Does Red Skull die at the end of Captain America?

Question

At the end of Captain America: The First Avenger (directed by Joe Johnston with Chris Evans in the titular role) you see Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) holding the Cosmic Cube after being hit by Captain America's shield. This causes the Cube to start glowing and Red Skull seems to dissolve into white light.

Does he die or was he merely transported to some distant place so he can return in another movie?

Answer 1

Red Skull thought extremely highly of himself, and viewed himself as an equal to the gods, who he viewed himself as walking in the footsteps of. The special effects we see when Red Skull holds the cube show the cosmos, followed by Red Skull dissolving into a beam of energy that shoots into the cosmos. These were very similar to the effects used when Asgardians used the Bifrost Bridge (the Rainbow Bridge) in Thor. So this scene is implying that the Red Skull got his wish, and he's now walking with the gods on Asgard, or one of the other 9 realms.

The ending of The Avengers provides partial confirmation, as

Loki and Thor use the Tessaract (the new name of the cube) to return to Asgard, showing that the Tessaract explicitly has the ability to transport people to the other realms.

Answer 2

Red Skull does not die at the end of Captain America. The Cosmic Cube transported him to Asgard.

_{There, he did a short stint attempting a hostile take-over. He was chagrinned to discover that compared to the Norse gods his powers were rather feckless and his tyranny was quickly ended. He then opened an ice cream shop which he called “Bifrostees”. Unfortunately for RS, due to anti-frost giant sentiments Asgardians are not fans of ice cream. His business venture was officially ended when Thor destroyed the Bifrost and the name “Bifrostees” was considered distasteful.}

Answer 3

If you pay attention the cube opens up a worm hole right there in the ship and a beam of light transports Red Skull the same way as the Bifrost works. If you pay enough attention in Thor you see that that's the way they teleport. And in the Avengers when Loki transports to Earth he uses the Tesseract. So indeed Red Skull got transported away to some distant realm by the Tesseract. Who knows he may have died there but he didn't die in the movie. I'm more curious if Marvel Studios brings him back at one point or another. And really I doubt he's on Asgard. As vile as he is the Asgardians would have either killed him or shipped him off somewhere lonely and dark.

Answer 4

Technically the Cosmic Cube isn't even supposed to be an Asgardian artifact.

Anyone who has read the comics would know that Asgardians, along with Earths myriad other godly pantheons, are very very low on the Cosmic Hierarchy.

Answer 5

It's very possible he was transported to a different realm, although unless he aquires some sort of new power he likely won't return as an enemy of Thor as he is next to nothing compared to Him. He may wind up on a team of supervillans, but considering Thor could annihilate RS with next to no effort i doubt he'll be back anytime soon.

Of course he may have just died in a very unusual way lol

Answer 6

Nobody knows. At the end of The Avengers, Thanos from the Silver Surfer series is shown saying that he will get revenge on Captain America and the Avengers. He should be in Avengers 2.