Thunderbolts Was Once Going to Feature Yet Another Familiar Face

After memorable turns in Captain America: Civil War and Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Daniel Brühl’s Baron Zemo almost got the call for Marvel’s Thunderbolts. But it wasn’t meant to be for the character, who started out as a big bad but became more sympathetic the longer he hung around the MCU—which does sound kind of perfect for the misfit team-up movie. He also has quite a few ties to the Thunderbolts in the comics.

Speaking to Screenrant, one of Thunderbolts‘ writers explained Baron Zemo was actually part of an early draft of the film, back to his villainous ways.

“I think there was a version of a tag written a long time ago [where] it was revealed that Baron Zemo was pulling some strings from prison or whatever,” Eric Pearson explained, though he wasn’t 100% certain of the details.

“I feel like there might’ve been a version where a tag where Zemo had broken out and swapped places with someone … [but] I think those ideas lived for one iteration and then died. Sometimes people think that we’re zagging on purpose, and it’s like, ‘No, we know that Zemo is very integral to a different story version of them.’ He’s part of putting [the Thunderbolts] together, and we negated the need for that with our very premise.”

Pearson pointed out that with Yelena being the center of the story, and the introduction of the Bob character, Zemo “just didn’t fit,” as much as Thunderbolts did keep its source material in mind. “There’s always the discussion of, ‘Well, if there’s a way to cleverly include Baron Zemo in this, he absolutely should be there,’” he said. In the end, however, the stories didn’t quite fit together, and Zemo was left out.

What do you make of this potential plot change? Would you like to see Baron Zemo back in action? Thunderbolts is in theaters now.

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