Marvel Gave Baron Zemo the WandaVision Treatment Before Scarlet Witch

Marvel Gave Baron Zemo the WandaVision Treatment Before Scarlet Witch

In 2016’s Avengers: Standoff!, Baron Zemo found himself in a small town turned prison, not unlike Scarlet Witch’s Westview from WandaVision.

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Marvel Gave Baron Zemo the WandaVision Treatment Before Scarlet Witch

While the Scarlet Witch turned the small town of Westview into a prison in the MCU’s WandaVision, Marvel Comics’ Baron Zemo and many other villains found themselves in a very similar situation back in 2016. Trapped in the small town of Pleasant Hill, Helmut Zemo was on the other side of the coin. Rather than being the creator of the town which was really a gilded cage, he was one of its prisoners having no memory of his actual identity or life (just like one of Westview’s residents). However, Zemo eventually broke free of Pleasant Hill’s control.

Avengers: Standoff! was a fairly large comics event spanning multiple titles with the main story coming from Nick Spencer, Mark Bagley, and Jesus Saiz. In it, fragments of a powerful Cosmic Cube had come together to form the sentient being known as Kobik who took the form of a curious young girl. Taken care of and influenced by SHIELD director Maria Hill and Dr. Erik Selvig, they convinced Kobik to create Pleasant Hill, a small town with morally questionable intentions.

One of the first residents of the town readers meet is a confused man named Jim. While he tries to escape on several occasions he never succeeds, eventually becoming acclimated to the town thanks to SHIELD’s brainwashing techniques. However, Jim’s mind and past were eventually restored (thanks to the work of the Red Skull behind the scenes). In truth, Jim is revealed to be Baron Zemo, having been captured and placed in Pleasant Hill which is really a large-scale SHIELD prison. Made to house supervillains whose minds and identities had likewise been erased and replaced with happy and neighborly personalities, Pleasant Hill was not unlike the town of Westview under Wanda Maximoff’s control, turning it into her television-style happy ending. Naturally, this lead to a villain revolution led by Zemo, resulting in SHIELD’s experiment falling apart as he secretly restored more villains’ minds, waiting for the right time to strike.

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While heroes such as the Avengers fought to keep the villains contained, many of them had to agree with the villains who cried abuse due to SHIELD’s lack of morality and ethics under Director Maria Hill. That being said, SHIELD’s justifications were very similar to Wanda’s. According to Dr. Selvig, Kobik was helping to make these broken villains whole, giving them happy lives created from the elements of their best selves (while still erasing their true identities and pasts). Likewise, Wanda initially tried to excuse her actions by saying that she was helping the Westview residents by taking away their grief and pain along with their memories, giving them roles she felt would best suit them.

That being said, Baron Zemo makes it brutally clear in Standoff! that the truth is far more valuable than the farce he and his fellow villains had been turned into against their will. Likewise, the residents of Westview had no love for the Scarlet Witch once she eventually freed them from her magic at the end of WandaVision. It also makes total sense that Maria Hill’s actions and failure with Pleasant Hill served as the beginning of the end for her time as SHIELD’s director.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/baron-zemo-wandavision-scarlet-witch-marvel/

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