Social media is about to get flooded with more fan theories after the final trailer for Black Widow dropped earlier today.
The film focuses on the origins of Natasha Romanoff, who must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.
Black Widow stars Scarlet Johansson in the lead role alongside Stranger Things fan fave David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov, the Russian super-soldier counterpart to Captain America, Rachel Weisz as seasoned spy Melina Vostokoff, and newcomer Florence Pugh as sister-figure Yelena Belova.
There was a lot of mystery surrounding Black Widow when the film was first announced, including the identity of its villain, Taskmaster. We’ve seen the character pop up in all the teasers and trailers, but we’re yet to find out who is behind the mask.
Fans had multiple theories, but it looks like one of the major ones has been squashed by the final trailer. In early February, Marvel dropped the new character posters for the film and revealed Weisz’s character name as Melina Vostokoff. According to Screen Rant, in the comics, Vostokoff is “a Russian agent turned assassin, known as the Iron Maiden, and who was forced to live in the shadow of Black Widow, developing a strong hatred of her.”
Despite being portrayed as the “mother figure” to Romanoff in the Black Widow teasers, fans speculated that her being behind the Taskmaster mask would be the ultimate plot twist.
Speaking of strong female Marvel leads, listen to the GOAT team breakdown Wonder Woman’s epic 80s soundtrack on It’s Been A Big Day For…below:
Fast-forward to today and it looks like that theory has been ruled out. We Got This Covered points out that one point during the promo, Romanoff, her allies and enemies are seen skydiving along with a bunch of falling debris. “One clip shows Melina piloting a helicopter during this sequence,” and during another point of the footage, “Taskmaster is battling [Romanoff] through the air at this stage, so it’s clear that Melina is not Taskmaster, after all.”
So, there you have it. Case closed on the ‘Melina is Taskmaster’ theory. But who could it be? We’ll just have to keep speculating, or wait and see when the film hits cinemas on the 30th of April.
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