It’s easy to ‘ship the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Cap and Falcon. They’ve shared too much screentime, and too many shy lopsided grins, to dissuade fans who’d rather consider them a couple. Over on Tumblr sashayed has just blown that ‘ship wide open. What started out as an idle curiousness over Cap’s running route in the beginning of Winter Soldier suddenly reveals: Steve Rogers had to purposefully be following Sam in order to meet him as many times as he does!
As internet theories go, this one is a lot of fun, going from tongue-in-cheek to eye-widening realization:
In the 2014 superhero movie “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” we see the characters of Steve Wilson and Sam Rogers encounter each other at four locations on Washington D.C.’s National Mall. Steve Rogers passes known love interest Sam Wilson, FIRST, running southeast on the inlet bridge at the lower edge of the Tidal Basin.
sashayed details the various points that Steve “laps” Sam and figures out Sam’s running route from there.
So like, first of all, just as a running route, it kind of makes no sense.
(A personal note: I think I’d actually like to try Sam’s route one of these days! But that’s not important right now…)
OK. So the distance between the first time Steve passes Sam and the first time he “laps” him is AT MOST about .3 miles.
Steve’s fast, but he’s not fucking Pietro Maximoff (olav hasholem), over here. He doesn’t run a <1-minute mile. At MOST, I guess, since he’s a superhero, he could be running a 3-minute mile on his morning jog. But you know what makes 900 times more sense? He passes a dude running, dude glances back to let him pass, sunrise hits The Face:
Steve is like ohHH god and, because his life is a mess, he ends up circling the Jefferson as many times as necessary until the dude comes by again.
Considering the running route and available walkways in the National Mall area of D.C., Steve circling to wait for Sam is actually the most realistic action, which is what makes this theory so much fun to read. sashayed goes even deeper with it in this Tumblr post and the logic is beautiful to behold.
[via Metafilter]