Black Widow: 10 Insanely Dark Moments That Won’t Be Used

Amongst the assembled backstories of the various Avengers, Black Widow's is unabashedly the darkest. She's a child soldier, trained to be a weapon since birth - and who only really escapes this well into her adulthood, having had almost her entire life ruined - something that both convinces her to help others, and also leaves her with a ruthless streak that is integral to her character.

With this kind of backstory, it's hardly groundbreaking news that Black Widow has had some of the darkest moments of the cast of the MCU.

As such, it's pretty interesting trying to figure out exactly where Marvel will draw the line in the sand for the assassin-turned-superhero, as while it's impossible to not include some dark moments from her past, the sheer number of brutal and depressing scenes that have to be stepped around in order to use many of her major storylines is monumental.

Given Black Widow comics contain everything from child torture to surgery being done on a conscious person, there's a real wealth of storylines Marvel will have to dodge for the 2020 Black Widow film - unless they want it to end up with a surprise R-rating.

While there is so much right with Black Widow's early days, there is also so, so much that needs to be dodged in any form of MCU film adaptation.

Natasha Romonoff has suffered on and off from a mixture of terrible characterisation - in no small part influenced by the fact she was a Russian character being written by Americans during the Cold War - and the general questionable moments that many female characters unfortunately experienced during the growing pains of comics.

Even when looking at Black Widow's time from the beginning of the MCU to their most recent film, you can tell far more effort has been placed into making her a more three-dimensional character, and this effort would be totally wasted were some of her past hysterical, continually lovelorn comic self to reappear.