Black Widow : Full Recap, Breakdown and SPOILER Theories
Welcome back to HLS Entertainment! Today we are going to be discussing the long, LONG, awaited Black Widow film. After being introduced in the third Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Ironman 2 in 2010, this Avenger has waited too long for her on solo film. This movie was supposed to kick off the MCU's phase four back in May of 2020 but was pushed back. The MCU had planned to take a mini hiatus between July 2019 to May 2020, like they have done so previously after each phase ended. Then Covid-19 happened, and Black Widow was pushed back all year until it landed on July 9th 2021. A full two years and change since Spider-Man Far From Home. Well the film is finally here and it was worth the wait, but still long overdue.
I want to do a quick shout out if you have NOT seen Black Widow yet do not move on to the next paragraph as this recap and breakdown will be DEEPLY SPOILER filled. BUT here is a Black Widow preview I did in June detailing all of the characters and locations to expect, with plenty of fun theories. This blog will also have spoilers for WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. As a mini spoiler free review, I thought this movie was action packed and the funniest spy espionage movie I have seen in a long time. As always just a reminder this is not an Easter egg break down, that is not what I do, this is a breakdown of the full movie and talking about what that means story wise going forward in the MCU. Do not forget to follow me on Twitter @HaroldLStokes and hit me up with what you thought of the movie! On to the breakdown!
Movie opens in 1995 Ohio as the camera shows young Natasha riding her bike, and then being silly with young Yelena. If you are a fan of "The Americans" a show that aired on FX this family dynamic screams that show, and it is great. We see Melina putting dinner on the table as Alexei gets home assumingly from work. We barely get a glimpse at it but I believe he is wearing a S.H.I.E.L.D. or FBI badge and we find out he stole a file and tells Melina it is time to go. Surprisingly to later in the film, Melina is the one who says she does not want to go initially.
We find out that what was stolen is all the remaining research from the Hydra experiments that were going to be used in the Winter Soldier program. As they quickly flee their home we get a few glimpses of pure 'Americana'. An American flag made of lights on a bridge while driving past fast food restaurants (including Hardees and McDonald's) and a high school football game, this is all topped off by young Yelena's favorite song Don McLean's "American Pie".
As they arrive to this hidden airfield and get the plane ready to fly, we get our first glimpse of Alexei's strength as he is the first and only Russian super soldier. S.H.I.E.L.D. arrives and Alexei has a shootout with them as the plane gains speed until he runs to catch it. In the shootout Melina gets shot and young Natasha is forced to take over flying them out of there.
Just a brilliant open that is not over yet, my one "issue" is the missed opportunity to bring back Clark Gregg in a younger Coulson S.H.I.E.L.D. agent cameo. That could have been incredible.
After landing in Cuba the wounded Melina is attended to by soldiers and taken away on a stretcher. Six year old Yelena is upset and runs to Alexei for comfort but is grabbed by a soldier. Natasha immediately frees her from the soldier and steals his sidearm showing off how she has already begun her training. Natasha is threatening to kill everyone as she is visibly upset as it dawns on us why, she does not want young Yelena to have to go through what she already has in the gruesome training in the Red Room.
We get a really sweet moment and great acting from David Harbor as he gives them a little talk calling his girls the toughest girls in entire world. This sweet moment is cut short by Yelena and Natasha being injected with a syringe knocking them out. We hear Dreykov ask about Natasha as he is impressed by her fire. Something I wanted this movie to do but can easily be brought back later, is Alexei picks up Yelena's toy she dropped, we easily can have a tender moment between the pair in the future of him still having the toy. This is where we get a rare title sequence from Marvel Studios as we see the horrors of the child trafficking that is taking place, and the young girls training in the Red Room.
We get a twenty-one years later jump with Natasha in a bathroom washing off in a sink as she watches Ross and his SWAT team storm the building. Natasha calls him telling him he is embarassing himself, prodding him with the question asking if this is his second triple bypass as Ross does look sickly and ill here. We get the cool reveal that she is not even there she is across the globe in Norway.
I singled this out because of the mention of Ross' health issues. This is not the first mention of this as he tells the group of Avengers in Captain America Civil War that he had a heart attack playing golf. We know Ross has been obsessed with the super soldier serum and something tells me he might just find something in the wreckage of the Red Room at the end of the film. General "Thunderbolt" Ross becomes Red Hulk in the comics, what if he tries to use it on himself due to his health issues continuing to get worse.
Two characters in this movie could be set up in this new phase as our new "Coulson and Fury", Ross is the first we will get to the second later. I kind of see Ross as our new Coulson dealing with heroes or villains directly talking to them or hunting them down as we saw Coulson do in phase one.
Cut to Yelena on mission. We see that she is the leader of this Widow team as they are trying to take out someone. Their mark makes them and Yelena goes in on foot to chase her down. A brief fight in the street is concluded with Yelena brutally slicing open the woman's stomach, as she flips over her body the woman sprays her with some red vial. As the red gas dissipates we see Yelena's expression change completely as she is released from the mind control. Yelena cuts a tracker out of her leg and takes the box filled with the vials as the dying woman tells her to free the others. This is when we get our first mention of Taskmaster as one of the Widows asks for the activation of the Taskmaster protocol.
We see Natasha in Norway getting supplies and then drive to a trailer in the middle of nowhere. Inside the trailer we are introduced to Mason sleeping on her bed. Mason is Natasha's arms dealer and just general hook up for IDs, weapons, supplies, shelter, etcetera. We get a mention of the Budapest flat being used by someone else so Mason brought Natasha her mail from there.
Natasha having James Bond movies on her laptop and knowing them word for word gave me joy in this movie. While watching her movie the power goes out, she finds out the generator needs gas so she drives into town. While turning onto the bridge she is attacked by Taskmaster blowing her car up. Her immediate reaction is to assume it is someone Ross sent after her but quickly finds out that is not the case as Taskmaster is there to retrieve the box of vials in her mail.
This fight is a fun introduction to one of the coolest villains in marvel comics. Taskmaster is a perfect mimic and can copy, defend, and reproduce any attack they have seen. This is quickly illustrated to the audience by having Natasha do her patented legs around the face throw move to Taskmaster only to have it quickly reversed and done to her. Already banged up from the explosion Natasha opts to grab the vials and escape through having Taskmaster kick her off the bridge into the river.
In my preview I incorrectly called Taskmaster swinging her as using Spider-Mans webbing but it really might as well have as they still swung just like him.
Natasha arrives in Budapest and to the flat, quickly discovers she is not alone as Yelena is waiting for her inside. They have a brief scuffle, Yelena working out some inner anger towards her probably. We find out yes Yelena sent the vials to Natasha in hopes that she would call in the Avengers and take down the Red Room. Natasha is skeptical thinking the Red Room and Dreykov are done and buried.
We find out Natasha's final step in defecting to S.H.I.E.L.D. was her assassination attempt on Dreykov, she and S.H.I.E.L.D. thought they were successful. But Natasha quickly finds out the Red Room is very much still active as a team of Widows assault the building. Yelena and Natasha fight to escape, and we are shown our first glimpse of the depth of the mind control the Widows are under as Dreykov orders one to kill herself instead of talk to Natasha after falling and snapping her leg.
As our pair reach their get away vehicle Taskmaster arrives in a heavily armored military truck. We get a fun motorcycle and car chase as Yelena and Natasha race through the city trying to escape the Widows and Taskmaster. Yelena specifically says HE during this chase referring to Taskmaster so even her as a Widow team leader is in the dark about the true identity of Taskmaster.
Natasha out smarts Taskmaster as she hides away with Yelena in an air vent. She tells Yelena she and Clint Barton hid in there for a few weeks. This is where we get a flashback of Natasha horribly using Dreykov's little girl to confirm his location to blow up the building he was in many years ago.
This middle group of scenes is dense with information and is easily my favorite section of the movie. Natasha and Yelena are in this convenience store getting medical supplies and a few drinks. Yelena tells Natasha about the Red Room continuing to be active, Nat is surprised that she has not heard about it and confused why Dreykov never came after her. This is where Yelena points out of course Dreykov would not go after Natasha and risk one of the "big" Avengers coming after him. Natasha takes offense to this, but does not disagree when Yelena says she bets the thunder god from space does not have to take an ibuprofen after a fight.
This being Yelena's first opportunity to really talk to Natasha about what she does, she asks her why she always does the landing hair flip pose. Which is a hilarious meta joke because she has done it no less than a million times in the MCU. Natasha is peeved by this line of questioning and says while she is doing all that posing she is trying to do good in the world. Yelena calls her on this, saying that she is still a trained assassin and killer just like Yelena except Yelena is not the one little girls call their hero. This must be terrible confrontation for Natasha, her entire story has been her doing her best to make up for the horrible sins of her past and to be basically called a hypocrite still by her sister must hurt. This whole posing running gag apparently came from Florence Pugh actually asking questions to Scarlett Johansson about it on set and one of the writers over heard it and wrote it into the movie.
Yelena goes on to explain that the psychological conditioning that Natasha went through is no longer what the Red Room does. Now, the Red Room uses genetic manipulation messing with the Widow's brain functions where they can not even really recognize they are being controlled, they do not know what is their thoughts and what is their orders. Natasha and the audience are told Dreykov is still taking children, and only one out of twenty survive.
Yelena asks Natasha if she ever looked for her parents, Nat tells her her mother gave her up. We get this sweet story Yelena has made up for herself about how her "real" family is still in Ohio. Natasha invites Yelena to join her in taking down Dreykov and the Red Room for good this time. During this conversation we just get small glimpses of this man putting away his keys and leaving his car unattended. This is fun visual storytelling because they gave us the information making you feel involved if you caught it before Nat says the keys are in the top green shelf.
We cut to the pair driving and Yelena asks Natasha if she likes her green vest, it has so many useful pockets and is the first purchase she has ever made for herself in her life. Nat teases Yelena about it like a every older sibling then goes on to compliment the vest to Yelena's excitement. This is where we meet Mason again, this time he got Natasha a helicopter and a bunch of her gear she had stashed (including two white suits for her and Yelena).
Cut to Alexei modern day in prison, now heavily tattooed and bearded after being so clean cut in the film's opening. Alexei is arm wrestling other inmates in this Russian prison while telling a story about how he fought Captain America in the 1980's. We see Alexei dispatch a few inmates easily, and then this very large human sits down to challenge him. This large human basically calls Alexei a liar saying Captain America was still on ice in the 1980's so it would be impossible that he would have fought him, remember that for the theory section at the bottom! Well, naturally Alexei takes offense to this and slams the guy's hand against the table so hard it breaks his arm. Alexei laughs at him calling him "little bear", which I initially just laughed at until I saw the name "Ursa" in the credits which is Latin for Bear. So he was literally calling the guy little bear which is a reference (kind of) to Alexei's comic book Winter Guard (Russian Avengers) comrade Ursa Major, a mutant that changes into a giant humanoid bear. Just a fun thing I noticed. Back to the recap and breakdown.
Mail call, Alexei seems to get fan mail and sent food and gifts. We have to remember for the future he was a "hero" to Russia and the Soviet Union. This simple thing is an amazing expansion of the MCU's world building because it shows us that heroes existed before the Avengers. So much so that in the mail that Alexei gets is an action figure of himself in full Red Guardian outfit, when he pulls the string on the back the head pops off and he sees there is an ear piece inside. Natasha is on the other end and is walking him through the prison break they are doing. Alexei of course instead of simply going along with the plan attacks the guards that provoked him earlier first.
As the prison break escalates it becomes clear he is not going to be able to escape by himself. Natasha springs into action leaping from the helicopter complete with super hero landing and Yelena's scoff of "such a poser". I love Yelena. Something I want to point out here that gets shown more throughout the movie, Yelena is NOT as talented as Natasha. We first saw it in their fight how Natasha many times tried to just end it by pinning her down where she easily could have finished it. Natasha is an Avenger, I would hope she is better than one of the Widows of the Red Room. I really wish they would have come out and called them Red Widows, would have been cool and made sense. Anyways back to the point, Yelena while getting shot at impulsively grabs a rocket launcher blowing up the machine gun turret shooting at her but also causing an avalanche. To which Yelena says "This would be a cool way to die", to which I say again I love Yelena.
As they finally get Alexei onto the helicopter Yelena immediately punches him in the face, to which Alexei says "why the aggression, is it your time of the month?" then Yelena goes into detail of how every single Widow is forced into surgery removing all of their reproductive organs. This is used as a levity moment as Alexei is a great comic relief in this film but it is also a dark reminder as to what they have been through. Alexei says he is touched and happy they came for him, but Natasha says this is business not pleasure. Natasha constantly calls them by their names never accepting labels like dad or mom or sister. Alexei reveals of course he has no idea where the Red Room is, he has been locked up for years. He is upset at being locked up and says he did nothing wrong except maybe insult Dreykov's hair or the political party, it is not like he was the one who killed his daughter like Natasha. Alexei is curious why they did not ask their mother Melina instead. Natasha and Yelena are both surprised to learn that she is even alive, seemingly they both had assumed she died of her wounds when they escaped as kids. Alexei say she is alive and works remotely for Dreykov outside St. Petersburg. I guess even super spies get to work from home this past year.
Alexei complains about Dreykov saying how he buried him with the "boring" mission in Ohio. Two things here, this is our first big moment of seeing Yelena obviously hurt by them complaining about Ohio, we previously saw her hurt by Natasha saying it was not real in the store. Secondly, the implications of the words chosen, he says "buries" it sounds like whatever program that Alexei was apart of was dissolved. Quick history lesson/reminder, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was a period of geopolitical unrest and is typically considered the time period between 1947-1991. Now how does those timelines line up with this, if they left Ohio in 1995 and it was a mission that lasted a little over three years like this movie says that means yes the super soldier that was used in military events in the 1980's was buried when the conflict ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Dreykov had no use for a super soldier at that point in time so it is possible he hid him away in Ohio on this mission so no one else would get ahold of him in this time period of upheaval in Russia.
Yelena says they will not make it to St. Petersburg, and is proven right with we cut to the controlled crash of the helicopter. As they get out the girls are still upset with Alexei, warranted, and Alexei says he needs to talk to Natasha. He quietly asks her if Captain America ever asked about him or talked to Natasha about him. This flung up the red flag for me again, once again remember this for later in theories.
Alexei says everything worked out the best for them, Yelena went on to be the greatest child assassin the world has ever seen and Natasha not only is an amazing spy but an Avenger. He embraces them and tells them how proud he is of his girls, that their ledgers most be gushing red. This of course is a reframing of Loki's comments to Natasha in 2012 Avengers and is Natasha's entire driving force. Trying to make up for the red in her ledger, try to right so many wrongs that she committed by doing good.
We cut to Melina working with her pigs, she gets an alert on her tablet of a perimeter breach, she grabs her rifle and sees our trio walking on the ridge down to her. She "greets" them and the only person that seems happy for this reunion is Alexei "honey we're home". We get them walking inside and we see Melina put away her rifle in her secret weapon room. In this room we see the mask machine that I noted from trailer footage as a possible plot point in the Black Widow preview blog.
We have Melina, Natasha and Yelena sitting down at the table while we see Alexei forcing on his old Red Guardian suit "still fits". Melina compliments him, and says she has never washed it. Now this family unit is sitting down to leftover food with only Alexei caring to eat anything. Natasha asks where the Red Room is and is told it is a fantasy to try to stop Dreykov. Melina dodges or stalls the conversation by explaining how the mind control works showing off her work with Alexei the pig. Of course she named a pig after him. During this conversation we find out that the North Institute that they stole the research from was actually Hydra and was going to be used on Bucky. Melina goes on and on bragging about this breakthrough as it is the key to unlocking free will.
During the entirety of this conversation with the pig Yelena is growing more and more visibly upset. They talk about their family structure not being a real family until Yelena can not take it anymore saying it was real to her, it was the best part of her life and nobody told her it was not real. She was the pig, she blames Melina for putting her through that and blames Natasha for her being in that position, because her defection to S.H.E.I.L.D. is what caused Dreykov to move forward with the mind control. She storms off and Alexei goes to talk to her.
This leaves Natasha alone with Melina. Melina reveals to Natasha that her mother did not give her up willingly. She and her family were bought off but her mother spent the rest of her life relentlessly trying to get Natasha back until Dreykov had her killed. Melina tells her it is best to not look into the past, but Natasha finds the old photo album we saw at the beginning of the movie. This is an insight on Melina's hypocrisy and how she still holds onto loving them. Natasha says she remembers shooting all the holidays in one day, remember this for theories. Melina filled with guilt reveals she has alerted the Red Room that they were here and they will be there soon.
We see Alexei and Yelena sitting together in the bedroom, Alexei tries to make her feel better by telling her a story about himself and his father that fails. Yelena then stops him from telling another story saying she does not want to hear any of his war stories as Crimson Dynamo, which is a comic name drop as she says the wrong Russian super hero. Which does beg the question if Crimson Dynamo was a real person in the MCU. This is when we get the beautiful scene of Alexei slowly singing her favorite song American Pie by Don McLean. This was actually David Harbor's idea on set according to director Cate Shortland. I am very happy they decided to keep it.
This sweet moment is interrupted by the Widows and Taskmaster showing up to the house. Alexei cockily thinks he can take them all on before he is riddled by tranquilizers while Yelena hides. Yelena gets up and gets ready to fight them when they storm the house. She turns the corner and we see Natasha out cold on the ground. Yelena comes face to face with Melina who is now fully geared up, she knocks out Yelena and the "family" is taken to the Red Room.
We get a quick scene of Alexei coming to on the jet and him seeing the Red Room, it is a giant helicarrier similar to those used by S.H.I.E.L.D., but then he is injected again and knocked out. We now get a conversation between "Melina" and Dreykov, props to him as he sees through the mask technology and it is revealed that Melina and Natasha have swapped places. I talked about in my preview the possibility of them using the face swap storyline from the comics and this was a brilliant way to do so while not being too outlandish. It was perfectly paired with showing Yelena about to be put under the knife surgically removing part of her brain to study. We get Yelena's simple "this is a much less cool way to die" and I have to say for the 100th time, I love Yelena.
While Dreykov wants to recruit Natasha and turn her into one of Melina's pigs, downstairs Alexei is pouring his heart out apologizing to "Natasha" until Melina reveals to him the plan. This is our first real showing of Melina really caring for the girls as we get flashes of her and Natasha planning this whole thing in the weapons room of her house. We learn the plan is to crash the Red Room and Natasha is going to activate the tracker in her suit so that Ross will show up in full force. Melina activates the communication device she hid in Yelena's ear and tells her their is a blade hid in the strap around her leg so she can escape. We see her escape and her job is to find the vials and free the other Widows.
Natasha prods Dreykov about her real mother, to which he taunts her saying she was buried under a pink blossom tree in an unknown grave. Dreykov sees Natasha's remorse for killing his daughter and continues his taunts with the reveal that his daughter Antonia did not die, that she is Taskmaster. That he had to implant a chip in her neck to help save her, but it made her the perfect mimic and she is his perfect soldier. One thing I do want to speak on that bothered me, but does not ruin things, is the OBVIOUS size difference in the stunt double for Taskmaster. If you do a side by side of the two clips before and after she removes her mask it is really bad.
Natasha wants to apologize to her but she is mind controlled just like the Widows. Dreykov sends her off to kill Alexei, Melina and Yelena. As soon as Taskmaster leaves the room Natasha pulls her gun on Dreykov to kill him but we quickly learn that is impossible. Dreykov has been using some form of tech that alters his pheromones to where no one around him can intentionally try to hurt him.
We cut to Melina and Alexei downstairs and Taskmaster arriving to stop them. Alexei fights Taskmaster, which is something I want to give props to her showcasing how strong and talented a fighter she actually is as she is handily beating super soldier Alexei. During this fight Melina is trying to hack and shutdown the engines to cause a controlled crash of the Red Room, but Dreykov remotely shuts it down. Then we see Yelena coming through the air vents and trying out Natasha's superhero landing, to which she shivers and says disgusting. Yelena is my new favorite.
We cut back to Dreykov and Natasha as he shows off his panel where he controls all of the Widows around the world. He implies that he is the true world leader as he holds a gun to every world leader with the Widows. But, Natasha calls him a fraud and coward as she begins taunting him. He begins beating on her getting more and more angry, revealing more and more of his plan. She calls him weak, calling him out on his horrors saying it is not as easy to be tough around her as it is around little girls. After Dreykov has shown off his equipment and how to use it is when we get our final reveal. Thank you for your corporation. A beautiful call back to 2012 Avengers as we realize Natasha has been completely playing him that Melina told her about the pheromones. She says it is too bad he was too weak to do the job for her, severing the nerve in her nose so the pheromones would not effect her, and she slams her face into the desk breaking her nose.
This second theory is darker. In the show WandaVision on Disney+ we saw how depressed Wanda was/is and how desperately she wanted to bring back her Vision. We know that ever since joining the Avengers Wanda worked with Steve and Natasha as they trained her to be an Avenger, soldier, spy, etc. well, maybe Natasha told Wanda about her Red Room experience. In this movie, while looking at the photo album with Melina Nat says she remembers shooting all of the holidays in a single day. That is eerily similar to what is shown in the fake credit opening of WandaVision episode 5. We see Vision being forced to take pictures with the kids for Thanksgiving, Easter, and Christmas all while they are the same age. And in each picture he is getting more and more agitated or upset. We know Wanda is trying to indoctrinate Vision into believing this fantasy she had created, maybe she went so far as to copy some of the tactics Natasha told her that happened to her in the Red Room. This thought process helps show how desperate Wanda got, and how far from the light she has strayed.
