When you’re dealing with characters such as Captain America who have decades upon decades of comic book history backing them up, you have no shortage of villains and supporting characters to cull from when adapting to film. As such, we’ve seen the likes of the Red Skull, Bucky Barnes, Arnim Zola and the Falcon enjoy prominent roles in what I personally believe to be some of the finest movies Marvel Studios have produced to date.
Likewise, there’ll be a few that can fill small roles in cinematic adaptations even if they’ve given the titular hero a run for their money on various occasions in the source material. One example that springs to mind is that of Crossbones, who was played by Frank Grillo in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Having been originally introduced simply as Brock Rumlow, a sleeper agent of Hydra, in 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, he ironically saw his screentime reduced when he finally emerged as a full-blown Crossbones two years later in Civil War. And, of course, he met his demise in the opening salvo.
Still, there are True Believers out there who’d like to see one of the Sentinel of Liberty’s greatest modern foes return at some point. After all, if the comics themselves can undo deaths, then surely their cinematic brethren can, right? Funnily enough, Grillo himself offered a glimmer of hope not long ago.
Knowing that whatever someone such as him says will be scrutinized though, the actor decided to set the record straight when recently speaking with Metro:
“Look, Marvel’s awesome. I have a long-term contract with them and it’s a superhero movie, you never know. I don’t have any idea. I said that once before about two weeks ago and people jumped on that and thought I said Crossbones is back. No. That’s ridiculous. But we’ll see what happens. I’m not waiting for the phone to ring.”
In other words, a return in a future Captain America movie can’t be ruled out, but none of us should hold our breath waiting for it to happen.