For more than a decade, Scarlett Johansson has stolen scenes and kicked asses as Natasha Romanoff. Almost from her first appearance as Black Widow (in the otherwise forgettable Iron Man 2) the question of when she’d get a solo movie has hung large in the air. For four long phases of Marvel tentpoles it didn’t happen. Indeed, Natasha met her on-screen end in Avengers: Endgame before it was announced at SDCC in 2019 that ScarJo would make her final bow in the MCU in the long-awaited Black Widow standalone film. After all of that, and more than a year of pandemic delay in release, Black Widow is finally on the big screen. And dear reader, it was worth the wait.
After the global scale and literal end-of-the-world stakes of every recent release in the MCU, the Jason Bourne-esque spy games of Black Widow feel almost quaint. We catch up with Natasha at some point in 2016 — just after the events of Captain America: Civil War. She’s on the run. Wanted for violating the Sokovia accords. Truly, absolutely alone. And for the second time in her life, contemplating the seeming collapse of the makeshift family that gave her comfort among the chaos of her life.
But, her respite and reflection is not to last. As she quips to Secretary Ross en route to getting lost, she lived a lot of lives before, and one of them is about to catch up with her.
Enter Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Natasha’s one-time fake sister in a fake family planted in Ohio by the Russian government. Newly returned to control of her own mind and grasping for what to possibly do next, she sends an antidote and an old snapshot to Natasha “the only superhero person she knows.”
Yelena’s missive soon brings with it a mysterious masked warrior comes looking to recover the package at any cost, Natasha has no choice but to follow up the one lead she has and find Yelena. Reunited in the same kind of violent chaos that once separated them, Natasha and Yelena are left to grapple with the unspeakable realities that have kept them both alive. Natasha’s journey has always been shrouded in mystery. An aching, even desperate need to make amends, to wipe the red from her ledger, has always been her raison d’etre, but the how and why of her past have never been on display. Black Widow changes that.
More than an origin story or an episodic glimpse of Natasha’s life outside the Avengers, Black Widow is a meditation on family, inherited trauma and the nature of change. It swells with moments of surprising emotion, but equally delivers on crisp, readable action while Florence Pugh delivers on of the most crackling and comedic performances in the MCU. Pugh’s Belova is sharp and wry, not unlike Natasha, but with a sense of wild-eyed freedom that sometimes eclipses her world-weariness with wonderment. Meanwhile, David Harbor as Alexi, aka the aged and discarded Red Guardian (Russia’s answer to Captain America) brings a light almost Homer Simpson-esque “hero” to the roster of super folks while Rachel Weisz is left to link the past and the present in a somewhat guarded turn.
It’s all an awful lot of fun — and the perfect return to summer cinema. Grab a bucket of popcorn and say farewell to one of Marvel’s greatest.