The seemingly invincible Winter Soldier aka Bucky has a major flaw, having the useful metal arm on the wrong side.
Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, popularly known as the Winter Soldier is among the few super soldiers in the Marvel universe. With body enhancements due to super-soldier serums, these individuals have improved speed, strength, stamina, and durability making them very deadly in hand-to-hand combat. Winter Soldier, in particular, has a robotic arm which adds to his ability in combat. It may seem that he may not have any weaknesses, however, that not the case as recently revealed by Marvel. Episode 5 of The Falcon & The Winter Soldier revealed that Bucky’s metal arm in fact has a big weakness i.e. it’s present on the wrong side.
The Story Of Bucky’s Arm
James Bucky Barnes made his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in “Captain America: The First Avenger”, where he was fighting alongside his childhood friend Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, against the evil organization HYDRA. While on a mission to capture Arnim Zola, HYDRA’s lead scientist, Bucky and Cap raided a fast-moving train in an icy mountain region.
Unfortunately, they ended up walking into an ambush and while fighting for their way out, Bucky fell down a cliff from a fast-moving train which everyone thought was his end. But in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”, it was revealed that Bucky was in fact alive and is now also a super soldier and that he only lost his left arm in the accident which was replaced with a cool robotic metallic arm. He lost his original metal arm in the fight against Iron Man in “Captain America: Civil War” and got an even better and indestructible vibranium arm.
The Weaknesses of Bucky’s Arm Replacement
The Falcon & The Winter Soldier episode 4 and 5 reveal two major weaknesses of the Vibranium arm. The first was a failsafe disable feature built-in his arm by the Wakandanswhich enabled them to “Disarm” Bucky’s arm as revealed during the quarrel between the Dora Milaje and John Walker over Zemo’s arrest. This particular incident creates a notion among fans that spread like wildfire where they believed that installing a failsafe and keeping it a secret was wrong and inhumane and made it seem like they still didn’t trust Bucky even after freeing him from HYDRA’s programming.
The second weakness of the metal arm is that it is present on the wrong side. During episode 5, while Bucky was helping Sam with some repairs, he states, “I’m right-handed”. Due to this reason, Bucky cannot use his metal arm to its full potential because he uses his dominant hand during combat, as seen in the MCU where he holds his rifle in his right arm and the amazing right-handed knife flip, did while fighting Captain America.
Having an indestructible arm sure is cool but having that arm on his dominant side would have made Bucky an even deadlier fighter. Unfortunately, he did choose to lose his left arm so there is no point regretting the fact that his metal arm is on the left side as, despite that weakness, Bucky has proved himself to hold his own against various mighty foes.
