Last year’s Avengers: Infinity War featured a surprise comeback for Red Skull of Captain America: The First Avenger fame, and while his appearance didn’t amount to much more than a fan-pleasing cameo, it seems the door is now wide open for Johann Schmidt to reassert himself as one of the MCU’s main villains.
In fact, according to sources close to We Got This Covered – the same ones who told us Taskmaster will be the villain in Black Widow and the Real Mandarin will be the villain in Shang-Chi, both of which were correct – Marvel now hopes for Red Skull to face off against Sam Wilson, most likely in the currently unannounced Captain America 4. And though the details of Marvel’s intentions remain unclear, this clash would certainly make a lot of sense from a character perspective.
After all, Sam officially inherited the mantle of Captain America in this year’s Avengers: Endgame. And while we can expect to see him settle into his new role in the upcoming Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV show, surely a showdown against Steve Rogers’ first nemesis would be the perfect test to see if Sam is truly worthy of filling his predecessor’s shoes.
Meanwhile, looking at this from Red Skull’s perspective, now that Thanos has taken and destroyed the Soul Stone in the main timeline, we can likely assume that the villain is free to leave Vormir and resume his quest for world domination.
In any case, seeing how Marvel has yet to even officially confirm a Captain America 4 for Sam Wilson, it could be a long wait before we get any further info on Schmidt’s potential comeback. Still, given that this intel comes to us from the same sources who also revealed the She-Hulk show way back in April before it was announced, we have no reason to doubt it.
Anyways, as we wait to lean more, we know that Mackie’s next MCU outing will presumably be The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which sees the return of another of Steve Rogers’ old enemies. We’ll find out how Sam gets on with a newly masked Baron Zemo when the series hits Disney Plus late next year.
