The Falcon and the Winter Solider: Daniel Brühl Releases First Look of New Helmut Zemo, Featuring a Face Mask

The Falcon and the Winter Solider star Daniel Brühl — who returns to the role of Helmut Zemo in the upcoming Disney+ series he first played in the 2016 film Captain America: Civil War — has shared a couple of new looks of his character. One of them shows him wearing the face mask Zemo dons in the Marvel comics, due to his face has heavily scarred. But that's unlikely to be the same reason in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier miniseries, considering he looks fine in the other image. It's more of Marvel Studios making minor tweaks to add new dimensions to its characters.

On Tuesday, Brühl shared two photos of Zemo over on his official Instagram account, both of which were taken from a short video that was shown at San Diego Comic-Con 2019 on Saturday to announce his presence on The Falcon and the Winter Solider. The footage hasn't been released online yet. We don't expect it to show up for several months, at least until Disney+ launches in the US in November. Brühl captioned the Instagram post: “‘Longing, Rusted, Seventeen, Daybreak, Furnace, Nine, Benign, Homecoming, One, Freight Car.' Zemo is getting ready.”

Those words are a reference to the trigger words used to activate the Winter Solider / Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), which we were shown in Captain America: Civil War. You may not recognise the words because they are spoken in Russian in the movie, first by a Hydra officer at the start of the film when the Winter Soldier is asked to steal the Super Soldier Serum and kill Tony Stark's parents, and then later by Zemo himself in the Berlin CIA facility, after Barnes has been captured.

Zemo tried to kill himself towards the end of the film, but Black Panther stopped him and handed him over to the CIA. Poetically, Zemo was kept as prisoner in the same Berlin facility. But given his involvement in The Falcon and the Winter Solider, it's clear that Zemo will somehow escape and go back to tormenting the two titular superheroes. Brühl's Instagram caption suggests the trigger words might have a role to play in the series, but it's rather unlikely given Barnes was treated and cured in Wakanda.

The Falcon and the Winter Solider will release in autumn 2020 on Disney+. There's no word on the release platform for the series in India.