Meet Your New Captain America

Once he was handed a certain shield at the end of Avengers: Endgame, Anthony Mackie became the next evolution of superhero star. He’s been working toward it for 20 years, and, as Brian Raftery learns, we’re only just catching up.

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Whenever he finds the time— that is, whenever he gets a break from being an Avenger— Anthony Mackie calls some friends in New Orleans and tells them he’s ready to build and sell another house. he’s been doing this for years now: putting together a crew, scouring dumpsters for old wood, even building doors and floorboards by hand. “Whenever you finish,” says Mackie, “you stand back and say, ‘That was a piece of dirt when I started, and now it’s a house.’ ”

Mackie tells me this on a quiet may weekday in downtown Vancouver, where the 40-year-old actor is eating pizza in a largely empty gastropub. he’s in the city to play a future-shocked mercenary on Netflix’s sci-fi series altered carbon. but because he’s a marvel star, Mackie is also an unofficial ambassador for the movie playing just a few blocks away: Avengers: Endgame. It’s the sixth film in which he portrays Sam Wilson, an ex-airman who doubles as the high-flying, highly lethal Falcon.

More important, it’s the movie in which Sam Wilson inherits the mantle—and the shield—of his best friend, the über-menschy superpatriot who’s anchored three films of his own: Captain America.

On this afternoon, Endgame has been out for barely two weeks, and it’s already made more than SGd$2.7 billion worldwide. (Some of that money comes from Mackie himself: he’s seen endgame four times so far.) and though the new Captain America is dressed in a style probably best described as “aspirational incognito” (beige pullover and blue jeans, a black Detroit Tigers cap resting on the table), a pair of 20-something backpack strapped dudes soon appear nearby, quietly nudging each other.