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?”

It’s what makes the standalone