Marvel's What If...? Set the Stage for One Captain America Villain's Return

Thanks to the alternate realities of Marvel's What If...? fans have been able to see more of their favorite villains that have already bitten the dust in the MCU. The latest episode of the series, episode 8: "What if.....Ultron Won?," may have planted the seed for one villain to come back yet again on the big screen, or maybe even on Disney+. All of the events of this week's new episode took place in the fallout of an alternate version of Avengers: Age of Ultron, but the Vision/Ultron character isn't the only villain to appear as Arnim Zola also makes his return to the MCU.

Within this week's episode, Black Widow and Hawkeye are the only surviving members of Earth's mightiest heroes and are eager to find a way to stop Ultron, despite seemingly almost everyone else in the world being dead. They eventually come up with a scheme to use computer-bound Arnim Zola to infiltrate Ultron by uploading him into one of the Ultron Drones. Since this episode takes place after Avengers: Age of Ultron though it begs the question, how could Arnim Zola's digital existence still be around since this is after Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Here's the seed for his return.

Confirmed in the episode is that multiple copies of Zola existed on a variety of computers around the world, with one version of him still existing in "an old Hydra base in Syberia" (the same one where The Winter Soldier was kept for many years). When Black Widow breaks it all down for him she and Hawkeye reveal that he's the final "copy" of Zola that exists in the world; and since we're operating under the assumption that everything that happened in this universe up until the moment Ultron beat the Avengers is exactly the same as what transpired in the MCU, we can assume that this extra copy of Zola exists in the MCU proper as well.

Actor Toby Jones reprised his role as Arnim Zola for the new episode of What If...?, having played the part of Zola as a man in Captain America: The First Avenger and then in his computer form in The Winter Soldier. It's also worth noting that an Easter Egg in 2011's "First Avenger" teased Zola's trademark robot body via a blueprint, something that could be brought back should this copy of Zola make his return in the MCU.

Lest we forget, a fourth Captain America movie is in the works after all....