MCU Theory Files: Black Widow

This is the first in a series of rumour collections about a specific MCU IP. The intention is to both track and collate scoops, look at the trends, and examine the information. This isn't meant to be encyclopedic, because many sites (like WGTC) just aren't worth paying attention too. What follows is the collective speculation from scoopers with either good track records or who haven't yet been fully debunked.

For simplicity's sake I'm using acronyms for the frequent fliers: RW (insider Roger Wardell), CM (Charles Murphy, who runs his own site), D (Daniel RPK, who has a Patreon), TI (The Iluminerdi, who run their own site), JC (Jeremy Conrad, who runs his own site), DF (Discussing Film), MS (Mikey Sutton, who uses Geekosity on Facebook), GWW (Geeks World Wide; two of the key players there have recently moved on to The Cinema Spot, TCS), LotLB (Lords of the Long Box, used specifically only for their unique source 'the Black Knight'), R (Reddit), and 4C (4Chan); I use (AS) to represent the consensus view among the scoopers where applicable; when one of these luminaries is speculating or mentions something they can't confirm, I've added a small "s" to the acronym (eg, CMs). Not all the above appear on this list, as not all of them have scooped Black Widow, but are included just to illustrate who I pay attention too--occasionally I'll cite someone not on this list (like Screen Rant), but they aren't tracked routinely because they aren't focused on or notable in the scooping business.

Any errors that follow are my own (please let me know so I can fix them); if there are any significant omissions, I'll happily add them.

The Basics

• Confirmed Characters: Black Widow (Natasha), Yelena Belova, Melina Vostokoff (Iron Maiden), Alexi Shostakov (Red Guardian), Rick Mason, Taskmaster, Secretary/General Ross, Dreykov
• Rumoured Characters: Hawkeye (AS), Iron Man (D, 4C), Deadpool (LotLB), two X-Men-related characters (LotLB), Ursa Major (SR), Everett Ross (R), Ivan Petrovich (4C), Jimmy Woo (4C), Sonny Burch (4C), Draco (4C), Laura Barton (4C), Isabela Moner as a KGB recruit (4C), Bucky (CMs; seen near the set during filming)
• Director/Writer: Cate Shortland (limited TV background)/Eric Pearson (see below)
• Production Notes: Jac Schaeffer's original script required emergency fixes from Ned Benson, pushing back production two months, but Eric Pearson has the only writing credit, meaning after Benson's emergency re-write there was another required; filming wrapped in October, with re-shoots in February; the original release date was in May, but it was pushed due to the pandemic
• Set Notes: 2017 vehicles were seen on set and in the trailer; 2007/08 vehicles were shown in the trailer; we've seen Hungarian insignia on various things in the trailer and set photos; Sebastian Stan (Bucky) was photographed near the filming wearing a Black Widow hat (it might have been a set visit, he was just in the area, or he's in the film)
• Official Synopsis: "Black Widow confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger."
• Other Official Elements: It takes place post-Civil War and Natasha is hunted by Secretary Ross (via Empire); new Black Widows are being trained (trailers); Red Guardian is being held in prison (trailers); what happened in Budapest will be addressed (Feige); Nat, Yelena, Melina, and Alexei have a family dynamic (trailers); Feige said the film will reveal a secret for the future of the MCU

Beyond what's absolutely confirmed I think we can safely make these assumptions:

1) Nat reunites with her old 'family' specifically to stop the new Black Widow program
2) Rick Mason is Taskmaster (there's no good argument to the contrary)
3) Yelena is being set-up as the successor to the title of Black Widow going forward
4) If Robert Downey Jr appears it will be via deleted scenes from Civil War (to keep costs down)

Less certain, but persuasively rumoured, is that the MacGuffin of the film is a device that prevents tracking (4chan calls it the 'Foxcharger' or 'Foxcharge'); the idea seems to be that this device is what helps keep Cap and his crew safe from Ross before Infinity War (solving an issue I don't think anyone cares about, but the MacGuffin could be used in the future). Is this the secret Feige mentioned? I hope not, as it's not very interesting.

The Scoops

I like colour-coding, so: blue is via official sources or the trades, green is confirmed, and red is debunked (my comments are confined to brackets)

• (January, 2018) Variety reports Jac Schaeffer has been hired to write the film (she was one of six writers/writing teams to contribute to Captain Marvel; she's since moved on to be the showrunner of WandaVision)
• (April, 2018) JC says Black Widow is coming in 2020 (matching earlier speculation from myself and others)
• (April, 2018) CM says the film will be a prequel: "It will find Natasha living in the United States 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union [2006], meaning we’ll meet up with Nat prior to the events of Iron Man 2. We’ve been told that early discussions about the film involved Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier. Rumors place the film on Marvel Studios slate of 2020 films, we were unable to confirm that release date
• (July, 2018) THR reports that Cate Shortland has landed the director gig (Scarlett Johansson was key in choosing her, cf)
• (September, 2018) JC claims the film will center on Y2K (1999) and flashbacks connected to Age of Ultron
• (October, 2018) CM regurgitates the now-debunked film description: "At birth the Black Widow is given to the KGB, which grooms her to become its ultimate operative. When the U.S.S.R. breaks up [1991], the government tries to kill her as the action movies to present-day New York, where she is a freelance operative. The standalone film will find Romanoff living in the United States 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union [2006]."
• (November, 2018) DF debunks the initial film breakdown (via Production Weekly) as a copy & paste of David Hayter's aborted 2004 Lionsgate film); even after this JC still insists it will focus on Y2K
• (November, 2018) CM scoops character breakdowns for the film, which he says will start shooting in March (this date was accurate until the Benson re-write, see below)
• (January) GWW (Caleb Williams) claims the movie will begin filming in February
• (January) 4C claims filming will begin in February and the story will alternate between 16-year old Black Widow in the year 2000 (revolving around the Y2K bug), and 24-year old Black Widow in the events directly preceding Iron Man 2 (the former seems very unlikely, but can't be fully debunked yet)
• (January) JCs believes the rumour that the film could be R-rated
• (February) Collider (Jeff Sneider) reports there's an eleventh hour re-write by Ned Benson, pushing back production on the film by two months (thereby confirming CM's original start date of March)
• (February) Kevin Feige denies the film will have an R-rating
• (March) CM claims Ned Benson's re-write has added an entirely new, younger character (if this is accurate, given the date, it cannot be Pugh's character)
• (March) THR reports Pugh was in negotiations to join the cast (Marvel pursuing her since December), and could only confirm that she is playing a spy
• (March) Daniel posts a (short) casting list whose only interesting listing is a young (15-25) female character (called a Camila-Mendes-type--the Riverdale-actress--this could be the actress CM references above)
• (April) Variety reports Rachel Weisz was in talks to join the cast, while THR reports David Harbour has signed on
• (April) Deadline reports O-T Fagbenle has landed a leading role
• (April) Daniel includes a few more casting notes, one of which is clearly meant to be one of the many Black Widows, while the other is a 10-13 year old Caucasian (for flashbacks perhaps?)
• (May) 4C claims Pugh's character is Yelena Belova
• (May) Sebastian Stan makes comments that suggest the film is post-Civil War
• JC (June) Repeats that the film will be set in the 1990s and involve Y2K
• R (June) Takes place before Iron Man 2 in 2005ish and that the intention is to pass the torch to the Florence Pugh version of the character. The idea is for Black Widow to begin a trilogy that will star Pugh in the sequels
• LotLB (same link) David Harbour's character in Black Widow is Ben Grimm (The Thing) before his transformation; Tim Tweeted that two characters associated with the X-Men would appear in Black Widow (while this is unlikely it can't yet be debunked because of the late re-writes of the film)
• CM (July) David Harbour's character is not Taskmaster (he believes that's O-T Fagbenle's role), and that whomever Harbour is playing is working with Rachel Weisz's character. He also clarified that the pre-Iron Man 2 idea for the film is two years old and that there have been three screen writers since. The original script he saw did not include reference to the five-year jump between Infinity War and Endgame (it's not clear what script CM saw since Hayter's would not have referenced Iron Man 2; it's also interesting that he was aware of the Eric Pearson re-write long before that became public knowledge)
• R (same link) posted a screen shot of what he claims is a now-deleted preview on Amazon of the Black Widow novelization (if true I'd guess the author is Will Corona Pilgrim, who has written the last seventeen official adaptations): Black Widow: The Heroes Journey (Set after Civil War). Natasha Romanoff, the lethal super-spy known as Black Widow, is locked in a room within Berlin’s Joint Terrorism Task Force playing cat and mouse with Agent Everett Ross. She’s wondering if Ross has any idea why she agreed to come in. He’s wondering a lot of things. What possessed her to let Steve Rogers' Captain America escape from the Berlin aircraft hanger with fugitive Bucky Barnes? Whose orders did she follow? Where is Rogers now?
• LotLB (August) Deadpool will be in the end credits of Black Widow and appear in the next Avengers film--he'll meet with Taskmaster at a bar in the former (while unlikely, given that we've been told Marvel is still 'figuring out' how to use Deadpool, this can't be debunked yet)
• 4C (September) Black Widow’s father is played by Ray Winstone; Isabela Moner plays a new KGB recruit mentored by David Harbour’s Red Guardian (given that we know Harbour has to be broken out of prison, this seems highly unlikely; also, the KGB hasn't existed since 1991--it's now the FIS or SVR, cf)
• D (September) RDJ appears via a deleted scene from Civil War
• 4C (October): Ray Winstone plays General Ivan Petrovich, Nat's surrogate father. Melina is abducting women to become new Black Widow's; Natasha and Yelena team-up to stop her, aided by Nat's old lover Rick Mason; Taskmaster pursues the pair, so they recruit Red Guardian; Mason is Taskmaster; cameos by Tony Stark and General Ross; Yelena set-up to be the next Black Widow. (It's worth noting that both CM and JC believe this is an authentic leak, whereas my theory is the poster saw the first trailer early, cf, and extrapolated)
• 4C (same link): Taskmaster is being played by Viggo Mortensen. Ray Winstone plays Black Widow’s Father in flashbacks
• 4C (November): Nat goes to Budapest to retrieve the Foxcharger (which makes a person untraceable); Yelena has been assigned to kill her, but didn't know Nat was the target; they team-up and break Red Guardian out of the gulag; three plots: 1) get the Foxcharge, 2) avoid the government chasing her, 3) stop Melina from re-activating the Black Widow program; Mason is Taskmaster and kills Red Guardian; the Black Widow's turn on Melina and kill her; Yelena kills Taskmaster and Nat gives her the Foxcharger
• 4C (November): Starts right after Civil War and ties into Ant-Man and the Wasp. Rachel Weisz is Iron Maiden and is the main villain. Taskmaster is Fagbenle and he dies at the end when Yelena kills him. He's back in the post credits somehow or there's a second Taskmaster. Might have been working with Yelena to con Nat out of Foxcharge the whole time. There are flashbacks to Nat's past lots of Red Room stuff with young her [with] Yelena, Melina and Alexei. They all have trauma from their past and it's what bonds them. Plot is stopping Melina from reactivating the Black Widow program and ruining the lives of more young women, and Nat getting this device that is basically like the "blocking" system in Black Mirror and will make her Cap and Falcon impossible to track. [M]ovie is very dark, very John Wick, and very much an obvious (sometimes heavy handed) passing of the torch to Yelena. Yelena will be a new status quo of a Black Widow who is the most ruthless MCU hero yet and it's questionable whether she will stay good or bad. Natasha realizes through the events of this movie how important the family she gained in the Avengers is. And that's why she goes back to Cap and Sam at the end. Hawkeye, Jimmy Woo, and whatever Walton Goggins character was named [Sonny Burch] all have cameos
• D (November) Says LotLB's claim about Deadpool in Black Widow is false
• R (December): Nat goes to Budapest to retrieve the Foxcharger (as above); Melina is kidnapping and training more women to be Black Widows; Nat realizes she and Yelena have been lured into a trap (by Taskmaster); they escape and crash with Rick Mason; learn Taskmaster is killing off everyone from the Red Room and that Melina is working with him; Mason is kidnapped and Nat is forced to rescue Red Guardian; learn Mason is Taskmaster, then Yelena betrays her because she's also working with him; Taskmaster is capturing women for Melina (who also plans to use Red Guardian's blood to reproduce the super soldier serum); Yelena made a deal to save herself by working for them, but didn't know more Black Widow's were being made and decides to switch sides; the Black Widow's turn on Melina and kill her; Mason kills Red Guardian and is then killed by Yelena; Nat retrieves the Foxcharger and gives it to Yelena; Taskmaster actually survived and is working for Ross (this is very similar to 4C above)
• 4C (same link): Mid-credits you see Yelena Belova arrive at a warehouse on a motorcycle. She goes inside and tells someone off screen that she got a device from Natasha. That's revealed to be Taskmaster, but in a different, more traditional costume. He turns around and asks if they've done enough, and General Ross tells them that they are just getting started. The post-credit scene is Hawkeye on his farm with his son. He watches him play and looks at a picture of Nat, saying to himself that he misses her (this screams fanfiction to me)
• First Black Widow trailer (December)
• More footage shown at Brazil Comic Con (December)
• Screen Rant (Thomas Bacon, December) wonders if Olivier Richter's role in Black Widow is Ursa Major. His theory is derived from two separate items: 1) Richter having a role in the film, 2) an image from the trailer that seems to show a tiny bear. The character in the comics is a werebear affiliated with the Red Room/Soviet Super Heroes--however, he's huge, not small (he's also a Mutant)
• 4C (same link): Ray Winstone plays Ivan in Black Widow [her father]. Jermey Renner has a cameo as Hawkeye in the middle of the film. Linda Caradelini returns as Laura Barton in a cameo, likely dealing with Barton escaping [Civil War-induced] house arrest to help Natasha.
• Eric Pearson (January) has the only writing credit on the film
• Black Widow trailer (January)
• R (same link): Oliver Richter is playing Taskmaster (rather than Fagbenle)
• THR's Richard Newby (January) theorizes how Scarlett Johansson could stay in the MCU after her solo film is done (reflecting a Sutton/LotLB idea). His theory is that Taskmaster is actually a clone of Natasha based on their perceived similar size in the second trailer
• Black Widow trailer (March)
• Empire Magazine (March): Following the events of Civil War, Natasha is hunted by Secretary Ross. Red Guardian is described as the “slightly budget” Soviet version of Captain America. Taskmaster is described as “every woman’s nightmare come to haunt her”. It’s widely believed that it’s Mason behind the mask and he’s said to be Natasha’s love interest from the past. Ray Winstone is playing Dreykov who is the head of the Red Room and likely the same Dreykov that Loki mentioned in the first Avengers.
• 4C (March, link above): Throughout the movie there are flashbacks of Nat’s childhood in the Red Room and the Budapest incident. Nat was sent by the Russian government to assassinate Draco, who was negotiating with their enemies, via car bomb. Nat tried to abort when she found out Draco’s daughter was with him, but the Russians betrayed her and let the bomb explode. Draco was believed to have died, but actually survived. Hawkeye was there spying on Draco and received the order kill Nat, but recognized she was genuinely guilt for the girl’s death. The Russians went after Nat for cleanup, but Nat and Hawkeye fought them off, and he brought her to the U.S. to be recruited into SHIELD and make up for her mistakes. First after-credits scene is Ross’ men retrieving Alexei’s blood from the wreckage of the Red Room, which Ross orders them not to report. They also find Mason badly wounded but alive. Ross orders them to bring him Mason as he might be useful. Second after-credits scene is Yelena visiting a makeshift grave for Nat in Hawkeye’s farm. She says she has no family and no purpose left, Hawkeye says Nat wanted her to have both, and gives her Nat’s old stingers. Jeremy Renner is in it more than people expect, but he's the only one. No Chris Evans, no Samuel L. Jackson, and just archive footage of Robert Downey Jr.
• Grace Randolph (March) claimed Disney was considering putting Black Widow on Disney+, something that JC echoed the next day and CM echoed obliquely on his Twitter feed
• 4C (same link): a long description of the film which is 90% about Taskmaster and debunks itself by including appearances from the Netflix characters (who, legally, can't appear in the film)

Analysis

Marvel cannot be happy with how quickly Fagbenle's role was figured out, leaving limited impact for the twist (the speculation is so ripe even casual fans may be aware of it by now). It's not at all clear why this story was so hard to crack, but clearly whatever Schaeffer and Benson wrote did not work and this was discovered late in the process. My guess is the writing changes were at Feige's insistence, since director Cate Shortland had plenty of time to absorb and consider Schaeffer's script prior to the film's original delay. Pearson previously did work on Homecoming and Ragnarok, so seems to be a known and trusted quantity.

The above list is enormous, so I took all the non-debunked elements and put them on a spreadsheet to make visualizing it easier:

The red marker is a debunking we can't confirm, while the yellow boxes indicate a scooper believing something to be true (keep in mind scooper speculation is to be taken with a grain of salt). What's fascinating is how absent the big names are from the film's content--very unlike other IP. Nearly all the rumours are via 4chan or Reddit, places of dubious worth (although they are, sometimes, correct). Don't get too caught up in how much repetition there is for an idea--this doesn't guarantee validity, just that people like the idea.

Some of these elements are, all-in-all, irrelevant (it doesn't really matter if Jimmy Woo makes a cameo or not, although I do think the MCU is trying hard to add relevance to an Ant-Man franchise that's struggling). Let's ignore those and look at the impactful plot elements above:

• 1) Melina is (partially or fully) responsible for the new Black Widow program

Despite that this would make her the primary antagonist, it seems redundant since Mason-as-Taskmaster already represents a betrayal; what it would do, potentially, is validate that the Avengers are Nat's only remaining family, but Melina's death as a hero would accomplish the same thing. I don't buy it--if the cast list CM posted two years ago is accurate, she at most has the supporting villain role

• 2) Foxcharge/Foxcharger MacGuffin

Plausible. but it's not the central focus of the plot (which is shutting down the creation of more Black Widows); it seems to be the B-plot which might have significance later (if true)--as described it seems a bit simple to be all that impactful

• 3) Taskmaster killed

This is an interesting element, as often those claiming he's killed say he survives somehow; CM has proposed a theory to make this work, saying it's his daughter who takes over the mantel, which is plausible. I'm not that interested in him (seems like a calque of Super Skrull, who I also don't find interesting--while he poses a difficult problem in terms of combat, there's no apparent larger goal to elevate him as a villain). CM's idea is a good one because then you create an antagonist with proper motivation, albeit I don't know how you make the power set interesting for more than one film. If Empire's description of Taskmaster is correct (that he's 'every woman's nightmare'), then I think he definitely dies

• 4) Melina/Red Guardian killed

Seems a foregone conclusion given Nat's speech in Endgame about having no other family--this deflates the impact it would have, but it's the logical story beat given the circumstances (who kills them isn't particularly important--part of the problem of Nat being dead is any potential character development is retroactively relevant, which seems pointless since her arc already worked)--at best this could serve to help Yelena's growth. I can't help but think what a waste it is to sign David Harbour and kill him off after a 10-15 minutes of screen time, but Marvel has done this kind of thing before so it's not implausible

• 5) Red Guardian's blood being collected

Given all the hints about the super soldier programs going forward in the MCU (from Falcon and the Winter Soldier to the eventual appearance of Wolverine), this is plausible (Ross seems like the more interesting choice for doing it) and is the most interesting element on the list (for me)

What's not clear is the motivation to re-start the Black Widow program. Is this a move by the Russian government? Or one of Marvel's various evil organizations (Hydra, AIM, etc)? Is it the work of one of Marvel's evil masterminds? It's simply not clear (although Melina or Dreykov's motivation would, presumably, be related to Russia). I'm not a fan of Russia=bad (ala Amazon's Jack Ryan series), as it's not very interesting, but it is an easy enemy for Marvel to fall back on.

We also have no insight into Taskmaster's motivation--is he out for profit (like Darren Cross or Obadiah Stane)? Desires power (ala Aldrich Killian)? Looking out for others (like Adrian Toomes)? Is he being forced (ala Winter Soldier)? Or is it revenge (ala Malekith)? We simply don't know. I don't think revenge is likely, unless he's a jilted lover.

Looking Forward

It's important to keep in mind what the point of this film is: a dramatic sendoff for Black Widow, setting up Yelena going forward, and (probably) hinting at the Thunderbolts (to be continued in Falcon and the Winter Soldier). Prequels are always problematic because they lack dramatic tension and, if we're really getting multiple deaths in the film, it's going to be very hard to end on a high note. Until the most recent trailer the marketing has been a mess and were it not for the MCU-brand I don't know how much fans would be looking forward to it. If Marvel wants the franchise to be taken over by Yelena, she will need to be very well-received, but I'm not convinced that's where they are going since Black Widow translates so easily to TV/streaming.

To broaden the scope a bit: if speculation is right that Marvel wants a version of the Thunderbolts, what do they want to do with them? One possibility is that they are doing a version of Acts of Vengeance (a 1989-90 crossover). In that story Loki tries to get revenge on the Avengers by gathering up various villains to defeat them. The problem with this idea is there currently are no formal Avengers (three dead, one retired, one crippled, another in space, etc) and that Loki's arc is almost certainly pointed towards redemption in his own series. A more realistic possibility is the Dark Reign/Seige storyline (2009-10), which the MCU could follow in spirit, simply removing Norman Osborn from it--this is a story the Thunderbolts heavily feature in and an idea Kinda Culty put out in July (albeit a different version of the team (and route to it) at that time).

What do I think? The film needs to end with her family either dead or out of the picture, as well as a (positive) resolution to the story--the nascent Black Widow program shutdown and (if it's part of the story) the Foxcharge/Foxcharger recovered. The post-credits would set-up Yelena and either Falcon and the Winter Soldier or The Eternals (possibly both). If we're getting the deaths of Nat's adopted family then I also think Taskmaster has to die (as part of the resolution of that story). What's unfortunate is just how clear all of this is--I don't find it particularly compelling, which means it requires great performances and writing (that's not to say I expect it to struggle at the box office, or that I won't enjoy it, just that my excitement for it remains low--a major part of the problem continues to be that it's a prequel for a dead character).

The next installment of this series will focus on Falcon and the Winter Soldier. These take a long time to put together, but all things being equal I'm hoping to have them out weekly until we reach IP that lacks sufficient information for discussion--this won't interrupt my usual MCU news updates, which will come out in their usual irregularly regular schedule.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)