Black Widow anticipation thread

Marvel's prequel Black Widow movie has been filming for some weeks now, and slowly but surely we are starting to see information trickle out for this movie. Interestingly enough, Marvel hasn't actually hasn't even officially announced that they are making a Black Widow movie (I know that they're waiting for Hall H at SDCC, but c'mon now), despite everyone knowing what's going on.

Directed by Cate Shortland, Scarlett Johansson is on board as star and executive producer and is finally getting that well-earned payday from Marvel.

The movie is said to introduce an as yet uncast (or at least an actor that has yet to be announced) Taskmaster into the MCU, Florence Pugh who is all but confirmed as fellow Red Room graduate and Black Widow Yelena Belovna, and Ray Winstone in an yet undisclosed role.

Some question has been brought up as to exactly when this movie will take place, and there have been some interesting rumors, including 1999 in the midst of the Y2K "crisis". Another, coming from Sebastian Stan, has the movie talking place in between Civil War and Infinity War (But nothing rules out multiple time periods). Natasha went on the lam before she could be arrested in Civil War, and there may be a good story to tell in between then and her hooking up with Rogers, Wilson and Maximoff.

As far as the relevance of the movie's prequel nature, Kevin Feige, while still not confirming a Black Widow movie is in production, compared the theoretical Black Widow prequel to Breaking Bad prequel, Better Call Saul.

Some people have questioned the necessity of a Black Widow movie (and I won't dignify them with links), but I look forward to one last adventure with Natasha Romanov and trust Kevin Feige to deliver an exciting and relevant story.

 

Maybe this?

 

It’s finally happening!? Hellz yeah!

 

Set photos reveal a possible first look from a distance at Taskmaster. However, as the article notes, he looks more like Darkhawk. I can see them wanting to change Taskmaster's look because his normal look really does look like an off-brand Red Skull.

https://mcuexchange.com/black-widow-villain-set-photo/

 

Any potential release dates?

And would it be too out there to speculate that Natasha was part of a similar program to Winter Soldier...where she too was frozen at times (so 70's or 80's to start, revived at Y2K, then the last time when Hawkeye then saved her from that life)?

Any word on a Jeremy Renner appearance (or if he has been cast elsewhere)?

 

Requires the Arnim Zola AI from TWS to have been lied to about Natasha.

 

That would spit in the face of 10 years of assumption she’s just a normal human hanging out with armored billionaires and gods

 

Yeah, I don't like the idea of her being some kind of super soldier this whole time. I don't have a problem with her knowing the Winter Soldier during his work (as hinted a couple of times), but I don't want it to because she was part of the part program.

 

I thought it was explicitly stated that she knew him because he showed up on single mission and ruined her mission. As in, they never worked together and had nothing to do with each other except the one time he shot her protectee (and it sounded like that happened when she worked for SHIELD, too, not before then).

 

She said, "you could at least recognize me" to brainwashed Bucky. That could refer to that mission, but I always thought it refered to something deeper.

 

I don't think that line implies anything significant, and if it did it would undercut (for me) everything she says in TWS about him being a ghost who is so good and so hard to find that a lot of professionals don't even believe he exists. I like that sense of him as the intelligence community bogeyman that Natasha just happened to catch a glimpse of once and that's how she knows the stories are true.

 

She was referring to the street fight she had with him in winter soldier

 

No, I don't think that's what she was referring to. It's clearly indicating something deeper and not their previous interactions in The Winter Soldier.

 

Agreed. In-movie timeline, the events of The Winter Soldier were not that far removed from Civil War, and Natasha had direct contact/conflict with Bucky, hence her "remember me" line. It would make Natasha seem more duplicitous than what has been established if she had some past life working with Bucky, but in consideration of the danger he posed to her friends (and herself) in WS, conveniently did not bring that up to Rogers at that time, or in the period leading to Civil War.

 

I'm glad to see they're finally doing this.
Kevin Feige's refusal to admit this exists, despite all of the announcements that have already been made about is, is hilarious.

 

or anything in "Infinity War" when she was standing side by side him on the front lines of Wakanda

Black Widow- Hey remember our secret conflict in the early 2000's?

Bucky- Shh!

 

Nat being older than she looks can work fine with the established facts if 1) the records Zola cited were falsified and 2) Nat either has no memory of anything prior to the late 80's/early 90's, of has a very good reason to keep quiet about it.

Given that the Red Room was a Leviathan operation, not a Hydra one, it's not too out there to posit that Zola wasn't in possession of all the facts. And if Leviathan handled it's Black Widows the same way Hydra managed it's super soldier assets, then mind manipulation is pretty much par for the course.

I'm not sure why anyone would be bothered by the notion that Nat is anything but a normal human, because it makes perfect sense that she's in some ways enhanced. Maybe not to the same degree or same ways as Cap and Bucky since she's trained/created to be a spy and an assassin, not a soldier. Plus it's already been established that there were numerous failed attempts to replicate Erskine's work, so why can't the Red Room be one of them?

Clearly something was still clearly going on with that as late as the early 90's since that's what got Howard Stark killed.

 

But Leviathan was still subverted by HYDRA, just like SHIELD...

 

According to Wikipedia, the comics version was "biotechnologically and psycho-technologically enhanced—which provides a rationale for her unusually long and youthful lifespan", so it's not totally out of the realm of possibility for them to do something similar to the MCU version.
Have they ever called her a Soviet agent in the movies or just Russian?
Because if they want to have her as a Soviet agent, they'd have to come up with some way to explain how a character played by an actress who was only 6 years old when the USSR fell could have worked for them.

 

I can’t wait.