I recently rewatched Avengers Civil war and I’m blown away by the evil brilliance of Baron Zemo’s plot to tear the avengers apart. When he was captured in the end by Black Panther, Ross asked Zemo how it felt to see his plans fail so spectacularly after spending so much time and effort and Zemo had simply replied by asking him, “Did it? Chilling. I’ll lay this out. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Baron’s Zemo’s family died as a result of the collateral destruction from the Avengers vs ultron fight, and so he tells secretary ross the need for Sokovian accords, the U.N. and Avengers meet there, he bombs the meeting killing king T’Chaka wearing Bucky’s face mask and purposely gets caught on tape to get Bucky captured. Once captured he poses as the researcher to ask him the location of the other super serum enhanced kill squad to kill them, activates him to cause terror to escape, causes the already split tension on Sokovia accords to unravel into a fight between the two opposing sides. The fight leads to Rode to be near death, the rest of Avengers to be captured, captain america, bucky and iron man get lured to the Soviet nuclear bunker for the super soldier kill squad. Zemo is on the outside of the nuclear bunker, seals them in, tells Tony that Bucky killed his parents knowing captain america would protect his friend, all while being set for escape(black panther caught him). Zemo knew that he could not take on the Avengers from the outside, so as he famously said, the only way to destroy an empire is from within. At this point, Rode is critically injured, captain america and iron man are no longer a team, the Avengers are in jail, and Bucky is in cryostasis, and all this done without any powers, just pure planning.