to do this, and Bucky (still missing an arm), says that until he wipe away his brainwashing, he’s too dangerous to live. He then steps into a cryogenic chamber and allows himself to be re-frozen. Steve walks out and sees T’Challa, who is watching. They talk, and T’Challa says that he failed both his father and Bucky, but that if he can get help one of them find peace, he will be happy. The camera pans out and shows that Steve and Bucky are hiding in Wakanda, in a secret high-tech facility in the middle of the rainforest, guarded by a massive statue of a black panther.
The movie’s pre-credits scene opens in Siberia in 1991, where a bunch of Russian scientists in an underground, cold-as-fuck-looking facility are electro-shocking and brainwashing Bucky, much like the scene in Winter Soldier. A general comes up to Bucky and repeats a series of trigger words that complete his brainwashing, and then he asks if he is ready to comply. Bucky responds that he is, and he is given a mission to retrieve a biological weapon of some kind. The scene cuts to a dark forest road, where Bucky, on a motorcycle, chases an old-fashioned looking car, runs it into a tree where it catches fire, opens the trunk, and finds a suitcase containing five blue packets of something.
Roll the Marvel logo.
Lagos, present day. Wanda and Widow are sitting at crowded cafe where Widow is trying to teach Wanda how to spy on people without drawing attention to themselves. They’re on an open channel with Steve, who’s watching from a nearby hotel room, and Sam, who’s standing on a roof with a little red drone called Redwing. The New Avengers have been tracking Crossbones, who has been blowing up and stealing from local police departments. They catch sight of a suspicious van, which they follow into a CDC facility, where it blows up, causing a distraction, and two more vans spill onto the curb carrying mercenaries armed to the teeth, including Crossbones. They rampage into the facility with nerve gas, and Crossbones steals a vial of a bioweapon.
Outside, the New Avengers attack them (there was a short clip of this a few days ago). Wanda, Steve, and Sam take out all the armed guys outside, then Wanda propels Steve inside, where he takes out everyone except for Crossbones, who has a cool spring-loaded metal fist that punches Cap straight through a concrete wall and down thirty feet or so. Crossbones and his mercenaries make their escape into a crowded marketplace, where Crossbones gives the vial to one of his henchmen and tells them to take it to the buyer. He and Steve then fight, while Widow takes on two henchmen and Sam takes on two. Widow defeats her two, only to have one of the mercenaries threaten to break the vial. Fortunately, Redwing shoots the merc and Widow catches it before it falls. Meanwhile Crossbones attaches a sticky bomb to Cap’s shield, which he throws into the air a moment before it explodes, then Steve finally defeats him, takes off his mask, and reveals his true face, which is badly burned and very Jonah Hex-like. Crossbones taunts Steve that Bucky was his buyer, and that he has fully reverted back to his Winter Soldier persona. The moment Steve is distracted, Crossbones lights up a bomb, which Wanda catches at the moment it explodes, trapping Crossbones in a fiery ball where he burns to death. Unfortunately, Wanda can’t control the energy sphere, and she tosses it into the sky, right into— guess what?— a hospital, where there are at least 11 casualties and many more injuries. The New Avengers look horrified at what just happened, and Wanda breaks down.
Meanwhile, we cut back to Christmas morning, 1991, where a de-aged, teenage Tony Stark is lying on the sofa listening to his mother Maria play the piano. They share a tender moment where she urges Tony to tell his father he loves him (or something; it sounds like they were fighting before), before Howard Stark walks in the door, announces that he and Maria are going away for the holidays for a week, but that they have to drop by the Pentagon first. Tony makes a sarcastic comment and finally gives Howard a hug and tells him he loves him. Right at this moment, an older Tony, standing in the doorframe, reveals that the entire scene is an augment reality mental simulation for memory therapy, and he says, “That’s how I wish that scene had played out. But it didn’t.” Tony is revealed to be speaking to an auditorium full of people at MIT, where he announces that he’s funding all of the students’s thesis projects; all their projects are approved and fully funded as of five minutes ago. His teleprompter has a line in there about thanking Pepper; he pauses, ignores it, and wraps up his speech by telling them to break a few eggs. The dean of MIT thanks him (it’s a cameo from that weird bald guy from Community in a nice throwback to the Russo’s roots).
While looking for the men’s room after, Tony runs into Alfre Woodard’s character, who asks him what he meant by telling the students to break some eggs. She tells him about her son, who was volunteering in Sokovia after college and got a building dropped on him by Ultron. She tells him that she holds Tony directly responsible and leaves, and Tony is visibly shaken.
In the aftermath of the Lagos disaster, Steve comes to comfort Wanda in her room, where she is watching T’Chaka make a UN address condemning the Avenger’s violence in Lagos, where it turns out some of the casualties were Wakandan citizens, who were on a Peace Corps mission trying to do outreach. Vision phases through the walls, and Wanda snaps at him to use the door like a normal person, and he gets offended and says he only phased because he saw the door was open anyway, and tells Steve that Tony has arrived at the Avengers compound, with a guest.
We cut to Thaddeus Ross addressing the New Avengers (Steve, Widow, Wanda, Vision, Sam, and Rhodey) in the conference room, with Tony sitting in the back looking morose. Ross tells the Avengers that 117 member nations of the UN have drafted a treaty that all the Avengers will be forced to sign, stating that they will become a special UN task force, to be deployed only when deemed necessary by committee. Ross is surprisingly sympathetic to the Avengers, and acknowledges that it is not an ideal solution, but one that has become necessary after Sokovia and Lagos. He tells them to think it over and leaves, and the Avengers begin arguing about whether to sign it or not. Tony throws up a picture of Alfre Woodard’s son on the screen, and tells the Avengers that he was a kid who, after college, didn’t go to Vegas like Tony would have, but wanted to do good with his life. He reveals that the kid died in Sokovia after Ultron dropped a building on his block, and says that he feels directly responsible. He says that when he realized 8 years ago that Stark Industries was making WMDs for terrorists, he shut down the whole thing, and now he’s going to do the same with the Avengers unless they sign the treaty. Rhodes and Sam get into a fight about who has more credibility based on how many tours of Afghanistan they’ve each done, while Vision comes up with a formula that basically says that Tony’s route will lead to fewer casualties in the long run. As they’re fighting, Steve gets a text from someone that says that Peggy has died in her sleep.
Note: throughout the movie we cut to various scenes of a man named Zemo doing sketchy shit and basically trying to track down Bucky, but I forget where Zemo’s scenes are placed. He doesn’t become important until near the end anyway, but in our introduction to him, we meet an older version of the general from the opening scene who gave Bucky his mission, now living in a dilapidated motel room. Zemo hits his car, knocks on the door, and asks if they can work it out without the police. The general tepidly opens the door, and Zemo barges in, knocks him out, and that scene ends. In the next scene with Zemo, he has the general tied up upside down, with his head in a sink and the faucet running. Zemo asks about a mission from 1991, and the general tells him to go to hell. Zemo tells him that Hydra is dead and that if he keeps his secret, he will only be dying for his pride. The general still refuses to talk, and Zemo turns the faucet all the way on, drowning the general.
London, present day. Steve, Sam, and Widow attend Peggy Carter’s funeral, and Steve is surprised to see none other than Sharon Carter get up to deliver the eulogy. Sharon relays a story about how she once asked Peggy how she could balance being a woman in espionage at a time when there were very few roles for women in wartime, and Peggy (by way of Sharon) responds with a line-for-line rendition of Cap’s famous “plant yourself like a tree by the river of truth” speech from the Civil War comics. Steve is obviously affected by this, and after the funeral, Widow comes up and asks if he’s ready to go to Vienna to sign the treaty, and he says no.
In Vienna, everyone has gathered to sign the treaty. Widow introduces herself to King T’Chaka, who thanks her for her willingness to sign the treaty and right the Avengers’ wrongs. She is also introduced to T’Challa, who after a brief introduction speaks privately with his father, and T’Chaka tells his son he is proud of how diplomatic he has become recently, and that he will be a good king someday. During T’Chaka’s speech though, T’Challa and Widow notice a K-9 unit outside going crazy outside of a news van, and suddenly the room explodes. T'Challa dives for his father but is cast backwards by the blast. In the rubble, T’Chaka is dead and T’Challa grieves for him, taking a black ring from his finger. Security footage immediately places Bucky at the scene of the crime, and news around the world suddenly has Bucky’s face plastered all over. Widow comforts T’Challa outside, but he threatens to find Bucky and kill him in revenge, leaving in a rage. Steve calls Widow, who warns him not to get involved because of compounding damage from Sokovia, Lagos, and now Vienna. There’s a small scene in here somewhere, in which Vision is at home making some food with paprika to cheer up Wanda, and she’s enamored by his efforts until she realizes that Tony has instructed Vision to hold her prisoner inside the facility and not let her leave.
Bucharest. Bucky is buying plums from an outdoor market when he notices people staring at him. He goes to a newsstand and sees his face on a paper, so he rushes back to his apartment. Steve is already in his apartment, reading his diary, and does not notice Bucky entering. Steve asks which Bucky he’s speaking with, and then warns him the police are outside the building, about to break in with shoot-to-kill orders. Bucky claims that he wasn’t responsible for Vienna, and all of a sudden the police barge in, and Steve suddenly finds himself beating up cops. Bucky tries to run, and Steve follows, injuring cops but not killing them. Bucky flees across a rooftop when suddenly he’s accosted by the Black Panther, who slashes, cuts, and leaps like a cat. Steve makes the jump to the roof as well, and they both stave off Panther long enough for Bucky to jump down onto the highway, steal a bike from a motorist, and run. At this point there are literally dozens of cops following them, and Falcon is trying to keep track of what’s going on from above. During the chase scene, Panther leaps onto Falcon, disables his wings, then launches off a car to slash Bucky’s tires out, and suddenly they all find themselves surrounded. Cap, Bucky, Panther, and Falcon are arrested and brought to Berlin.
In the van in the ride to Berlin, T’Challa asks Steve why, if he couldn’t protect New York, DC, or Sokovia, does he think he can protect Bucky, and threatens to kill Bucky the moment he’s free. They are taken to the German Bundestag in Berlin, where they meet Martin Freeman’s character, called Everett Ross (no way that’s going to be confusing later on), who is flanked by Sharon, who takes their suits and gives them receipts for it. Tony arrives, furious, and asks what the hell is going on. He’s on the phone with Ross (the other one) and promises that there will be consequences. Tony and Steve fight about whether it was right for Steve to intervene, then the conversation takes a lull and Steve asks about Pepper. Tony replies that she broke up with him, and admits he can be a lot to handle at time, and wonders how his parents made it work with Howard being like he was. Tony and Steve share a memory of Howard, and Tony offers Steve the pen from WWII that Howard used to sign some peace treaty or other, so that he can sign the accords and Tony can wipe the whole incident behind them. Steve refuses and Tony sits down, exhausted.
Meanwhile, Bucky is being interrogated on tape by none other than Zemo himself, who says the same buzzwords that re-activates Bucky’s Winter Soldier persona. The Winter Soldier, enraged, rips his shackles and cage off and then says he is ready to comply. Zemo asks about a mission from 1991 and the scene cuts. Meanwhile, everyone else is freaking out about losing audio and video of the interrogation. When Steve gets down there, he finds a trail of bodies, including Zemo, who is feigning injury, and Steve leaves Zemo and runs after Bucky. In the lobby, Bucky is attacked by Tony, Widow, and T’Challa, who kicks his ass but still somehow escapes. He commandeers a helicopter, which Steve successfully pulls back to the building and subsequently crashes. Steve rescues Bucky from the river and takes him to an abandoned warehouse, where Sam meets up with him (this was the Ant-Man post-credits scene). Steve has Bucky’s arm in a vice, and he asks again which Bucky he’s talking to. Bucky says something only Steve would know, and says he didn’t do Vienna but that he was framed. Steve asks what Zemo asked him, and Bucky says that he was asking about a mission from 1991, where it’s revealed that the bioweapon Bucky stole back then was used to create more super-soldiers. There is a flashback, where Bucky narrates how they used the serum to create six new Winter Soldiers, all of whom are top assassins who speak thirty languages and can destabilize an entire government in a single night. He reveals that they are alive and are being kept in cryostasis in Siberia, and that he thinks Zemo is planning to unleash the six Winter Soldiers on the world. Cap asks Falcon if they can ask Tony for help, but Steve doesn’t think Tony will believe that Bucky is innocent. Sam says he knows a guy.
Tony, meanwhile, pleads with Everett Ross to let him be the one to bring in Steve and Bucky, and promises he can have them both in custody in 72 hours. Ross gives him 36 hours and tells him this is his last chance. Tony is hoping to avoid anyone getting hurt, and is frustrated that Steve is making his life so difficult by not understanding the hard place he’s in. Widow, who by this point is on Tony’s side, asks who they can ask for help in bringing in Steve. Tony says he knows a guy. Cut to Queens, NY, where we follow a teenager up a flight of stairs into his apartment, where he finds Tony sitting on the couch with his Aunt May. Peter Parker is stunned and basically asks what the hell Tony is doing here, and they improvise a spiel about Peter somehow winning Tony’s MIT grant and forgetting to tell Aunt May about it. Tony and Peter talk in Peter’s room, where Tony shows Peter proof that he knows he’s Spider-Man. Peter denies being Spider-Man until Tony pulls down on the attic string and Peter’s costume falls out. Tony asks Peter why he does what he does, and Peter says that he’s doing it to stand up for the little guy. He says that because he couldn’t be a football player before he got his powers, he shouldn’t be a football player now. He says it’s about being fair and using your powers equivalently. Tony asks if Peter’s ever been to Berlin before and Peter complains that he has an algebra test in the morning. Meanwhile, at the Avengers facility, Vision is housesitting still when he sees an explosion outside. He phases out to investigate, and suddenly Hawkeye shows up and breaks Wanda out. They’re almost clear when Vision phases back in and he and Hawkeye fight, with Hawkeye losing badly. Vision tells him he can’t win, and Hawkeye responds with, “No, but she can,” and Wanda suddenly manipulates the Soul Gem on Vision’s forehead and sends him crashing through the floor and down hundreds of feet into the earth. Hawkeye and Wanda escape.
Steve, Sam, and Bucky meet up with Sharon under a bridge, where she returns their gear and kisses Cap, to the approving nods from Bucky and Sam in the car. They then travel to a parking garage, where Cap, Falcon, Wanda, and Bucky meet up with Hawkeye, who has Scott Lang in the back of his van (this was another previously-released clip). With Captain America, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, and the Winter Soldier on one side, Steve details the plan. They need to get to Siberia to stop Zemo from unleashing the other Winter Soldiers on the world, but to do that they need to access a Quinjet that Tony has stashed at Leipzig Airport. They arrive at the airport and walk out onto the landing strip.
They are intercepted by Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Black Panther, Vision, and Spider-Man. Tony tells Steve he has less than 11 hours left to bring him in before Ross sends in an army, and he begs Steve to put his pride aside and just come with them so nobody else has to die. Widow also urges Steve to not let this turn into a fight, but he refuses, and the battle begins. Panther goes straight for Bucky’s throat, Cap and Iron Man clash, Falcon and War Machine go at it, Spider-Man and Ant-Man fight, Widow and Hawkeye fight, and Witch and Vision fight, although this changes frequently. Spider-Man in particular is amazing to watch, as he goes toe-to-toe with Winter Soldier effortlessly, grabbing his metal arm and asking him what it’s made out of. He webs both Winter Soldier and Falcon before Redwing blasts him out of the sky and Falcon cuts them loose. Bucky asks why he didn’t do that sooner and Sam says, “I hate you.” Spider-Man also goes one-on-one with Cap, who, after telling him he has a good heart but his faith is in the wrong person, throws an airplane on top of him, then asks where he’s from. Spider-Man says “Queens,” and Cap smiles and says, “Brooklyn.” After a few minutes of fighting, Cap tells his team that they need to get to the Quinjet, and Hawkeye suggests that maybe in order for Steve and Bucky to win, the rest of their side has to lose, and although Steve is uncomfortable with sacrificing his team, he agrees, and he and Bucky take off running. Scott tells Steve to make a run for it when he gives the signal, and then turns into Giant-Man, where he knocks War Machine and Spider-Man out of the sky. Spider-Man asks if anyone has seen “that old movie” The Empire Strikes Back, and Rhodey asks how old Spider-Man is, and Tony snipes back that he didn’t carbon-date him when he recruited him but that he veered on the younger side. Turns out Peter had a point, and he starts wrapping web around Giant-Man’s legs in order to trip him up, which reverts Scott back to normal size. Cap is almost to the hangar when the Vision intercepts them, slicing an air control tower off and dropping it in front of their path. They are able to slide through the rubble right as the door closes, only to find Widow waiting on the other side. She has a gun aimed at Steve then finally drops it and tells him to go, while she holds off Panther, who is also climbing through the rubble. She shoots a shock at him again and again, only momentarily tripping him up, but Cap and Bucky get away.
As they fly off, Rhodey attempts to catch the Quinjet, and Falcon tries to catch Rhodey, and Vision, from the ground, shoots a massive energy beam at Falcon to try to shake him off, only for Falcon to barrel roll out of the way and Vision’s beam hits Rhodey instead, knocking out all of his power systems. Rhodes is helpless and terrified as he falls hundreds of feet, with both Falcon and Iron Man diving to save him, only to miss by a few seconds. Tony finds Rhodey barely alive but unconscious, and as Falcon walks over to try to help Tony blasts him away in a rage. Rhodes is rushed to the ER, where it’s revealed that he’s paralyzed from the waist down. Vision apologizes for his part in this, and Tony tells him to go home and that he’s done letting other people pay the price for his mistakes. Cap’s team of rogue Avengers is locked up in a secret Interpol supermax prison, formerly SHIELD’s, called The Raft, which is a big floating dome that pops up out of the ocean. Scott, Wanda, Clint, and Sam are imprisoned here, with Wanda in particular looking terrible. Widow comes to Tony, and he confronts her about her betrayal, and he makes a biting personal attack that she couldn’t resist being a double agent, and she tells him that he has no shame. He says that now that Panther told Interpol that she betrayed Tony’s team, they’ll be coming for her next, and she tells him to watch his back. Spider-Man got to go home, as during the airport fight he broke several ribs and Tony managed to evacuate him.
Tony goes to the Raft, and on the way, Friday tells him that the psychologist that was supposed to interrogate Bucky back in Berlin was found dead in Zemo’s hotel bathtub, with a lifelike Bucky mask next to him, thus proving that Bucky was set up. Tony asks Sam where Steve and Bucky went, saying that he only wants to speak as a friend, but the other Avengers treat Tony like a traitor and call him names like backstabber, and Hawkeye says “Watch out, this guy will shoot you out of the sky.” After Tony reveals that he is muting the conversation with Ross, he says that he believes Bucky is innocent and only wants to help Steve, and Sam reveals their destination: Siberia.
Tony flies out to Siberia, where Steve and Bucky have already started poking around the abandoned compound. The three of them call a truce, and Tony reveals that he knows Bucky is innocent and that they’re all being set up, and together Cap, Iron Man, and Bucky poke around the facility, only to discover the six Winter Soldiers, still in their cryogenic chambers, each one shot through the head. The doors lock and Zemo reveals himself, saying that he never wanted more people like Bucky loose in the wild, and that it was only a ploy to get the Avengers to fight amongst themselves. He turns on a videotape, the result of his investigation into Bucky’s 1991 mission, and as the three of them watch it, Tony says, “Wait, I know that road. What is this?” He realizes that he is watching the security camera footage of his parents’ death. It flashes back to the opening scene of the film, where we see an extended version of the scene. After crashing the Starks’ car, Bucky pulls Howard out of the car, punches him in the face with his metal arm until he dies, then places him back in his car so it looks like an accident, then walks around to the other side, to Maria, who is crying out of fear, and strangles her to death. He then walks over to the security camera, so you can clearly see it’s Bucky, then shoots it, ending the video. Tony is stricken with rage and grief, and he asks Steve if he knew. Steve dances around the question, and finally reveals that he knew, but didn’t want Tony to get hurt.
Tony dons the full Iron Man armor and begins pummeling the shit out of Bucky. Steve intervenes and tries to distract Tony, telling Bucky to escape, but Iron Man bombs the exits and seals everything for they’re all trapped inside. Bucky and Steve double-team Tony, brutally beating each other to within an inch of their lives. Meanwhile outside, Baron Zemo has escaped the complex. He is sitting in the snow, listening to the same voicemail he’d been listening to throughout the movie. Suddenly Black Panther sneaks up behind him, and he listens to the voicemail too. It is Zemo’s wife. Zemo had been a Sokovian special forces soldier, and during Ultron’s attack, he evacuated his wife and son to his father’s house in the countryside. He thought they would be safe there, but then the Avengers dropped Sokovia on them. When they cleared the rubble weeks later, they found the bodies of his wife and son, protected by the body of his father. Zemo says that in a single day the Avengers took everything from him, and so he wanted to destroy not only the Avengers, but the governments that supported the Avengers. When he realized that stronger villains than he had failed to take down the Avengers, he decided to make them fight each other, which is why he was hunting the videotape of Bucky killing the Starks, which would turn the Avengers’ leader against it’s financier. He was never interested in the other Winter Soldiers. T’Challa listens quietly, then says that there is so much violence and retribution in the world, and he sees how it is consuming everyone else, and he refuses to let it consume him any longer. Zemo pulls out a gun and tries to shoot himself in the head, but Panther’s vibranium glove stops the bullet, and Panther takes him back to face justice.
Meanwhile, Steve, Tony, and Bucky are all nearly-dead. Bucky tries to rip out Tony’s Arc Reactor and it blows his arm off, knocking him out of the fight. Friday analyzes Steve’s fighting pattern and adapts, but Steve is still determined to protect Bucky to the end, and he beats Tony to within an inch of his life and then stabs his shield into Tony’s chest, killing the arc reactor. Steve takes Bucky and leaves. Tony shouts that that shield doesn’t belong to Cap, that it belonged to Howard, and Steve contemptuously tosses it away back at Tony.
In the aftermath, Tony is helping Rhodey learn how to walk again with an Iron Man-ish exoskeleton, when Stan Lee the Fedex driver comes to deliver a letter. It’s from Steve, and it’s basically an apology for hiding the truth from Tony, and Steve says he did it to protect himself, not Tony, and that he was sorry everything turned out the way it did. As Steve is voice-overing the letter, we see Steve breaking into the Raft and breaking out Wanda, Scott, Sam, and Clint, as he promises to always be there when he’s needed. Tony sets down the letter and looks off into the distance, upset.
In the one post-credits scene we saw, Steve and Bucky are recuperating at a highly advanced medical facility. Steve asks Bucky if he’s sure he wants to do this, and Bucky (still missing an arm), says that until he wipe away his brainwashing, he’s too dangerous to live. He then steps into a cryogenic chamber and allows himself to be re-frozen. Steve walks out and sees T’Challa, who is watching. They talk, and T’Challa says that he failed both his father and Bucky, but that if he can get help one of them find peace, he will be happy. The camera pans out and shows that Steve and Bucky are hiding in Wakanda, in a secret high-tech facility in the middle of the rainforest, guarded by a massive statue of a black panther.
You broke Mr. Powell's rules
still good shit if accurate.
