Earlier this week Marvel announced that Martin Freeman would be joining his Sherlock and Hobbit co-star Benedict Cumberbatch in the brotherhood of Marvel movie stars. There are no plans yet for the two to share screen time; Freeman will appear in Captain America: Civil War in May 2016, and Cumberbatch, as far as we know, won’t make his Marvel debut until he plays the title role of Doctor Strange in November later that year. But a new rumor indicates that Freeman’s role might extend well beyond Civil War, and, if that’s the case, he could wind up paired with pretty much anyone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (M.C.U.).
Though Marvel has yet to officially announce Freeman’s role, odds are his role in the third Captain America film will be fairly small. The cast is already overcrowded with Avengers like Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Robert Downey Jr., Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Don Cheadle squaring off against each other. (Hence, “Civil War.”) Sebastian Stan is slated to return as the Winter Soldier seen in the last Cap adventure, Emily VanCamp will reprise her role from that film as well, and both Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther and an as-yet uncast new Spider-Man are scheduled to make their M.C.U. debuts. Marvel just confirmed Paul Rudd’s Ant-Man will make an appearance and, strangest of all, William Hurt will reprise his role from 2008’s The Incredible Hulk. (That movie, confusingly, starred Edward Norton, not Mark Ruffalo, as Bruce Banner, so many people forget it’s actually part of the current M.C.U.) So where, exactly, could Martin fit in to all this?
Rumor has it, Freeman will play “an interrogator” and U.S. government agent assigned to the fictional African nation of Wakanda. Wakanda was name-dropped several times in Avengers: Age of Ultron; it’s where you find Vibranium and Andy Serkis’s Ulysses Klaw. It’s also the home, in the comics, to T’challa, a.k.a. Black Panther. Given the description of Freeman’s character, most comic-book aficionados have decided he’ll be playing a fairly obscure character called Everett Ross. And based on what we know of Ross’s arc in the comic books, it’s very likely Freeman will start off as his usual bumbling, charming self in Captain America: Civil War, before turning bad and joining forces with Klaw in Black Panther.
That kind of subversion of expectations is exactly what made Freeman’s portrayal in the first season of FX’s Fargo so compelling, so it’s reasonable to hope for that same kind of comic-relief-turned-villain arc in Freeman’s Marvel role. If that’s the case, it’s unlikely that Freeman’s U.S. government agent in Wakanda will have any cause to cross paths with Cumberbatch’s Sorcerer Supreme. But if, as some are speculating, Freeman doesn’t go full villain and becomes the new Agent Coulson instead, then, well, a blissful Cumberbatch/Freeman partnership could be Marvel’s next big bromance. Stranger things have happened.
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