This post contains spoilers for “Captain America: Brave New World.”

It’s no secret that “Captain America: Brave New World” was a difficult movie to make. Reshoots, rewrites, and other changes plagued the film throughout its production, and the process was so muddied that it can be hard to keep track of what was tweaked and how much of the original vision remains intact. For instance, the production had to deal with no small amount of Israeli-Palestine conflict backlash due to its inclusion of Ruth Bat-Seraph (Shira Haas), whose comic book version is the Israeli mutant superhero/Mossad agent Sabra. In the movie, the character’s nationality remains, but she’s reimagined as a Black Widow who now works for President Thaddeus Ross’ (Harrison Ford) government, and there’s no official word on whether this was the plan all along or a late-game reaction to the outcry. 

There’s also the fact that some of the apparently obvious changes were actually on the table all along. The prominence and Red Hulk transformation of President Ross may seem like something that found its way in the film after original Ross actor William Hurt died in 2022 and Ford took over. However, those plans were already in place before Hurt passed away, and Ford took the role without even reading the script. Likewise, the movie’s grounded mercenary group approach to the Serpent Society — which one might assume was a hasty redesign after someone realized how absurd the characters’ comic book costumes are — was always in the plans, even though their role diminished along the way (more on that soon).  

You get the idea: Things were messy. To make sense of it all (or at least as much as possible), here’s a look at the actors and moments cut from “Captain America: Brave New World.” 

One notable omission from the movie is WWE star Seth Rollins (real name Colby Lopez), who originally played an unspecified character in “Brave New World.” The size and importance of the wrestler’s role in the film is unclear, and may very well remain so. Before the movie premiered, Rollins confirmed in an interview with Chris Van Vliet that he definitely won’t appear in it:

“I will unequivocally say I am not in the film. I don’t want those people to waste their time, and I don’t want to misinform anybody. […] They ended up going in a different direction with it. Marvel knows they’ve got a finished product that hopefully they’re happy with, and hopefully it’s successful. But [Brave New World] will be sans Seth Rollins. Marvel does a great job, it should be a good one.”

Rollins didn’t want to elaborate on what his role in the film would have been, but judging by the finished product and the other cuts from the movie, he was almost certainly a member of the Serpent Society — possibly appearing during a version of the Mexico recovery mission, or in some completely different confrontation that didn’t make it in the film. 

Another recognizable name who never turns up in “Captain America: Brave New World” is Rosa Salazar, who was originally set to appear in the film as Rachel Leighton, who uses the code name Diamondback. As the name implies, the comics version of Leighton is a member of the Serpent Society. A femme fatale figure with a dark past, she has a tendency to switch sides and is known to happily work with the protagonists on occasion.

Diamondback would have been an interesting “Brave New World” character. Due to a blood transfusion from Steve Rogers, she has his powers in the comics. This would have made her a fascinating foil to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who often questioned his decision to not take the super soldier serum in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” The comics version of Diamondback also has a romantic history with (the Rogers version of) Captain America, which suggests that she might even have been a potential love interest for Sam.   

This character’s comic book backstory and the fact that a comparatively major name like Salazar was cast as Diamondback suggest that her planned role was quite substantial. The fact that she was cut from the movie entirely is a sign of how massively the movie changed along the way. It also shows how much the Serpent Society’s role seems to have diminished. The only truly prominent Serpent-adjacent figure in the finished film is Giancarlo Esposito’s Sidewinder. Esposito joined the project in the spring of 2024 and filmed his scenes during that summer’s extensive reshoots, so whatever scenes Salazar (and possibly Rollins) had in the film have likely either been discarded entirely or reworked to fit Sidewinder.

There were rumors that “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” star Logan Kim would make an appearance in “Captain America: Brave New World.” According to noted scooper Daniel Richtman, Kim’s character would have been none other than Amadeus Cho, the young Korean-American supergenius who’s among the most prominent newer Marvel Comics characters. 

Cho’s appearance in the movie would have made sense since the character’s superhero identity is a Hulk — the slick Totally Awesome Hulk, to be exact. After all, since the main Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany), Red Hulk (Harrison Ford), and even Hulk’s son Skaar (Wil Deusner) are already in the MCU, why not introduce the next gamma-radiated powerhouse in line? 

Then again, it’s hard to see a version of “Brave New World” where Cho would have played a particularly major role. There’s every chance that his Richtman-reported cameo was cut for storytelling purposes … or perhaps just to avoid confusing the audience, seeing as an animated version of Amadeus Cho (voiced by Aleks Le) currently appears as a recurring character on the 2025 Disney+ show “Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.”

The introduction of the Korean war-era “secret Captain America” Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) and his absurdly tragic backstory is arguably the most pivotal moment of “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” “Captain America: Brave New World” continues to heap abuse on poor Isaiah when Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) brainwashes him into attempting to assassinate President Ross, “The Manchurian Candidate”-style. However, the movie explicitly does not feature the bright future of his family — Isaiah’s grandson, Eli Bradley (Elijah Richardson).  

Though Eli is a fairly minor supporting character on “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” Marvel fans should recognize the character’s potential. In the comics, Eli becomes a Captain America-style superhero called Patriot to honor Isaiah’s work, and eventually becomes one of the leaders of the Young Avengers. Since the MCU has introduced multiple live-action versions of Young Avengers members in recent years, it would have been logical to keep Eli in the mix for “Brave New World” to allow his story to progress. This was indeed the plan at one point, but producer Nate Moore confirmed in an interview with Screen Rant that Eli ultimately fell victim to script revisions:  

“There are early drafts of the script where Eli was in it, but we started to feel like there were too many characters to track and we want to make sure if a character is in the film, they have something to do. And so we had to make the tough decision to just explore Isaiah and to see how Isaiah being pulled into Sam’s world maybe affects him. We also wanted Sam and Isaiah. We wanted room to build up their relationship without a third party kind of commenting on it.”

Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Sterns is the true (if somewhat tragic) villain of “Captain America: Brave New World.” The character’s first MCU appearance since 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk” reveals that he’s spent the intervening years as Thaddeus Ross’ prisoner, and Sterns has been forced to use his gamma-enhanced intellect to benefit the general-turned-President. Unsurprisingly, the superpowered genius with lots of time on his hands eventually turns the tables, and Sterns hatches a long-gestating plan to tear down Ross’ legacy by destroying his international reputation and turning him into the thing he hates the most: A Hulk. 

Whether this was always the case is another matter. While there’s no word on what Sterns’ original storyline was, it certainly went through considerable changes. In fact, Nelson told The Hollywood Reporter in September 2024 that he effectively filmed his scenes two times: 

“I’ve shot it. I’ve actually shot it twice because I did it originally a year ago, and then we came back and redid a lot of it at the beginning of it this summer.”

One reason for such massive reshoots may be the character’s design, which seems to have changed significantly along the way. Judging by his Funko Pops figure, Sterns’ original design was considerably more streamlined than his haggard final appearance, with a full head of hair and a neat little goatee to complete the look. The drastic change from a slick and well-groomed villain to a malformed man who spent many tormented years as a prisoner (and looks like it) indicates there’s more behind this than a simple aesthetic decision. In fact, it smells like a significant late-game change to the character’s story arc. 

In March 2023, set photos of what looked an awful lot like Thaddeus Ross’ funeral emerged. In these images, we see Sam Wilson, Ruth Bat-Seraph, Liv Tyler’s Betty Ross, and Xosha Roquemore’s Leila Taylor dressed in black at a cemetery. Since the only character in the film that connects this particular quartet is President Ross and the man himself is entirely absent from the picture, it really seems that there’s only one reason they might be there — and since Sam’s arm is clearly injured and he’s therefore likely temporarily out of flying action, it seems that the scene was intended to take place near the end of the film. 

In the finished movie, Ross survives his Red Hulk transformation and voluntarily steps out of the White House, ending the movie as a prisoner of the Raft — the same facility where he locked so many superheroes in the past. However, the 2023 photos strongly suggest that his original fate was far darker, and he doesn’t survive to see the end of the film.

Trailers almost always lie in some form or another, and as anyone who remembers the two conspicuously missing Spider-Men in the “Spider-Man: No Way Home” trailers, this very much applies to the MCU. Because of this, it’s not too surprising that the official trailer for “Captain America: Brave New World” also contains its share of red herrings. A notable one comes right in the beginning, when Isaiah Bradley seems to be begging a skeptical Sam Wilson for help during their prison meeting. In the actual movie, of course, the situation is completely flipped. Isaiah didn’t summon Sam to meet him, and is in fact largely resigned to his destiny as a perpetually imprisoned scapegoat and forbids Sam from tarnishing his shield by trying to help him. Later on, the aforementioned funeral sequence also appears in the trailer, looking gorgeous enough to suggest that it was once extremely close to making it in the finished film.

Sure, slight misdirection is par for the course if the trailer doesn’t want to spoil too much. Still, the amount of attention this particular one gives to the funeral that never came is somewhat jarring. The same can be said about this version of Sam’s meeting with Isaiah, which paints both men as a far colder characters than the complex but caring figures they are in the movie proper. “Captain America: Brave New World” betrays Isaiah Bradley in many ways, and it’s sad to see that the trailer does the same thing.

This isn’t a character or moment per se, but in a way, it’s much more, because it affects the film’s entire theme. Fortunately, however, this is one change that was for the better.

As fans who have been keeping up with the troubled production know, the original title was “Captain America: New World Order,” but in June 2023, the title of “Captain America 4” was unceremoniously changed to “Captain America: Brave New World.” While some of the changes in “Brave New World” are and will likely remain shrouded in mystery, this one has a very easy explanation. “New World Order” is a term that’s historically connected to antisemitic conspiracy theories about a secret plan to form a governing body that rules the entire world, and if the people responsible for the original title were unaware of this fact before, others both within the company and outside it were happy to educate them. Here’s what Nate Moore told Empire (via Coming Soon) about the name change in December 2024: 

“I think ‘New World Order’ was a title we thought was really interesting and sort of moody and scary. Some of the feedback we got, internally and externally, was that that phrase has, unfortunately, been co-opted in the real world in a way that made people uncomfortable.”

“Captain America: Brave New World” is now in theaters.