Ever since I did that post about Captain America’s theoretical onesie and the evolution of his costume, I’ve gotten a lot of requests to do a similar OCD breakdown analysis about Black Widow’s.
After Cap and Bucky, Widow’s easily my favourite MCU character, so I am all too happy to break it down. But just know this required me to wade through so many disgusting male comments about her costume and body that I wanted to flip my desk and set it on fire. Repeatedly. You’re welcome.
Here are the six costumes I’ll be looking at from 2010-2018.
From L to R: Iron Man 2, Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, and Avengers: Infinity War.
Putting the rest under a read more because shit’s gonna get long.
Ok but we know Nat is at least somewhat skilled in programming/coding/hacking, and if y2k is apparently going to ~start another world war~ what if she erases most if not all Russian intelligence to stop the Americans from getting their hands on it, effectively concealing her real birthdate forever, and ACTUALLY making the winter soldier and the program a ghost story, and so no one believes he exists because there’s no record of him?
I read a theory that Natasha kept her hair red when she lost her Bucky so he could find her. In infinity war, when they knew where Bucky was, her hair was blonde. The pics from avengers 4 show red hair again. She’s lost her Bucky again. It’s an interesting observation. Of course, they haven’t shown any Bucky Nat in the MCU but it’s Canon in the comics.
So I was watching the airport fight scene from ‘Captain America: Civil War’, and noticed something. You can see Natasha standing behind Steve while everyone was talking.
Whenever Hawkeye broke the webs that were on Steve’s hands, he had Scott take his shield back from Spiderman. She’s still standing there…
Then whenever Rhodey spots Bucky and Sam, Cap throws his shield to stop him. Black Widow is still standing behind him. She had nineteen seconds before Steve ran off after T’Challa, so she could’ve tried to stop him, but she chose not to.
It makes since that she didn’t try to stop him though, since she sided with him in the end. But it’s like you could see the mental battle she was having with herself throughout the whole scene…
“In a way, her head is with Tony’s side of things, but her heart is with Cap in a lot of ways.” – Anthony Russo
ALSO STEVE LOOKS SO SAD WHEN HE THOUGHT HE’D HAVE TO FIGHT HER…..
things i will never be over, natasha romanoff edition:
the increasing engagement with teammates, and specifically team-as-family as a steady character arc
i will yell forever about the Red Room spy/assassin training to lone mercenary to becoming an agent of shield and then an avenger and then to articulating that one of her priorities was staying with her team.
that she is putting in the work for the actual atonement part of a redemption arc
relatedly, she never balks from people’s criticisms of her. she’ll push back if she thinks they’re being unfair, but she doesn’t take offense
for someone who said that love is for children, she has an awful lot of people in her life that she would sacrifice everything she’s worked for to save
she accepts that other people’s choices are not her choices and that’s okay
she doesn’t devalue herself. other people might, but she knows what she’s worth.
What I keep getting stuck on is how little of this is explicit text in the films. Like, it’s THERE- we’re not pulling this out of nowhere; there’s textual precedent- but if you aren’t looking for arcs across the films, these character traits and her overall growth are, it seems, pretty easy to miss.
Which I recognize is what happens when you’re not a title character, but this storyline is CATNIP and I cannot believe they’re not letting us get fan-stoned off it more blatantly.
Wide Spread Interests 