Black Widow Stand-Alone: 10 Things Marvel Must Do

9. Explore Natasha's Russian Origins

Black Widow
Marvel Studios

At one point, a character says to Natasha, "You're Russian?" to which she replies, "I used to be." One of the richest seams of story is surely Romanoff's journey from Russian (or Soviet) citizen to black ops agent for an international organisation like S.H.I.E.L.D.

When did she emigrate? Was she forced to leave, and can she go back? Are her parents still around, and if so does she have a relationship with them? We don't need a full-on origin story to explore the character's history - particularly as we saw some of the Red Room in Age Of Ultron - but filling in some of Black Widow's background might illuminate her cautious distance from fellow Avengers and enrich her future adventures.

And, of course, there's always the matter of what happened to her original accent...

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Film history obsessive, New Hollywood fetishist and comics evangelist.