In Marvel comics, superhero teams evolve from year to year. The Avengers and the X-Men regularly see new members join or leave their ranks to pursue their own interests. Regarding the Thunderbolts, the absence of Baron Zemo, their leader, has not failed to raise questions among fans... The screenwriter finally reveals why the villain is not in the film adapted from their adventures, currently showing in theaters.
Baron Zemo removed from Thunderbolts*?
Being a key element of the plot that introduced US Agent and ValentinaAllegra de Fontaine In The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, many MCU fans expected Baron Zemo to appear in Thunderbolts*. His actor, Daniel Brühl, had already revealed early in the film's development that he wouldn't be in the cast, but audiences were hoping for a nod from the iconic villain from Captain America: Civil War. It turns out that in a very early draft of the script, co-writer Eric Pearson (who wrote the film with Joanna Calo) had considered bringing Baron Zemo back in Thunderbolts*. He told our colleagues at Screen Rant that this idea was quickly dismissed, and that he barely remembers it, but that there was talk of a final twist where it would be revealed that the villain had been pulling the strings all along.
To be fair, there was a version where we stopped at the house of a kid who had just thrown a high school party, so I think Zemo was there at some point.There was a conclusion written a long time ago, sort of revealing that Baron Zemo was pulling the strings from prison, or something like that. I might be getting confused, but I have a feeling there was a version of an ending where Zemo escaped and switched places with someone—maybe Valentina's assistant [Mel, editor's note]—and that he was working with a photostatic veil [a mask capable of replicating an individual's face and voice].
A manipulative Baron Zemo in Thunderbolts*,an idea quickly dismissed
To IGN, Eric Pearson went further, indicating that it could have been a post-credits scene (the most important of which we now know is by the Russo brothers) and that, similar to the final moments of The Usual Suspects, we would have discovered that Baron Zemo was behind the film's shenanigans from the beginning.
A million years ago, I made a post-credits scene where Zemo is like Keyser Söze. Like he's pulling the strings from prison. But I don't think that version lasted much longer than "Hey, what do you think?" - "No, not that."
Also for Screen Rant, Eric Pearson confirms that this idea didn't last very long, from the moment the writers decided that Yelena Belova would be the center of the story and they introduced the character of Bob, a.k.a. Sentry, the MCU's new superhero.
But I think those ideas lived for a brief moment and then died. Sometimes people think we're purposely zigzagging, and I say, "No, we know Zemo is very much a part of a different version of the story." He's the reason the team is created in the comics, but we've worked around it with our own beginning. But we're always thinking about origins. We're always like, "If there's a way to cleverly include Baron Zemo in this story, he absolutely has to be in it." But in the story we wanted to tell and fell in love with, Yelena was the centerpiece, and all the characters found their way through Yelena. And then we also introduced Bob, and he was out of place. We didn't want to end up with a film that the target audience would think was for someone else.
And you, would you have liked Baron Zemo to still appear in the film?
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