While it'd be a brave choice to depict Nat in a more ruthless light, owing to the fact she's a leading figure in the Avengers and a hero at that, any Black Widow film would be daft not to refer to her time as an actual spy.
The timeframe for Romanoff's days as an assassin is still up in the air, but there's no denying the appeal of seeing the Widow working as a spy in the twilight of the Soviet Union. Not that it'd form the crux of a film, seeing as how people are quite rightly looking forward to seeing Romanoff fighting as a hero, but the MCU is still in need of some ambiguity. The Winter Soldier and Civil War benefited from that approach, and Bucky - who's undoubtedly gearing up to take over the reigns as Captain America - has illustrated that fans love seeing a hero with a shady past.
We know for a fact that Romanoff has a lot of red in her ledger. If we were to see that in the solo film - even in a small way - it would only add more depth to a character that benefits from that mystery.
Plus, it would make good competition for Fox's upcoming totally not a Black Widow rip-off we swear Red Sparrow, which will centre around a Soviet spy defecting to the West during the Cold War. Get on it, Marvel.
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.
