What Does The Ending Of Captain America: Civil War Really Mean?

What Was Zemo's Real Plan?

In many ways, the only character who "wins" in any quantifiable way is Helmut Zemo. But what exactly was he trying to achieve?

OK, so Zemo was a former member of the Sokovian military who lived outside of the country's main city. During Age Of Ultron's finale, his wife, daughter and father were killed, something he blames on The Avengers and their flagrant ignorance of collateral damage. Over the next year he uses the S.H.I.E.L.D. documents released by Black Widow at the end of The Winter Soldier to plot his revenge.

His goal is to tear The Avengers apart, which amounts to pitching Captain America against Iron Man. To do this, he takes advantage of the emergent paranoia around the Sokovia Accords to frame Bucky for the bombing of the US Embassy, drawing the former Winter Soldier out of hiding and activating him, in turn getting him to lead Captain America to the Russian HYDRA base using the insignificant other super soldiers as a cover.

Before heading out there for the final stage of his plan, he reveals his previous cover as the UN interrogator, convincing Iron Man he too was wrong and sending him after Cap. Once the three are together, he reveals Bucky killed Tony's parents and hopes the trio will kill each other while he gets a quiet moment of clarity before killing himself.

However, as he believes he's won despite not succeeding in the final two points of his plan - Steve stops himself before delivering a killing blow to Tony and Black Panther stops his suicide attempt - it appears those weren't the main focus, but additional goals. By the end he's already pushed the Sokovia Accords debate long enough to split the team regardless; he revealed his hand just late enough that the damage had already been done. What he really wanted was to avenge his family by dividing their "killers", a motivation not dissimilar to the emotions later powering Cap and Iron Man.