10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About Black Widow
2. She's The Most Hated Avenger
While Black Widow may have a pretty vocal fandom, it can sometimes seem like she has an equally strong hatedom.
In 2015, a study by social media analysts BrandWatch (there would be a joke here about how that isn't a real job, but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones) found that Black Widow is the "most hated" Avenger. Out of all the team members from the first two films (and also Spider-Man), it was found that Natasha is the one with the most negative comments on Twitter
Now, there are a couple of important caveats to this result. Firstly, it was from a sample size of only 900,000 tweets, which is only really a drop in the ocean. Secondly, it was only looking at tweets about Black Widow in a negative context rather than ones specifically about not liking the character.
Basically, a tweet would still count as "negative" if it was by a fan of Black Widow who was annoyed at Marvel for that idiotic romance subplot in Age of Ultron or the character's relative lack of official merchandise.
Still, the problem is either that people hate Black Widow or they hate the way Marvel treats her and neither is particularly great for the company.