When Marvel Studios introduced the roster of characters set to appear in their 2024 Thunderbolts film, fans were immediately stunned by the absence of Baron Zemo from the team. In the Marvel Comics, the first iteration of characters to take on the mantle of Thunderbolts (like every Marvel Comics team, the roster has changed many times over the years) were led by Zemo under the guise of a hero known as Citizen V. With Zemo nowhere to be found among the members of this MCU-based team, fans began to wonder if Marvel Studios was simply withholding him from the public reveal to serve as a surprise later. After all, following the events of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, there’s no readily recognizable reason that fans shouldn’t expect Zemo to return to the MCU.
Actor Daniel Bruhl took his performance as Zemo up a notch in the Disney Plus streaming series and was given much more to do than in his previous turn in the role, making the lack of Zemo even a little more confusing to fans. He danced, he fought, he betrayed, he came back…by the end of the series, it would be hard to argue that Zemo wasn’t among the highlights of it. With fans anxious to have him back in the role and no news about him being attached to any upcoming projects, Radio Times asked Bruhl if he could say whether or not fans might expect him to turn up in Thunderbolts when it hits theaters. Bruhl, unfortunately, didn’t give much away.
Even if I could… I couldn’t, you know. The only thing I can say, everybody knows – is I’m not dead!
Daniel Bruhl
Not only is Zemo not dead, his last scene in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier showed that he was still able to orchestrate large-scale operations from inside his prison cell in The Raft. Zemo, of course, is a man of great patience, so while he may not appear in the Thunderbolts, at least not as a member of the main team, it’s very likely there’s still some use for the character down the road which means fans will have to adopt his patience while they wait. But it does sound like Bruhl expects to revisit the character sometime soon.
Source: Radio Times
