10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About Black Widow
1. She Betrayed A Teammate
Back when Black Widow was leader of the Avengers, the team's membership went through some weird changes.
One of the stranger new recruits was the supervillain Madame Masque, who had reformed completely at random and joined to stop Iron Man who, equally randomly, had become evil.
After helping to replace Tony with a teenage version of himself, Masque decided to stick around. However, Black Widow didn't trust her and suspected that Masque had only joined as part of a larger plan.
When someone broke into Hank Pym's lab, Natasha accused Masque of betraying the Avengers. Sick of the constant mistrust, Masque quit the team and stormed out.
It turned out though that the real intruder was a robot called Benedict (named after Arnold not Cumberbatch). Benedict attacked Masque and dragged her away to an unknown location. He then handed a gold coin to Black Widow, suggesting that she had been in on it all along and had happily betrayed her teammate.
It might not have been intended to be that bad, but the Avengers then got involved in the Onslaught crossover and the series ended. The storyline with Madame Masque wasn't resolved until years later, by which point Black Widow was no longer on the team.