Somehow, I forgot she died.
Marvel shoved a bucket of artificially-flavored popcorn into my arms and caught me in a whirlwind of Russian superhero sisters so intense that I forgot Natasha Romanoff, better known as Black Widow, died two years ago in the film “Avengers: Endgame.”
Because there she was, 11 years old and riding a bike through a suburban neighborhood.
“Black Widow,” directed by Cate Shortland and released in July 2021, opens on a summer evening in the childhood of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh).
The girls’ mother comes out to comfort little Yelena when she scrapes her knee, and their father returns home from work just in time for dinner. This picturesque childhood lasted only three years, because a life of comfort has never been Black Widow’s story. The reality is that there’s no blood relation at all in this family.
Their “parents” are scientist Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz) and Soviet-Russian supersoldier Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour.) The pair is on a deep undercover mission to steal mind control secrets.
After Alexei and Melina complete their mission, the family flees the country and the two young girls return to a traumatic life under the thumb of General Dreykov in his Red Room and Black Widow program, a training ground for female spies.
Though they aren’t biologically related, the connection between Natasha and Yelena is strikingly heartwrenching. Natasha fiercely defends her little “sister” when Red Room agents try to separate them.
“She’s only six,” she cries as Alexei takes a gun from her hands.
“You were even younger,” he says quietly.
Their deep affection for each other moved me from beginning to end. After this moment, they don’t see each other or their faux parents again for 21 years. Natasha is on the run after the events of “Captain America: Civil War” and receives a package of red chemical vials from Yelena.
The fight that ensues after Natasha tracks down Yelena easily surpasses any scrap my younger sister and I have managed to get into. Natasha’s big-sister instincts haven’t lost any hold on her, however, and she’s the first to tap out when she notices Yelena is in real pain. Their fight sequence is one of the many attention-grabbing battles in the film.
If you’re familiar with Marvel movies, you’ve wondered for years what kind of trouble Natasha and Clint Barton got up to in Budapest. I finally learned the story behind their veiled references.
Natasha and Clint attempted to destroy Dreykov and the Red Room years ago in Budapest, but they didn’t succeed. Natasha thought Dreykov’s daughter died in the explosion as well, but learns she’s alive and mind-controlled by Dreykov.
Yelena explains she’s been trapped under the Red Room’s mental manipulation as well, and the red vials can release the remaining widows from the mind control.
Tracking down Alexei and Melina are their best chance of finding the untraceable location of the Red Room. They soon break Alexei out of prison and find Melina. This leads to an awkward but funny dinner table conversation.
While their jump back into parenting is amusingly sweet, I felt conflicted about absolving them easily. They threw two innocent children into an abusive, terrifying life. Addressing the role they played in the girls’ trauma thoroughly would have made adult Natasha and Yelena’s acceptance of them more convincing.
Natasha’s dismissal of their time together 21 years ago exposes the ache in Yelena’s heart for the family she remembers not as a mere facade.
“It wasn’t real,” Natasha says. “Who cares?”
“Don’t say that,” Yelena says, her voice breaking. “It was real to me.”
My 8-year-old brother, sitting beside me in the theatre, silently mouthed that line.
“It was real to me,” he’d declare, hands over heart, into my ear for the next week.
Banding together at last, they gain access to the Red Room. After successfully freeing the remaining widows from mind control, the base plummets towards the ground in flames.
Natasha and Yelena make peace amid the wreckage of the training grounds that separated them from each other.
“I should have come back for you,” Natasha says. “It was real to me, too.”
Their story beautifully set up Yelena’s character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and gave me a new favorite in Yelena Belova more than it helped me say goodbye to Natasha.
And, I finally know what happened in Budapest.
