The upcoming Black Widow film promises deeper insight into the past of Natasha Romanoff than the MCU has ever offered its audience before. While brief glimpses in the franchise hint at her backstory, nothing concrete can be made out. That led to many fans look to the pages of Marvel Comics for clarity, but instead came out with more questions than answers. After all, the truth is a complicated thing in the world of international espionage.
Part of what makes the Black Widow's origins difficult to parse through is that for decades after her initial appearance there was no mention of the Red Room or the childhood training that would eventually define her character. When Natasha first appeared it was as an Iron Man villain, a Soviet agent sent to undermine the thriving capitalist, and the details of her past that emerged soon after were quite different than they are today.
At the time of her debut, the Black Widow believed herself to have been a ballerina in the Russian Bolshoi. After she fell in love with test pilot Alexei Shostakov her happiness ended all too soon when her husband during a mission to space. Wanting to honor Alexei's service to the Soviet government, Natasha became their most capable spy and assassin.
At least, that's what Natasha believed. Over the years of her continuity, the details of that origin for Black Widow would slowly unravel. It soon came to light that her late husband did not actually die at all, and his death was merely a ruse by the KGB to turn Alexei into the super soldier Red Guardian. Such a discovery would set a precedent for Black Widow stories: neither Natasha nor her readers should trust the past her stories show.
Through the next two decades, there was never a mention of the Red Room training that would eventually be integral to Natasha's past, and instead, the Black Widow spoke frequently of her previous career as a ballerina and Olympic athlete. The insights into her childhood primarily concerned a building fire orphaning her at an early age and leading to her rescue by Ivan, who was the key piece of her supporting cast for years. Further flashbacks showed her wartime run-in with Wolverine and Captain America, and soon the contradictions started to add up.
By the time the comics introduced the governmental Red Room program that brainwashed and trained children to become elite assassins and spies, Natasha's past became wholly inconsistent. How could she have trained as a Russian agent in her childhood but then only believe she worked for the government after her husband's death when she was an adult? How did Ivan and Wolverine saving her at different times during her childhood stack up with her time in the Red Room, and why hadn't she aged if she was around for WWII and the Cold War but looked to be a young adult in the '90s?
It wasn't until the 2004 Black Widow miniseries that Marvel creators explained how all the puzzle pieces fit together. While most of Black Widow's solo series delve into the secrets of her past, her 2004 mini took the time to make all her previous stories coincide. When Natasha finally got ahold of her childhood svengali, she found out the truth of her past.
The truth was that in 1928, Ivan rescued the infant Natalia Romanova from a burning building in Stalingrad and turned her over to the care of spymaster Taras Romanoff. It was under Taras' guidance that Natasha began her childhood training, which eventually included Wolverine's tutelage. All of that preceded Natasha's induction in the Red Room's Black Widow program that would provide the brainwashing necessary to explain all previous inconsistencies.
Still a child, Natasha underwent biochemical engineering that altering her body chemistry to never get sick, age, or lose its near physical perfection. The same engineering instilled in her not only the brainwashed memories of her career as a ballerina but the inability to think about the inconsistencies in her personal history without feeling physically nauseated. From that point on, Natasha was brainwashed to believe anything the Russian government wanted her to believe, and she rose to the top of their ranks to become the deadliest secret agent in the world.
Occasionally, the comics still throw curveballs into Natasha's backstory like nanobots that infect everyone she's ever slept with or a subdermal microchip that collects data on all her allies. Most recently, the biggest upset was the reveal that Natasha's body was actually cloned and her mind stored on a Russian telepath, allowing her to survive her death in Secret Empire. With every new solo, there are new revelations about the Black Widow's backstory, and if fans can expect anything, it's that her upcoming movie will do just the same.
Directed by Cate Shortland, Black Widow stars Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Florence Pugh stars as Yelena, David Harbour as Alexei aka the Red Guardian and Rachel Weisz as Melina. The film opens May 1, 2020.