From RUSSIA With LOVE

After her noble death in Avengers: Endgame, Natasha Romanoff was left without the one thing fans wanted: a standalone solo movie. As that’s finally put to rights in Black Widow, Total Film joins Scarlett Johansson and the team for MCU’s action-packed Phase 4 lift-off.

- JAMES MOTTRAM

The last time we saw Black Widow it was – to put it mildly – emotional. “Let me go – it’s OK,” she told Hawkeye, plunging to her death on the barren planet Vormir in Avengers: Endgame for the ultimate world-saving sacrifice. As deaths in the Marvel Cinematic Universe go – sorry, Iron Man – there probably wasn’t a more heart-stopping moment, as the ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. spy turned Avenger gave her life to retrieve the Soul Stone.

Still, it left the MCU in a bind. For years, a Black Widow film had been mooted, right back to 2004 at Lions Gate Entertainment before the rights reverted to Marvel. When Scarlett Johansson first appeared as Natasha Romanoff – the former KGB assassin with a very particular set of skills – in 2010’s Iron Man 2, it didn’t take long before questions were asked about a solo outing. Marvel Studios maestro Kevin Feige even held discussions with Johansson, who was then only 25. But there was a caveat, he said. “The Avengers comes first.”

While others – Thor, Captain America, Black Panther, even Ant-Man – had their moments in the spotlight, Black Widow was made to wait. And wait. And wait. Not that Johansson felt her character demanded the same treatment; if she was going to front a Marvel movie, there had to be a reason. “Is there something exciting to do creatively, as an actor?” she says. “Are we going to be able to make something extraordinary and strong? And something that stands on its own?”