Avengers: Age of Ultron might've made a few missteps in its story (why oh why does Hawkeye need a family?), it did provide an interesting snippet of Black Widow's past, in particular her time spent in the infamous 'Red Room'.
The Soviet Union's top destination for conditioning their assassins, Natasha Romanoff was known to be among their most talented operatives. Training their spies to be proficient in combat and deception, the Room was notorious for producing the Soviet Union's best and brightest assassins, falling behind in terms of infamy only to the Winter Soldier program concurrently conducted by the same government.
Nat was likely to have spent her time in the program in the years preceding the collapse of the USSR, making her one of the last assassins to have emerged from its doors. While it might be a case of 'the less we know, the better', the chance to see the internal workings of this program - having already been provided a glimpse in Agent Carter and Age of Ultron - would undoubtedly strengthen any solo Black Widow film.
Add to that the fact the character's most recent comic book outings have taken that premise and ran with it wholeheartedly, and it's not difficult to see the appeal in taking the film in the same direction.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
