Sam Wilson has taken up the mantle of Captain America in the MCU, with his adventures set to continue in Captain America: New World Order in May 2024. Now that he’s worthy of holding the title, his former code name of Falcon has also been passed down to his friend Joaquín Torres.
In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier we met Danny Ramirez as Torres, with Wilson handing over the damaged EXO-7 Falcon wings to him and telling him to “keep ’em”. Ramirez is confirmed to appear in New World Order, potentially setting him up for a long and prosperous future in the MCU, just like Mackie before him.
Even with this success, Ramirez has noted that life still isn’t easy for a Latino actor in Hollywood. On Twitter, he recounted how he’d recently gotten to the final stages of auditions for a Latino character, only to find that at the last moment they decided they should rewrite the character to be a “white guy”:
Ramirez went on to admit that there should be flexibility in storytelling, but that this should absolutely go both ways:
Fortunately, it seems like there’s a push for color-blind casting in Hollywood at the moment. We recently learned that The Last of Us considered casting Mahershala Ali as Joel before going with Pedro Pascal, with Marvel Studios reportedly wanting to diversify its casting as much as possible in future phases (the current rumor is for Dev Patel as Reed Richards in Fantastic Four).
That said, this is a depressing story, and we can understand Ramirez’ frustration that a Latino role can be completely rewritten to accommodate a White actor. Would the same happen the other way? Probably not, but maybe we’re moving in that direction.
Captain America: New World Order will arrive in theaters on May 3, 2024.