Black Widow Everything We Know About Natashas PreAvengers Past

Black Widow: Everything We Know About Natasha’s Pre-Avengers Past

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While the stand-alone Black Widow film will more fully explore Natasha Romanoff’s past, the MCU films briefly addressed Natasha’s pre-Avengers past.

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Black Widow Everything We Know About Natashas PreAvengers Past

The upcoming solo film following Marvel’s super-spy Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), Black Widow, presents the opportunity to explore one of the biggest mysteries in the Marvel universe: Black Widow’s origin story as a Russian secret agent. Although Black Widow has appeared in twelve of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, beginning with her undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. mission to surveil Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 and ending with the Avenger’s untimely death in Avengers: Endgame, only minor details about the defected KGB agent’s pre-Avengers past have been revealed within the films.

Natasha Alianovna Romanoff, better known by her superhero moniker Black Widow, is one of the founding members of the Avengers who defected from the KGB to become a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent for Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). While the Avenger was formerly a supporting character within the MCU films, Natasha appears in the leading role in her first stand-alone film, Black Widow. Set in the years between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, Black Widow is wanted by the government for her involvement in the feud between Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) and for violating the terms established within the Sokovia Accords, a set of rules regulating superhero activities. Returning to Russia, Natasha must confront her past as a former KGB operative and make amends with her family, including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), and the Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour).

Black Widow’s indefinite past is a trend that dates back to the original comics, since the character’s origins and the details surrounding Natasha’s assent to one of the world’s greatest KGB assassins is never fully addressed. One of the accounts of Black Widow’s history depicts how she was kidnapped by Baron Von Strucker and trained to be an assassin and a ballet dancer, while another claims that she was a student of the Soviet spy facility known as the Red Room Academy, both of which are never confirmed to be true in the comics. Based off of the information revealed in the films, Natasha’s past in the MCU is a compilation of Black Widow’s backstory previously featured in the comics, appearing as both a dancer and a Soviet spy in-training during a brief flashback in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Here’s everything we know about Natasha’s pre-Avengers past.

Black Widow’s Red Room Training & Life As Russian Spy

Black Widow Everything We Know About Natashas PreAvengers Past

While Natasha Romanoff makes her first appearance in the MCU as early as Iron Man 2 under the alias Natasha Rushman, a notary public working for Stark Industries, viewers don’t learn specific details about her past as a Russian spy until the second Avengers film, Avengers: Age of Ultron. When the Avengers track Ultron to the black-market arms dealer Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), Natasha has a run-in with Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), who hypnotizes her and causes her to have hallucinations about her horrific past training to be a KGB agent at the Red Room Academy, a secret training facility for Russian spies that poses as a boarding school.

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At the Red Room Academy, young girls are made into weapons for the U.S.S.R., learning sharpshooting, hand-to-hand combat, and ballet, all with the aim of creating the ultimate spy. A grueling and rigorous program, the Red Room’s tests included killing an unknown innocent man and undergoing a “graduation ceremony” where all of the girls who pass the program are forced to be sterilized in order to avoid any distractions that will keep them from completing their missions. Natasha appears to excel within the program and to be one of its strongest candidates, since the Red Room’s headmistress compares her strength to that of marble in the brief conversation Black Widow has with her during her hallucination.

Despite being one of strongest assassins in the program, the program’s intense curriculum seems to rob Natasha of her own voice and makes her feel powerless, as shown through the imagery in the scene when the other girls in the program are depicted with their mouths covered and the headmistress covers Natasha’s face with her hand before the graduation ceremony. Despite her fears of the graduation ceremony, Natasha is forced to undergo the sterilization procedure, graduates from the Red Room Academy, and rises through the ranks as one of Russia’s most skilled assassins. While many of the details surrounding her life as a Russian spy are shrouded in mystery, Natasha was such a successful covert operative for the KGB that she became a danger to global security and her proficiency as a KGB spy put her on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar as a danger to their operation.

How Black Widow Was Recruited By SHIELD

Black Widow Everything We Know About Natashas PreAvengers Past

On her missions as a Russian spy, Natasha’s skills as an assassin and a master of espionage brought her existence to the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D., an American counter-terrorism and intelligence agency run by the director Nick Fury. Once she was discovered to be a danger to world security, Nick Fury sent the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), a.k.a. Hawkeye, to terminate Romanoff. However, upon meeting Romanoff, Barton decided to defy Nick Fury’s directive and proposed that Romanoff be considered as a candidate to join S.H.I.E.L.D. instead, given her advanced skills. While the details of their first meeting are never disclosed, it’s presumed that Hawkeye recognized not only Romanoff’s potential as an ally, but her willingness to change her life for the better.

With Fury’s permission, Romanoff deserted her Russian allegiance and became a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. This moment appears to be a great turning point for Romanoff, since she abandoned a life of corruption and exchanged it for an honorable one. Not only did S.H.I.E.L.D. offer Natasha the chance to go straight, but it gave her the human connection and family she’d sought all of her life. While Natasha started out in The Avengers wishing to wipe out “the red in her ledger” so she wouldn’t owe Barton for sparing her life, she overcame her trust issues in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, opened herself up to the idea of forming true friendships, and eventually became best friends with Barton, the same person whom she was formerly afraid of owing.

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Black Widow’s Pre-Avengers SHIELD Missions

After becoming a member of S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha was partnered with Barton, and the two of them were tasked with tactical S.H.I.E.L.D. missions located all over the world under the moniker “Strike Team: Delta.” The most infamous of those missions is the one mentioned most often within the MCU films: the mission that took place in Budapest, Hungary. During The Avengers, when Black Widow and Hawkeye are battling the Chitauri in New York, Natasha mentions that the alien battle reminds her of their mission in Budapest, to which Batron responds, “You and I remember Budapest very differently.” While the actual details of the mission are unknown, the mission appears to be a significant moment in the formation of Romanoff and Barton’s friendship and remains an inside joke between the two of them.

Apart from Budapest, another mission Romanoff completed for S.H.I.E.L.D. involved a run-in with Hydra’s super-soldier The Winter Soldier, a.k.a. James “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan). In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Romanoff tells Steve Rogers about the legendary Winter Soldier, an assassin credited with kills throughout time that she herself encountered during a S.H.I.E.L.D. assignment. Protecting a nuclear engineer, Romanoff was pursued by the Winter Soldier, who shot at her car and sent it hurling over a cliff. Despite saving the engineer during the crash, the Winter Soldier shot and killed the scientist through Romanoff’s stomach. While Natasha has completed many S.H.I.E.L.D. missions, these two are the most notable since they are mentioned within the MCU films. One of her pre-Avengers missions the viewers witness firsthand is also Natasha’s introduction within the MCU, when Natasha is on an undercover mission to discover if Tony Stark is dying in Iron Man 2.

While more of Natasha’s pre-Avengers past may be addressed within Black Widow, one of the most mysterious aspects of her past that will most likely be explored in the film are the events that led to her induction into the Red Room Academy, since the trailer for Black Widow revealed that Yelena Belova was also a student of the Red Room. While Black Widow addresses Romanoff’s dark past, it also depicts one of the rare moments when Romanoff isn’t beholden to someone else’s orders, now that she doesn’t have any affiliation with a government organization and will have the freedom to make decisions for herself for the first time in her life.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/black-widow-movie-natasha-romanoff-mcu-before-avengers/

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