From Captain America’s sidekick to the brainwashed assassin Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes has come a long way in his superhero career.
Over the many decades of existence, the Winter Soldier underwent some pretty massive changes. From the sidekick to Captain America to an elite Soviet assassin to becoming Captain America himself Bucky’s life has been a winding road, to say the least. And since he burst into the Marvel Universe in Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s Captain America Comics #1, Bucky Barnes has grown from one of Marvel’s youngest heroes into one of its oldest.
Beyond his obvious aging, Bucky’s body has undergone more than a few changes, too. Now, we’re dissecting the Winter Soldier’s history to see how precisely he’s changed, inside and out.
Average Boy Wonder
Before he was any sort of super-spy, Bucky started out as an average teenager, whose moxie and spunk won him a spot as Captain America’s sidekick. Born as James Buchanan Barnes, he came to call himself “Bucky,” and the most impressive thing about his superhero career at that point was that he didn’t have a single superpower for a good portion of it.
To the surprise of the villains who transformed him into the Winter Soldier, Barnes never had any mystical powers, gadgets or power-bestowing serums running through his veins in WWII. When his costume snagged on a missile and seemingly killed him after blowing off his left arm, the Russians who found him after the war were astonished at how well preserved his body was, but that his survival had nothing to do with any superpowers.
PEAK CONDITION
While he might not technically be superhuman, Bucky is far from an average juman. Like many Marvel heroes, the super spy’s body has a finely honed physique that far exceeds the capacity for what most people can do. Even when he was just a kid during the war he could send a man flying across a room with a punch, and further training and exercise only further honed his natural abilities.
Bucky’s speed has always been especially impressive. Combined with his elite training, Bucky could react quickly enough to slice Hawkeye’s arrows out of the air mid-flight or block bullets from the Black Widow with his cybernetic arm. Combined with the raw grit to take beatings from the likes of Nazi superhuman Master Man or the Russian super bear Ursa Major, Bucky’s human qualities are a big part of what makes him so extraordinary.
Trigger Words
When the Russians seized control of Bucky he underwent their most intensive regime of brainwashing protocols in order to keep him subservient. Periodically, Bucky’s sheer willpower would bring him moments of clarity or lucidity, forcing the Soviets to only intensify the process. Where this is most brutally depicted is in the MCU, where the Winter Soldier’s captors use the aid of torturous machines to instill a set of trigger words that could activate him at any time.
After uncovering the trigger words for his own use and gaining access to the Winter Soldier, Zemo was able to reactivate his training, kicking the assassin into a brutal state of mind where he showed no restraint in fighting any of the heroes he faced. After Bucky was freed and returned to the side of Marvel’s heroes, the Red Skull captured him and attempted to brainwash Barnes, who was now serving as Captain America, again. However, Bucky proved resistant to the process this time, and he may have some lingering resistance to brainwashing.
Old Man Bucky
As someone who was old enough to fight in World War II, Bucky is one of Marvel’s older human heroes. In order to best extend the years they could keep using him as an assassin, the Soviets used cryogenesis to freeze Bucky when they had no use for him. Though he periodically spent time out of the ice to train with the Black Widow in the Red Room and to go on assassinations, Bucky only aged gradually over the course of the years until he seemed roughly the same age as his former partner, Steve Rogers.
However, Bucky has a little help staying young now. When he nearly died during the battle of the gods depicted in 2011’s Fear Itself crossover event, Nick Fury narrowly managed to save Barnes’ life with an injection of the same Infinity Formula that kept him alive for over a century. Bucky only received a small dose, helping his heart to repair from its injuries and only granting him a fraction of the formula’s physical benefits. While any augmented physical powers he had would be fairly mild, the dose he got should still keep him young for the foreseeable future.
Cybernetic Arm
As the Winder Soldier, the most notable part of his body is his cybernetic left arm. The cybernetic enhancement represented the pinnacle of Soviet technology when scientists first grafted it to Bucky’s body to make up for the limb he lost in his tragic accident. It’s strong enough to shred through metal and bust through brick, but super-strength is only the start to the cybernetic arm’s tricks.
While it’s immune to EMPs, the Winter Soldier’s arm can actually release EMPs to disrupt other electronic devices, and it can also release a stun gun-esque charge. Perhaps weirdest of all is that the arm can be remote-controlled, springing to life, even if it’s disconnected from the rest of the Winter Soldier’s body.
