Madri-what, now? Back in December 2019, a leaked set photo of the upcoming The Falcon and the Winter Soldier for Disney+ revealed that a possible new location for the show looks to be… Singapore?!

Is that what’s at Wimblish tonight? I kept looking up from my desk at work to see this table covered with… squid? pic.twitter.com/cPy0QF1ksp — Luke Hatcher (@lukeman) December 4, 2019

Jokes aside, the photo actually reveals the icon of the state flag of the fictional South Asian city of Madripoor.

A closer look at the state flag of Madripoor.

The Singapore flag.

There’s no mistake that the crescent, star and lion head is very Singapore-esque, but aside from that and from how it looks in the comics, the similarities are few and far between.

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In the Marvel comics, Madripoor is a fictional island-state (not unlike Singapore) located just southwest of the Little Red Dot. As described in the Marvel fandom Wiki, Madripoor used to be a “haven for pirates”, and its society is divided into the rich and poor (no pun intended), which means the crime rate there is pretty high, unlike Singapore.

Madripoor in the comics.

That said, Madripoor is visually very similar to Singapore in that it is a metropolitan city with dashes of its oriental past riddled in between. A more on-the-nose inspiration would be the Madripoor Pearl, a hotel that looks very (very) similar to the Marina Bay Sands, as seen in the pages of Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye.

The Madripoor Pearl as seen in Hawkeye v4 #4 in 2012.

What’s most interesting, however, is the fact that Madripoor is not associated with the Avengers, but the X-Men. The city first appeared on the pages of New Mutants in 1985, and has since featured Wolverine rather heavily. Could this be a sign that Marvel Studios is slowly introducing the mutant race to the MCU?

In any case, it would certainly be very interesting to have any sign of mutants appearing on Madripoor. But for now, that’s wishful thinking. Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier and Anthony Mackie’s Falcon running across the Singapore-inspired skyline of Madripoor would suffice, for now.

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier releases on Disney+ sometime in Fall 2020.

Marion has a serious RPG addiction. Sometimes it bleeds into real life; he forgets to sleep because he thinks he has a Witcher’s body clock. Forgive him in advance if he suddenly blurts out terms such as “Mind Flayer” and “Magic Missile”, because never once does he stop thinking about his next Dungeons & Dragons game.

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