Ever since the MCU became a thing in 2008, Marvel has managed to tell a bunch of good-to-great stories for its main roster of heroes. Well, except for Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow and the only female Avenger on the team.
Since being introduced in Iron Man 2 in a very male-gazey fashion, Natasha Romanoff has consistently been short-changed when it comes to meaningful character or narrative arcs. In fact, she’s predominantly been sticking around to merely serve the stories of Marvel’s male heroes.
Sure there have been sprinklings of character moments, reveals and quips, but those are fall far short of what we would expect for one of the top Avengers in terms of longevity, screen time and importance.
In the Captain America movies, Black Widow has mainly been there as extra muscle and a shoulder to lean on for Steve Rogers. The Avengers movies are mainly about the greater threat at hand mixed in with bouts of conflict between the other male heroes, leaving little room for anything else, let alone something resembling a Natasha Romanoff character arc.
Even when Marvel tried to give her something of a deeper story in Age of Ultron, it ended up as a half-baked love story that not only existed to serve Bruce Banner’s arc, but it also grossly insinuated that Natasha is a monster because she’s sterile rather than the awful things she’s done as a superspy.
Hell, even Endgame managed to drop the ball for Black Widow despite giving her a massively increased presence in the film. While her valiant sacrifice is noble, her death comes well before any of the other main Avengers and it ultimately ends up serving as motivation for the remaining heroes against Thanos – an example of the troubling female character fridging trope if there ever was one.
By the film’s conclusion, Tony Stark ends up taking all the remembrance spotlight and the name Natasha Romanoff is all but forgotten.
And this brings us to Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff’s long-awaited solo film that’s come after the character has technically died in the MCU.
Some might see this as nothing more than a cash grab that also doubles as a belated remedy to the lacklustre treatment Natasha Romanoff has received in the MCU so far. That may or may not be true, but let’s also look at it this way: this will be first film where Black Widow’s story will be her own and not in service of other dudes.
After so many one-liners, references and vague flashbacks to her background and previous spy life, Black Widow finally pulls the curtain back on Natasha Romanoff’s life.
We see characters from her past, a fleshing out of her history and it seems like things will actually revolve around her rather than the other way around. You’d expect that from a movie titled Black Widow but it’s best to be a little cautious given Marvel’s history with its female characters.
Whether or not all those pieces present in Black Widow will result in the rich story Natasha Romanoff deserves remains to be seen, but the signs look (mostly) promising.
We’ll find out soon enough come May 2020, but hey, it’s better late than never from Marvel to finally acknowledge one of its longest serving heroes.
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