Bucky's Arm Creates The Opposite 'Worthiness' Problem As Thor's Hammer
In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes's cybernetic arm creates the opposite problem that the hammer Mjolnir creates for Thor. Bucky's arm has long been a source of problems for him, mostly logistical, such as well Iron Man broke it off in his fight against the Winter Soldier and Captain America at the end of Captain America: Civil War. But Falcon & the Winter Soldier episode 4, "The Whole World is Watching," indicated it may be an emotional issue for Bucky, too.
Since being rescued and rehabilitated from his time as the brainwashed Hydra assassin the Winter Soldier, Bucky's power level and skillset has been wildly erratic. Most have assumed it was just some inconsistency in the writing – after all, a number of characters have seen their powers and level of power vary greatly between movies in the MCU. But The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has made it clear Bucky often appearing depowered isn't a writing issue but a personal character choice. The times he's had to pretend to be the Winter Soldier and the flashbacks to his time as the assassin have shown his power leveling up considerably while the times he's fighting as Bucky, he's been more restrained. In his attempts to distance himself from his past, Bucky is clearly trying to not himself go to violence the way he did when he was the Winter Soldier.
However, his negative attachment to his arm, and the idea that both defines him and also that he's not worthy of using it to its full extent, is holding him back. In many ways, it's the inverse of the relationship Thor has always had with his hammer, Mjolnir. Thor never worried about not being worthy of Mjolnir; if anything, Thor's origin story journey was learning to humble himself and accept he had not yet been worthy of wielding the hammer. Bucky's is the opposite journey. As the Winter Soldier, he did terrible things; now his story is about trying to find self-worth and realizing he is a good man and worthy of using his arm fully.
However, both of their attachments to their weapons are crutches, as shown by what happens when each of them has lost their weapon. When Thor lost Mjolnir in Thor: Ragnarok, he allowed Hela to overpower him and take his eye, convinced that without his hammer, he wasn't strong enough to defeat her. "Are you Thor, the God of Hammers?" Odin asked him, gently chiding his son before explaining that Mjolnir was only meant to help him control his power. Thor's source of power, as it turns out, had been inside him all along - he just had to finally realize his true worth.
Likewise, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier episode 4 showed that Bucky, like Thor, feels he's useless when he loses his cybernetic arm. When Ayo triggers the failsafe in Bucky's arm during a fight with the Dora Milaje, his arm detaches and drops to the ground. Bucky's look of pure shock shows he hadn't expected it, but even in his surprise, the fight goes completely out of him. He doesn't even try to keep fighting once he loses his arm.
The ideal resolution for Bucky's story would be to get to the same emotional place of acceptance that Thor does by the end of Avengers: Endgame: He knows he's still worthy enough to wield Mjolnir, even if he doesn't actually need it to use his power. If Bucky can learn to forgive himself and accept that he's worthy, it will break him free of the mental training wheels he's been keeping on his arm. Bucky's cybernetic arm can be used as a tool of great good, not just for murder, but he's not ready to accept that yet. Understandably, he doesn't yet see that what Hydra did to him can be turned into a gift rather than seen as a curse. Just as Thor had to learn to stop holding himself back, eventually, Bucky will have to learn the same, whether that happens in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or not.
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