WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier Episode 6, "One World, One People," now streaming on Disney+.

One of the more controversial elements of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier was Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) and her revolutionary group, the Flag Smashers. She served as one of the series' main antagonists; she could and should be classified as an anti-villain since a lot of her goals and beliefs are sympathetic. However, the narrative surrounding her was muddled and had an unsatisfying ending, and she's not the first female antagonist or anti-villain to get that treatment.

This is not to say that Marvel can't write female antagonists. Hela (Cate Blanchett) and Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn) are fun, powerful and gloriously evil, and they're allowed to be unabashedly that. But when comparing how the narrative and the fans treat male antagonists like Loki (Tom Hiddleston) or Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) to how female antagonists like Karli - or Jessica Jones' Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Jiaying (Dichen Lachman) or others - are handled, a disheartening pattern starts to appear. A lot of the male characters are given nuanced portrayals and opportunities to redeem themselves, while many of the female characters are reduced to emotional, unhinged lunatics in the eleventh hour and harshly punished.

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Ghost Ant-Man Wasp Hannah John Kamen

One character to break this pattern was Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) of Ant-Man and the Wasp. In contrast to the comics, where Ghost was a mysterious male hacker, inventor and Iron Man foe, the film's Ghost was a young woman named Ava Starr, who was unwillingly used as a weapon by S.H.I.E.L.D. after an accident left her in a state of molecular disequilibrium. This condition meant she could phase through objects and go invisible, but it also meant that she was in constant pain and was slowly dying, and as such, she was willing to hurt and kill to find a cure for herself.

Ghost spent the majority of the film trying to acquire the quantum energy that could heal her, which put her in conflict with Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and their quest to rescue Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the Quantum Realm. Her goals were, if not heroic, then at least understandable: she was grossly misused by S.H.I.E.L.D. and wanted to regain her autonomy. Ant-Man and the Wasp showed her backstory very clearly, both through flashbacks and discussion, and the protagonists understood her motivations. They resisted helping her because they believed it could harm Janet, but when Janet emerged from the Quantum Realm, she voluntarily helped Ghost.

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It was a beautiful exchange: thanks to the abilities she gained in the Quantum Realm, Janet was able to sense Ghost's condition and the pain it caused, and she was quick to share some of her quantum energy with the young woman. This stabilized her, stopping her random phasing, and Scott and the others were later shown attempting to go back to the Quantum Realm to get more energy to share with Ghost. Once she was healed, Ghost shows remorse for her actions and even tried to let Bill (Laurence Fishburne), who had acted as her guardian, go ahead without her because he hadn't done anything wrong. He refused to leave her, and the two shared a hug before embarking on a new, safer life.

Falcon Winter Soldier Karli Funeral

Ghost was essentially saved by love and patience: Janet took the time to share energy with her, and in doing so, validated that Ghost was worth saving. It didn't matter that Ghost had done bad things, some not of her own volition and some in the pursuit of a cure for her molecular disequilibrium: Ghost deserved a chance to do better. Janet believed that and, by extension, Scott, Hope and Hank came to believe it; Bill, who devoted years of his life to helping Ghost, obviously believed it as well.

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Compare this to Falcon and Winter Soldier's Karli, whose motivations were pieced together through a series of vague conversations over several episodes and who was ultimately killed off. Sometimes Karli had legitimate things to say; she opposed systemic oppression, institutionalized poverty and the unequal distribution of resources, all reasonable things to combat. She was particularly incensed about the way that people who had been alive during the five years of the Blip were displaced and mistreated upon the rest of the population's return, although the details and timeline of her experiences were never fully clarified. The problem was that she was willing to use violent, often murderous methods to achieve her goals.

Falcon and Winter Soldier showed Sam (Anthony Mackie) wanting to listen to Karli and trying to meet her halfway before John Walker interrupted them and ruined it. Sam even referenced some of her goals when addressing the gathered politicians, but ultimately, Karli and her fellow Flag Smashers still ended up dead. The groundwork for redemption was there, but in the end, Karli was killed off partially to further Sharon's (Emily Vancamp) apparent villain arc and partially because Marvel didn't seem to know what to do with her. If the show had followed the example set with Ghost, Karli's character arc could have had a stronger resolution.

Directed by Kari Skogland, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier stars Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Emily VanCamp, Wyatt Russell, Erin Kellyman, Noah Mills, Carl Lumbly and Daniel Brühl. The series is available on Disney+.

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