Captain America is a brown Filipina named Arielle Agbayani
By Wendell Gaa
The release this month of the newest film by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) “Captain America: Brave New World” has had me thinking about one of Marvel Comics’ newest superheroes who happens to be a Filipina by the name of Arielle Agbayani.
To be clear, she is not meant to be either a replacement or successor to the original Captain America superheroes in the comics, namely Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson, but rather she is a character who is inspired from Captain America to take on the mantle of a superhero fighting evil-doers in the name of justice using a shield and hand-to-hand combat skills.
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of obtaining a copy of the fourth issue of a limited comic series entitled “The United States of Captain America” which features the debut of Agbayani. This series was released in 2021 in celebration of the 80th Anniversary of the publication of the first comic series to feature Captain America, who is my personal favorite member and leader of Marvel’s Avengers superhero team.
While there is no denying that Steve Rogers is the original character for the role, it is so fitting that among the younger generation of superheroes he has inspired one happens to be one of our own, and this of course reflects modern ethnic diversity in the comic industry.
As I read the portion on Ari’s story, I learned how her Captain America character is a Filipino American college sophomore student who is attending classes at the fictional Hargrove University in Boston, Massachusetts. Like any other typical student, she just would like to live a normal life balancing her academic and social priorities. But she is neither blind nor oblivious to some of the harassment and injustice that she witnesses on campus towards some of her fellow students, unlike how the campus authorities seemingly behave.
When one of her close friends is a victim of an assault by another student who is seemingly “untouchable” because of his family’s wealthy connections, she decides to stand up to crime and don on a mask, shield and a costume designed with a star and brand herself Hargrove University’s own “Captain America” in order to launch a campaign of fear and intimidation against campus bullies.
I’ve noted how Ari is curiously relatable as a person moonlighting between being a young university student talking about everyday topics like costume parties and a tough idealistic crimefighter just like the classic Captain America superhero.
This Pinay Captain America happens to be the creation of writer Alyssa Wong who is a Filipino American herself. Together with fellow writer Christopher Cantwell, she had worked with artists Dale Eaglesham and Jodi Nishijima to breath life into this new Captain America.
Interestingly enough, she has stated in an interview how she is more inspired by the Captain America version of Bucky Barnes instead of Steve Rogers. Barnes is the comic character who is more popularly known as Rogers’s best friend turned into the supervillain-turned-superhero Winter Soldier. In this regard, Ari is more prone to using tactics which are sneakier, shadier and more subversive compared to the generally more traditional direct approach which Steve Rogers uses in battling criminals.
Knowing this particular aspect of Ari’s personality traits make it all the more interesting to see how much she stands out as her own unique superhero character with qualities that I’m sure will make many comic book fans and pop cultural enthusiasts invested into seeing how her character evolves in the coming years.
Now that Ari’s other Marvel Filipina superhero compatriot Wave/Pearl Pangan has just made her TV debut on the brilliant new animated series “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man” which is now streaming on Disney+, I am likewise hopeful and excited to see Ari Agbayani soon making her character debut both on the small and big screen. There can be no more exciting time to see our own Filipino superheroes come to life in one of the biggest pop culture franchises in the world than now!
