Thus far in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the MCU is essentially making Zemo the antihero Loki should have been. After being teased at the very end of episode 2, episode 3 found Bucky Barnes and Sam Wilson turning to Baron Helmut Zemo for help in tracking down the source of the Flag-Smashers' Super Soldier Serum. This involved Bucky orchestrating a plan to break Zemo out of the high-security prison the Sokovian intelligence officer been held at since the end of Captain America: Civil War for his crimes.

Surprisingly, Zemo quickly won over viewers with his charm, manners, and willingness to use his vast fortune and deep connections to help Falcon and the Winter Soldier in their quest. For now, their missions align; while Sam and Bucky want to stop Super Soldier Serum from being used by villains and terrorist groups, Zemo wants Super Soldier Serum to never again be used at all, but both parties agree the Flag-Smashers' creation and use of it must be stopped. However, Zemo isn't a completely different person, it's simply that their goals align for the time being. He's still just as manipulative as ever and is clearly already getting under Bucky's and Sam's skin, testing their weaknesses and storing away the information he learns for potential use later. Ever the strategist, he's still steps ahead of the heroes even as he helps them.

Related: MCU Theory: Zemo Controls Bucky By Using His OTHER Trigger Word

As a brilliant strategist and master manipulator, Zemo's scenes always carry a sense of danger and menace even when he's technically in the guise of an antihero instead of outright villain. The audience knows that even as he plays Sam and Bucky's game, he's simultaneously playing his own, different game, one no one but Zemo himself is privy to. He creates an uneasy feeling in viewers that the protagonists are being played somehow – they just can't spot how. In short, Baron Zemo is what Loki should have been all along in the MCU. While there were moments of Loki being a manipulative mastermind, most notably in the first Thor movie when he keeps Thor on Earth by making him believe he's banished and uses Odin's Odinsleep to his advantage, the majority of Loki's screentime in the MCU has been spent reducing him to a fast-talking con man with some parlor tricks.

Thor and Loki in Thor Ragnarok

Even when Loki has pulled off a plan, his agency has often been removed, such as Marvel's now-canonical retcon claiming that Loki was under the influence of the Mind Stone during the events of The Avengers, or his plan has been thwarted almost immediately. Worse, he's often been reduced to being the butt of the joke. No offender in this regard has been worse than Thor: Ragnarok, but even in The Avengers he was painted as little more than a diva whose "brain is a bag full of cats." It's hard to imagine the heroes of the MCU talking about Zemo with the flippancy they do about Loki.

It's a shame, as it does a disservice to the Loki from the comics, who is both vastly more powerful in his magic, but also a far better strategist and master of the long game. He's not a simple trickster, but the god of lies, using his formidable magical abilities, unwitting pawns, and multiple levels of deceit to pull off complex machinations, some planned out years if not millennia in advance. In the MCU, when Loki's plan is ruined, he's usually caught flat-footed. In the comics, Loki always has multiple plans up his sleeve in case one scheme goes sideways, and the heroes are often blindsided by them. In that sense, the MCU's Zemo is far more like the comic book Loki than the actual MCU version of Loki. It will be great to see more of Zemo's underhanded and devious tactics play out in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – but it would be even better if the upcoming Loki series finally restored the God of Mischief to the brilliant strategist and manipulator he is in the comics and gives him the respect he deserves in the MCU.

More: Why Loki Needs To Show Thor’s MCU Journey From Loki’s Perspective

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