A deleted final showdown for Black Widow, and more Red Guardian, Taskmaster, and Yelena
moments were all cut from the final version of the movie.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, I'm Jan and in this video, I'm revealing all the deleted
scenes from Black Widow, a post-credits moment that teased Natasha's return from the dead,
plus the Avenger cameo you never got to see!
Spoilers ahead, of course, so take care.
The Black Widow post-credits scene sees Yelena visiting Natasha's tombstone in Ohio and as
she mourns her sister she whistles softly.
(WHISTLES LONG NOTE) This is the same whistle the sisters used
to call to each other as children and which they also did as they parted at the end of
the movie.
(WHISTLES LONG NOTE) (WHISTLES LONG NOTE)
In the end-credits scene, after Yelena whistles there's a brief pause as if she waits or hopes
for a response, as do we, but there isn't one.
However, Black Widow director Cate Shortland has now revealed in an interview with Variety
that there were discussions about including a whistle reply in the scene.
Natasha, of course, died in Endgame when she gave her life in return for the Soul Stone
and, together with Tony Stark, she's one of the few Avengers that have so far remained
dead in the MCU.
If Yelena had heard a reply to her whistle, even if it seemed like it wasn't real and
she'd imagined it, then I expect it would have fuelled lots of speculation that Natasha
could soon return in an upcoming MCU project, similar to some fans' wishful hoping about
Iron Man's hammer sound at the end of Endgame.
Many other dead Marvel characters have already made a return to the MCU including Vision
and Loki, albeit in different versions or timelines,
and even Coulson was reanimated for Agents of SHIELD after Loki killed him in The Avengers,
so I wouldn't be totally opposed to the OG Black Widow returning if it was done in the
right way.
After all, we don't know exactly what happens to a character when they go the MCU version
of the Soul World and whether there's any way they could be retrieved.
Thanos saw and spoke to a young version of dead Gamora after he snapped, a hint that
the Soul World could be accessible perhaps.
Of course, there'd be many fans who'd love for Natasha to return in a Black Widow sequel
or even a different movie, and I think that including the whistle response
would have given fans the impression that Marvel was committed to doing that in some
way, which is my guess for why they ultimately didn't do it.
Leave a thumbs-up if you wish there'd been a whistle response and let me know whether
you think Natasha should come back from the dead.
The main events of the movie culminate with Team Natasha taking out Dreykov, liberating
his brainwashed widows, and crashing the airborne Red Room to the ground.
As Secretary Ross together with a large military convoy heads towards the crash site, Nat sends
her adoptive family and the Red Room survivors away, while she waits to face the music alone.
What exactly happens next is left to our imagination as the film cuts to black before returning
with an epilogue scene set two weeks later that shows Natasha is still free.
Footage from the Black Widow trailers, however, indicates that originally there was an alternate
or extended version of this ending where Ross gets out to survey the scene together with
his SWAT team from the beginning of the movie.
You can see from the Hungarian writing on the truck behind Ross that the Red Room appeared
to crash down somewhere in Hungary, perhaps even near Budapest.
There's also deleted footage in the trailers of armed marksmen emerging from cars and scores
of military personnel taking up positions among the wreckage of the Red Room with their
sights presumably set on Natasha.
It seems that this would have been an almost impossible situation for Natasha to escape
from by herself although given some of the crazy fun action in the movie,
it's not unfeasible to think she might have found a way out, given she and Hawkeye survived
a shootout with the Hungarian Special Forces many years earlier.
It's also possible that she somehow struck a deal with Ross or tricked him again in some
way though I don't think he'd be especially amenable to a negotiation.
There were some great moments with David Harbour's Red Guardian while he's locked up in the Russian
prison and we find him bragging about the supposed battles he had with Captain America!
What year was this?
Like, '83, '84.
Captain America was still frozen in ice then.
And the prison break when Natasha and Yelena come to rescue him originally included more
extensive Red Guardian combat scenes.
The marketing materials show him fighting other prisoners who got out after a prison
riot kicked off.
And in some behind-the-scenes footage, we can also see Alexei fighting off a pack of
prison guards, whereas in the final version Red Guardian's only encounter with a guard
is while he's climbing up one of the walls.
I suspect the longer prison fight was cut for time given the final movie was already
around two hours and a quarter, though personally I never felt the film dragged.
Some more Red Guardian moments from the trailers that didn't make it into the final movie,
include Alexei flexing and admiring his muscles in Melina's bathroom which is deleted from
the scene where he decides to put on his old Red Guardian suit.
We also don't get to see him putting on his helmet as he does here in the promos.
And Alexei's reaction after he leaves the bathroom with his costume on is noticeably
different in the trailer compared to the final movie.
Still fits!
Still fits.
Speaking to Inverse, director Cate Shortland said that there was a good deal of improvisation
on set, especially during the dinner table reunion.
And I found some more dialogue by Alexei for that scene in the trailers that wasn't used
in the final film.
Back together again.
You got fat.
It's mainly water weight.
In the final version of the movie, this is how that exchange goes instead:
You got fat.
But still good.
I just got out of prison.
I, uh...
I have a lot of energy.
Oh!
Please don't do that.
Also in the trailers, but not in the final film, is footage of Taskmaster watching Black
Widow fight and analysing her moves.
His call sign's Taskmaster.
And that line from Yelena did not make it into the final film either.
By the way, the footage from that cut scene is actually taken from Natasha's hallway fight
in Iron Man 2.
In the final movie, Taskmaster analyses Natasha's moves during the fight on the bridge rather
than in advance and, instead, we see the antagonist studying a Hawkeye fight scene, which sets
up the Taskmaster arrow attack on Nat and Yelena in Budapest.
There's also a small piece of dialogue that Dreykov appears to say to Taskmaster in the
trailers that wasn't in the final film.
Bring her... home.
This appears to imply that originally part of Taskmaster's mission was to capture Natasha
or Yelena and take her to the Red Room, rather than just retrieve the antidote vials which
seemed to be her main mission in the finished film.
The story of who was underneath the mask and how she was part of Natasha's red ledger fitted
well with the overall theme of the movie about the abuse of girls and women.
However, I think the movie's promotional material led many fans to believe Taskmaster was going
to be a much bigger villain, for example, the way one trailer was cut even implied that
Taskmaster was going to be the big bad rather than Dreykov.
His call sign's Taskmaster.
He controls the Red Room.
I really enjoyed the film; however, the marketing may well have set the
wrong expectations for fans going in to the movie when it came to Taskmaster's role.
Natasha and Yelena also had some deleted and alternate versions of their scenes in Budapest.
After their fight in the apartment, this quip from Natasha was cut from the final movie.
It's good to see you too sis.
And then there's a line from Yelena that appeared in lot of the promos for the film.
Natasha my sister, after all this time, what brings you home?
I can see why this was cut as it doesn't make a lot of sense in the movie given that it
was Yelena who sent Natasha the vials of antidote together with their childhood photo in the
first place, so Yelena already knew why Natasha had come home.
And there's also a line deleted from Yelena's dialogue about what she imagined Natasha's
life would have been like in America.
You're thinking about moving, but you're waiting for the interest rates to go down.
We did get to briefly see some of the Red Room widows training in unison after Team
Natasha arrived on the floating platform.
However, as you might expect for any big film like this and as we can see from the trailers,
a lot more footage was shot of the Widows' training choreography that didn't make it
into the final cut.
And a cameo by Tony Stark was also apparently on the cards according to a September 2019
Deadline report from the Saturn Awards where it was stated that,
"Downey will be seen in the role of Stark one more time in the Marvel prequel Black
Widow."
Clearly Tony Stark wasn't in the movie, although Yelena did mention him at one point as one
of Natasha's Avenger scientist friends who she thought could help analyse the mind-control
antidote formula.
Why don't you take it to one of your super-scientist friends?
Tony Stark, maybe?
Given their final words in Civil War though, I doubt they'd have been on speaking terms
during the main events of the Black Widow, so I don't think it would have made a lot
of sense for him to appear in the film.
T'Challa told Ross what you did, so... they're coming for you.
I'm not the one that needs to watch their back.
Still, possible scenarios where he might have fit would have been via a flashback or reusing
footage from a previous movie, like when Thor: Ragnarok used an Age of Ultron clip of Natasha
to calm the Hulk and bring back Banner.
Alternately, Tony could have been a voice over the phone, similar to how Hawkeye's voice
was in the movie during the flashback to the assassination attempt on Dreykov.
BARTON: (ON RADIO) We need confirmation Dreykov's in the building.
Since recording this video, Cate Shortland has revealed in an interview with Games Radar
that initially there were discussions about whether any of the other Avengers or existing
Marvel characters should be included in the movie, but in the end both she and Kevin Feige
agreed that, "She doesn't need the boys.
We didn't want it to feel like she needs the support.
We want her to stand alone.
And she does."
And if you want to see all the Black Widow connections to the MCU which did make it in
to the final movie, things you missed in the post-credits scenes, and the secret link between
Bucky and the Red Room, tap here to watch my Black Widow MCU Changes video or follow
the link in the video description.
So, do you wish any of these deleted scenes had been in the final movie?
And do you think we'll ever see Black Widow again on screen?
Comment with your thoughts below and if you enjoyed this then do like and share the video,
I really appreciate it.
You can tap left for my full Black Widow breakdown or tap right for another video you're sure
to like.
Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!