Sabra's planned inclusion in Captain America: Brave New World has been incredibly controversial from the start.
The comic book version of the hero is an agent for Israel's secret service, the Mossad. However, with real-world tensions high due to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many have argued Marvel Studios should have left the character on the page.
Instead, the decision was made to make a series of sweeping changes to the MCU's Ruth Bat-Seraph (played by Emmy nominee Shira Haas). Those have now been outlined by Captain America: Brave New World producer Nate Moore in an interview with The National.
"She’s Israeli, but she’s not Mossad. Now she works in the U.S. government," Moore confirmed. "What we thought was interesting was a lot of the characters in the film revolve around President Thaddeus Ross [Harrison Ford]. Ruth works within the government under Ross, so her perspective on that character and Sam’s perspective sort of put them on a collision course."
"She’s first-generation Israeli, but she works within the U.S. government," he added before elaborating on how Marvel Studios approached bringing Sabra to live-action. "We try to take the essence of a character but reinterpret it in a way that we find interesting."
"When we made the ‘Black Widow’ movie, we realized there was an opportunity to connect that mythology to characters that we thought were interesting and maybe didn’t want to translate as one-to-one from publishing," Moore continued. "The Ruth Bat-Seraph you meet in the film has very much, I would argue, the attitude of the character from publishing, but the backstory is different."
"She’s no longer a mutant. She’s a part of the red room [from ‘Black Widow’]," he noted. "You want to make the best version of a character – be honest to the roots of the character without not necessarily doing what publishing did. We weren’t about to put her in a feather boa and have her throw diamond earrings at people [such as in the comic books] but we did like the attitude of the character."
In a rare moment of unity, those on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have expressed anger over Sabra's MCU debut. However, when it was first revealed that she'd been reimagined as a U.S. operative, Marvel Studios was accused of removing her Israeli identity, making her inclusion something of a lose/lose situation for the studio.
While Sabra has clearly been reimagined for the MCU, it seems likely she'll be a one-and-done character unless fans really embrace her and push for more after watching Captain America: Brave New World. And the movie may have bigger problems than Ruth Bat-Seraph when all is said and done.
In Captain America: Brave New World, after meeting with newly elected U.S. President Thaddeus Ross, played by Harrison Ford in his Marvel Cinematic Universe debut, Sam Wilson finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must discover the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red.
Captain America: Brave New World opens in U.S. theaters on February 14, 2025.