Given that we all know what happened to Natasha Romanoff in Avengers: Endgame, and (SPOILER ALERT)
nothing happens in the Black Widow movie that changes that fate, Black Widow is just as it was presented: a solo story taking place between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. It’s sort of like Marvel’s version of Rogue One: a side story that fills in the existing background but doesn’t actually change the timeline. Which is kind of interesting for the Marvel Cinematic Universe given that they’ve created a whole machine out of having a series of stories that add on to each other one by one, although ultimately the after-credits scene of this movie does do that.
One thing about Black Widow is that she has something in common with Hawkeye, which may be why they were such close partners. Both Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner have natural charisma (Johansson’s being more obvious than Renner’s) but neither Black Widow or Hawkeye really seeks the spotlight the way Tony Stark does, or naturally attracts it like Steve Rogers does. Both of them are sort of like the super-world’s version of Jason Bourne: basically human operatives who just perform at a higher level than everybody else and whose general behavior is just ‘do the mission and move on.’ So even though there are movies like Jojo Rabbit where Johansson dominates the scene without being the lead character, Black Widow has usually been a support character in other heroes’ movies, and that seems to be the case even in her own film.
Here, Natasha, on the run after helping Captain America escape from General Ross, gets hunted by a masked super-agent who seems to have all the Avengers’ combat skills, and then is contacted by her “little sister” Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) who has broken her own conditioning and needs Natasha’s help to liberate a whole host of widows that the director of the “Red Room” kept kidnapping and brainwashing even after the fall of the Soviet Union. To do this they decide they need the help of their foster parents who raised them in a Soviet sleeper cell in Ohio, senior Widow Melina (Rachel Weisz) and ex-superhero “Red Guardian,” (David Harbour) who nearly steals the movie.
I agree with the one Pajiba reviewer who said that Black Widow is kinda like ordering a meal at a Michelin restaurant and taking it home in a doggie bag: the ingredients and preparation are first class, but the result tasted like reheated leftovers. I think this is actually because it’s “out of order” in the chronology. It’s clear that Yelena is being set up to take Natasha’s role, but nobody in the setting knows that yet, of course. Pugh has a good acting scene at the family reunion dinner but otherwise we don’t get much insight into her character. The whole movie is basically a blow-shit-up fest, although it is pretty good at that. But the fact that there is a real resolution to some critical aspects of Natasha’s past just makes it that much more of a bummer that she died.
My friend Don pointed out there’s really no reason they can’t bring Natasha back. I mean, Thanos sacrificed Gamora to get the original Soul Stone in Infinity War, and in the next film the Guardians of the Galaxy encountered the alternate-past Gamora before the final battle and are currently chasing her into a yet-to-be-released movie. Maybe Johansson, like Chris Evans, just decided it was time to move on. Or maybe Johansson, as an executive producer on this movie, got sick of Marvel Studios yanking her chain with delaying the release date several times. Which considering this movie’s female empowerment theme would be a bit ironic.
Which gets to that after-credits scene. Confirming that Florence Pugh’s character is supposed to be taking the place of Johansson in the MCU, Yelena goes to visit a gravestone someone placed for Natasha and is visited by Julia-Louis Dreyfus’ character, who seems to know her already. Fans of course know that Louis-Dreyfus previously appeared in Disney Plus’ The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as the mysterious benefactor of John Walker after he disgraced himself, eventually giving him new equipment under the ID of “the USAgent”. So clearly she’s being presented as this sort of anti-Nick Fury who is assembling her own group of operatives for a sinister project. Personally I’m thinking that “the Contessa” is an alias and this is really just Selina Meyer plotting her revenge against the Washington DC establishment for that one election she lost.