Marvel movies have tried their best to deal with threats drawn from real-life scenarios wherever possible. Whether it’s Artificial Intelligence in Avengers: Age of Ultron, global surveillance in Captain America: The Winter Soldier or terrorism in Iron Man, a few of their films have echoed conflicts gripping reality. It looks like one of their upcoming Disney+ shows would’ve hit a jackpot in that sense had things continued the way they were.

Apparently, the central storyline of The Falcon And The Winter Soldier revolved around a manufactured pandemic outbreak. This would be triggered by Zemo’s motivations of implanting a chip inside everyone’s minds. This has echoes of the Mad-Bomb storyline from the comics that the Russo Brothers also wanted to pursue initially with Captain America: Civil War. The outbreak may not have exactly caused a disease or sickness similar to COVID-19 though; in the comics it turns everyone into zombies, forcing our heroes to confront people they knew in a rather odd state.

It looks like Disney ordered some rewrites of the storyline back in February in the wake of the outbreak that was then affecting China and its provinces, especially Wuhan. It’s likely Disney shares a good relationship with China and is a corporation that likes playing it safe. Accordingly, they wouldn’t want anyone taking offence over their depiction of a pandemic. That said, whether they’ve actually reworked the plot to remove all references to this is subject to question, considering most of the show was already shot until December.

The Falcon And The Winter Soldier was set to premiere on Disney+ in August 2020 but a final leg of Prague shoot got postponed earlier this month. It remains to be seen if Disney somehow managed to finish it off in a set in Atlanta, Georgia spending some extra money to CGI Prague footage in there. As of now, it’s uncertain if it will make its premiere date. Hopefully, a full-length Falcon And The Winter Soldier trailer will arrive online soon enough.