Avengers: Endgame rounded out the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s decade-long main story with relatively few deaths. But one loss in particular is likely to sting, specifically for a certain subset of fans: that of Black Widow, a.k.a. Natasha Romanoff, Scarlett Johansson’s K.G.B.-trained fighter extraordinaire. Natasha sacrificed herself during the Avengers’ final mission: a “time heist” that sent them spinning through the past to prevent Thanos from getting his hands on all six Infinity Stones. She and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye were tasked with securing the Soul Stone; in order to do that, though, one of them had to die. Hawkeye and Black Widow fought, with each one trying to commit suicide so that the other could live—and Black Widow wound up winning, so to speak. From one perspective, it was a noble end for a beloved character; from another, it was a hasty exit for a long-sidelined heroine who has for years deserved better.
Black Widow has been a fixture of the Marvel universe for nearly 10 years—and she spent much of that time as the franchise’s only female hero, without ever getting a stand-alone film of her own (despite a near constant stream of promises that her movie was coming)). It’s a discrepancy Marvel fans have been pointing out for years, particularly because Johansson was for a long time one of the few stars among the main Avengers who had proven that she could open a blockbuster film on her own. That long-awaited Black Widow solo film may finally be on Marvel’s upcoming schedule—but it will arrive after the character has died in the series’s main continuity, and after a trajectory that’s been as all over the map as Black Widow’s varying hairstyles.
The character made her first appearance in Iron Man 2—in a scene that famously chose to focus on her desirability rather than her staggering combat skills. Black Widow has frequently used her foes’ assumptions about her against them. But since she’s never led her own movie, she’s also spent her years in the M.C.U. as an accessory to narratives foregrounding other heroes—all of which were assembled bit by bit by a collection of male directors who have placed her in a variety of skintight outfits, subjecting her to down-the-shirt camera angles and brief flirtations and quasi-romances with everyone from Hawkeye to Captain America to Bruce Banner.
That last dalliance is especially telling. In Avengers: Age of Ultron—directed by Joss Whedon—Natasha’s main story line is twofold: she’s genuinely infatuated with Banner, and she’s forced to remember the furthest reaches of her past training in the Soviet “Red Room,” where she was sterilized against her will. A particularly emotional scene finds her telling Banner, who is struggling to control his Hulk side, that if he plans to run away from the Avengers, she’ll go with him. Banner pushes her away, pointing out he can never have a family—though there had been no indication before Ultron that Natasha even wanted a family herself. Either way, she replies by telling Banner about her sterilization, then ends on a perplexing statement: “You’re not the only monster on the team.” That encounter hardly sat well with fans.
During Black Widow’s final moments in Endgame, viewers may have found the memory of that unfortunate history rushing back; the movie heavily implies that Natasha wants Hawkeye to live because he has a family, and she does not. At the beginning of the film, we watch Hawkeye enjoying a lazy afternoon with his wife and children before they’re cruelly dusted by Thanos’s finger snap; their loss turns him into a furious vigilante, but the movie implies that he can be redeemed by his love for his family, who will return once the Avengers undo Thanos’s work. Without saying it explicitly, Endgame indicates that Hawkeye has more to live for than Black Widow; as one of her friends points out after her death, the Avengers are the only family she’s ever had.
Her heroic sacrifice is in keeping with Black Widow’s history as a character who’s only ever really worked in service of someone else—helping Captain America confront his past; helping Bruce Banner through his Hulk issues; mediating a bunch of men’s competing philosophies in Civil War. Unlike Thor or Steve Rogers or Tony Stark, she’s never been at the center of a prolonged consideration about who she is and what her arc is leading toward. And yes, on top of all that, she was the only central woman in the franchise until Captain Marvel showed up—the only point of representation for all of the franchise’s female fans. (Apart from more minor characters like Peggy Carter and Gamora, whose roles in the cinematic universe are also defined by the men in their lives.)
And so we come to Endgame, a movie that gives Black Widow control of the Avengers’ operations in Nick Fury’s stead for five whole years—offscreen, in a period of time the film completely skips over. Maybe that’s because the Black Widow stand-alone film will be set during these years; it probably can’t delve into the character’s future.
But when combined with everything else Endgame does to Black Widow, the decision is frustrating. Her death comes partway through a three-hour film—meaning that the rest of the movie centers largely on all-male action scenes, save for a showy few seconds that unite Captain Marvel with the franchise’s remaining female characters. Had Black Widow been given more space, both in this film generally and in her final scene specifically, to utter even a few sentences about what being an Avenger has meant to her over the years, her death may have had more meaning; instead, her primary focus throughout her final film is that last mission. And although Endgame pauses to give characters like Steve Rogers, and Tony Stark, and even Hawkeye moments of emotional catharsis, it hardly extends the same courtesy to Natasha.
As always, she’s forced to sprint along with the film’s otherwise feverish pace, which never gives her or her death room to breathe. Tony Stark gets a lengthy, well-attended funeral; Natasha doesn’t get so much as a eulogy. The only people who really meditate on her life and the meaning of her death are her male counterparts—and why not? Natasha’s story never really belonged to Natasha anyway.
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