Ever since 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger fans have been left wondering what happened to The Red Skull and where, when or if he will make his return. At the end of that film (spoiler alert), Red Skull is seemingly vanquished by the tesseract but things may not be that simple.
In 2016's Captain America: Civil War we are introduced to a character by the name of Everett K. Ross, played by Martin Freeman. A quick google search will tell you that this character is a supporting role in the Black Panther mythos. More interestingly, Ross is an employee of the U.S State Department. This is something that we'll come back to in a little while.
In the MCU, much of the Captain America sequels is based around the “Winter Soldier” storyline written by Ed Brubaker in 2005. However one of the main characters of this arc has been largely absent from the MCU, Alexander Lukin. In Brubaker's story, Lukin is the one who defrosts The Winter Soldier in the modern era and uses him as a pawn in his quest for power. Lukin is obsessed with obtaining the cosmic cube and using it reshape the world into his making. This brings him into conflict with The Red Skull, who is also chasing the cosmic cube. This comes to a head when Lukin has The Winter Soldier seemingly assassinate the Red Skull. This is described better by the Wikipedia page:
“...the Red Skull finally recovers the Cosmic Cube, only to be assassinated by the Winter Soldier on Lukin's orders. However, the Red Skull used the Cube to transfer his mind right before death into Lukin's body, leaving the two men stuck together "like rats in a cage"...”
So basically The Red Skull finally finds the cosmic cube only to be killed while the cube is in his hands. Sound familiar? Red Skull uses the cube to transfer his consciousness into Alexander Lukin's body so both of their minds exist within the same body. Now, in the MCU, The Red Skull was, similarly, seemingly killed whilst holding the cosmic cube. But what if he was able to transfer himself somewhere else? This is where Everret Ross comes in. What if, somehow, Red Skull's mind was able to end up inside Everret Ross? Now this is where I get a bit shaky because I still can't connect the dots as to how this would happen. From what we've been told so far, the tesseract/cosmic cube is the space stone and not the mind stone or the time stone. So I have no clue how to explain the transfer of consciousness across time! But I do know that there is a precedent for The Red Skull trying to influence the policies of the US government.
In the 2003 Avengers story “Red Zone” written by Geoff Johns, Red Skull has been able to gain office as the US Secretary of Defence using the disguise and pseudonym of “Dell Rusk”. Now what if the MCU loosely adapts this storyline mashed up with the Alexander Lukin storyline, wherein Everett Ross is being manipulated by the consciousness of Red Skull into swaying the policies of the US government. This could end up in a very cool reveal where we see Everret Ross having a conversation with The Red Skull who exists only in Ross's mind (akin to the Loki scene at the end of Thor). It would also provide a little explanation to that strange scene between Everett Ross and a captured Zemo in Civil War. It seemed to me like they wanted us to think that Ross was hiding something in that scene and this is just a crazy theory that I came up with that I thought might provide an explanation. It's also interesting to think that (spoiler alert) Captain America ends up in Wakanda at the end of Civil War. We already know that Everret Ross will show up in Black Panther's solo movie as a supporting character (as in the comics) but could it be the Red Skull's obsession with Captain America which is the driving force for Ross travelling to Wakanda and becoming involved in T'Challa's life?
Admittedly, I do not have the kinks worked out. I already mentioned that I have no idea how the mind of The Red Skull would end up in the body of a regular guy in 2016! I'm sure there's a hundred other things which don't make sense about this theory, but I look forward to hearing all about it in the comments section. If you have any ideas about how this could actually work, make sure to help me out!