Captain America: Arnim Zola Reveals Steps for Evil Scheme

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is over a decade into its run, but fans are still finding new and exciting details tied to its roster of films. Whether through plot points confirmed in latter films or retcons in other supplemental material, there’s still a lot to discover about the franchise — including one of its most surprising reveals. The new book The Wakanda Files, which canonically dives into previously-unseen paperwork within the MCU, sheds a bit of light on the return of Arnim Zola (Toby Jones), the Nazi scientist who was revealed to have been uploaded into an old S.H.I.E.L.D. computer at some point between Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. A notebook entry from Zola sheds a bit of light on exactly how that happened, and it’s pretty interesting.

“The end is nearer for me than I imagined,” Zola writes. “The diagnosis is grim, and I do not have much time remaining. Science cannot save my body. But it can save my mind.”

“In my laboratory in the roots where S.H.I.E.L.D. first grew, I have constructed a supercomputer for the purposes of emulating and synthesizing of my own brain,” Zola continues. “One hundred billion neurons replicated and re-created using microprocessors of my own design. It will be my masterpiece. I have copied 19.77 terabytes of my brain’s memory functions to 200,000 feet of databanks over the course of the past year. With luck, I will be able to tie the computer to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s systems and have some semblance of control over it as long as the main CPU is online and active. I am storing my personal journals in the Hydra data files. And providing a hard copy to Pierce. Within these records, my work should be easily continued past my demise.”

While these new details don’t necessarily revolutionize Zola’s role in the MCU, they do provide some intriguing context surrounding how he returned in Winter Soldier. And with rumors suggesting that Zola could potentially return in Disney+’s The Falcon and The Winter Soldier TV series, that could get even more significant.

What do you think of these new Arnim Zola details? Do they change the way you look at his role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!