What If Showed How the MCU Can Bring Back a Villain It Already Destroyed

What If Showed How the MCU Can Bring Back a Villain It Already Destroyed

“What If… Ultron Won?” also teases another villain’s survival and how he could return in the core-MCU timeline.

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What If Showed How the MCU Can Bring Back a Villain It Already Destroyed

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for What If…? Season 1, Episode 8, “What If… Ultron Won?,” streaming now on Disney+.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is full of reoccurring heroes — but in terms of villains, many of the most notable ones from across the twenty-plus films have been permanently killed or removed from the board by the end of the narrative. There are only a handful of notable antagonists who have the ability to return to further bedevil the heroes. However, the multiversal What If…? just proved there might still be another waiting in the wings.

While “What If… Ultron Won?” is largely focused on the influence and effects of a Perfect Ultron on the MCU, Captain America’s old enemy Arnim Zola is revealed to still be technically alive — and possibly capable of returning in a similar way in the core-timeline.

What If Showed How the MCU Can Bring Back a Villain It Already Destroyed

In “What If… Ultron Won?,” the successful uploading of the villainous Ultron into the body that would have otherwise become Vision allows him to defeat the Avengers and subsequently wipe out humanity and then almost all life in the galaxy after stealing the Infinity Stones from Thanos. One of the few remaining shreds of hope come from two of the last heroes on Earth: Black Widow and Hawkeye, who’d been airborne during the attack. Possible salvation comes from an unlikely source: traveling to the ravaged ruins of Russia, Black Widow and Hawkeye end up finding the KGB-held copy of Arnim Zola.

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Appearing in Captain America: The First Avenger as a HYDRA scientist during World War II, Captain America: The Winter Soldier revealed that he eventually “defected” to America and SHIELD. But within the growing spy organization, Zola and his allies planted the seeds of a new HYDRA. Although Zola himself eventually died, copies of his mind and memories were uploaded into numerous computers as backups. Captain America and Black Widow confronted one such copy during the Phase 2 entry in the Captain America series, and it was ultimately destroyed in a missile barrage meant to kill them. Still, What If…? seems to confirm the idea that there are multiple other copies of Zola across the Earth, with Hawkeye and Black Widow revealing the others in their world had been wiped out in Ultron’s attacks.

Considering the sequence of events in “What If… Ultron Won?” appeared to be more or less the same as the core-MCU timeline up until Ultron’s victory, then this means it’s possible other copies of Zola’s mind also exist in the Sacred Timeline. One could even still be waiting within the halls of the KGB, protected by an army instead of just left to be discovered in the ruins of the world. This also means that Zola could be rediscovered at some point in the future and reactivated, bringing back one of HYDRA’s key players in a period of uncertainty for the MCU. The MCU is still reeling from the events of Avengers: Endgame, and while there may be a new Captain America on the board, there are also the threats to the timeline encountered by Loki and the potential for Scarlet Witch to let loose with her power.

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Having a restored HYDRA around would only make things more complicated, especially for the heroes who live on a more civilian level like Hawkeye or Captain America. It could present a genuine concern for the remnants of SHIELD and sew further discord across the world. And considering that Zola is apparently a powerful enough program, it could even pose a threat to an Infinity Stone-enhanced Ultron (that is, if he can get access to the code), suggests his return could cause serious problems. While he may have appeared defeated, Zola might secretly be one of the MCU’s most dangerous threats — and all he needs to realize that possible potential, as proven by What If…?, is to be unleashed.

To see Zola’s unlikely alliance with his world’s Last Avengers, new episodes of What If…? are available Wednesdays on Disney+.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/what-if-shows-how-arnim-zola-could-return/

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