The trailer for Black Widow has arrived, giving us a first look at Natasha Romanoff's standalone Marvel movie. Scarlett Johansson reprises her role as Natasha once more, but as fans know, she came to a rather unfortunate (and emphatically final) demise in Avengers: Endgame. The new movie is set after the events of Captain America: Civil War, meaning Natasha is still alive, but there's more to the Black Widow codename than just one person. The history of Black Widow over in Marvel's comics is full of weird loopholes, clones, and top-secret spy training programs, giving us all kinds of wiggle room when it comes to figuring out when and how the Black Widows who aren't Natasha Romanoff might come into play. Most notable among them is Yelena Belova, the Black Widow played by Florence Pugh, who features prominently in the new trailer.
But knowing that Yelena is on her way to the big screen is only one part of the equation. To really understand the ins and outs of who she is, why she matters, and where the other Black Widows fit into this mess, we need to do some serious digging--starting with the organization behind it all: the Red Room.
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Introduced in 1964, Natasha's early years as the Black Widow were largely playing on the era-typical Russian femme fatale tropes you'd see in something like Rocky & Bullwinkle. She was a regular antagonist against various Avengers who eventually broke out into a series of her own, sliding back and forth between antagonist and anti-hero roles as she became more popular. Development of her history and origins was slow-going and typically banked on Cold War-era stereotypes that Russians were scary and dangerous and, of course, mysteriously sexy, without much real substance to speak of. Things slowly started to change as the Cold War came to an end in the real world, opening the door for a more thorough exploration of just who Natasha was and where she came from.
In 1999, Natasha's origin was given a complete overhaul, introducing the concept of the "Black Widow Ops Program" that was later explored through the Red Room, an idea that would not only retroactively reshape Black Widow as a character in the Marvel universe, but open all sorts of interesting narrative avenues for writers and artists to travel down that were only tangential to Natasha herself. After all, if there was a whole program to train Black Widow agents, it obviously follows that Natasha wasn't the only one.
The organization responsible for the Black Widow Ops Program was called The Red Room, which was both a literal place and sort of covert secret society. It was one part "boarding school" spy academy for children, where they'd be taught things like ballet (remember those flashbacks in Avengers: Age of Ultron?) martial arts, and murder; and one part Illuminati-flavored web of secret basis and soviet-era secrecy that spanned the globe for whatever nefarious super villain purposes Marvel Comics needed. It continued to grow and evolve over the years, with each change affecting any number of retroactive updates to Marvel history for those aforementioned nefarious purposes.
For example, when Bucky Barnes was resurrected as the Winter Soldier, the Red Room was responsible for his revival and subsequent brainwashing. A male version of the Black Widow Ops program was added to the mix called the Wolfspider Program, which Bucky participated in as a trainer. Later it was revealed that the Red Room had also engineered a cloning program of its operatives, secretly creating duplicate bodies for people like Natasha, which could have the memories and consciousness of operatives uploaded as a sort of "extra life" should things go south.
Because, sure, we may be talking about gritty, neo-noir spy stuff here, but let's not forget these are still superhero comics.
No, really, that was their one key difference at first. Their abilities and skillsets were, by design, completely identical.
Yelena's story wasn't all that complicated. She debuted in 1999 right alongside the Red Room reveal, so her initial story was pretty barebones. She was activated, told that she was the rightful heir to the Black Window title, and sent after Natasha when she volunteered for a mission that would allow her to prove it. The Black Widow vs. Black Widow fight got a little dicey, but ultimately Natasha was able to grab the upper hand and brutally shatter Yelena's delusions about her abilities and her claim to the mantle. For her part, Yelena took the defeat pretty well and retired for a while to become a model. You know, like all super spies do at one point or another.
Things didn't stay simple for Yelena for long. After her retirement and subsequent return to action, she spent some time as the Super Adaptoid, a deeper-cut Marvel villain. This was the result of being captured and experimented on by Hydra (who, important to note, are independent from the Red Room in the comics, though their MCU incarnations tend to blur those lines).
Yelena's stint as the Adaptoid came to an end after she was rescued by the Avengers, but she never quite rose to prominence or joined any major teams. With her inferiority complex with Natasha mostly overcome, Yelena's role in modern comics is to pop up by surprise whenever things start getting complicated for Nat--not as an opportunistic thorn in anyone's side, but as a sort of chaotic-neutral force who wants to make sure the Black Widow legacy is maintained. To do so, both Natasha and Yelena have a tendency to impersonate one another when the situation calls for it--because why not, right? There aren't many people in the Marvel universe who share the exact same skillset and almost the exact same history, so the two of them have an advantage when pulling that sort of stunt, no matter what their goals may be.
During Marvel's SDCC 2019 panel, fans got to watch a full trailer for the Black Widow movie, which featured a pretty extensive (and extremely brutal) fight scene between Nat and Yelena. They called one another "sister" before reaching a stalemate, sitting down, and sharing a shot of vodka. So, we can obviously surmise that, no matter what revelations and changes might be on the way for their published history, the fact that they're the products of the exact same system is going to remain the same.
Knowing what we know about Natasha's Endgame finale, it might even be a safe bet to assume that the Black Widow movie will position Yelena as her de facto successor and a hero in her own right. Yelena's comic book history might be shady and strange, but there's nothing that says the MCU can't play a little fast and loose with the details--and, knowing what we know about Natasha's Endgame demise, the MCU may have a job opening that Yelena is uniquely suited to fill.