In addition to establishing new superheroes and shedding more light on Natasha Romanoff,
"Black Widow" features numerous lines of significant dialogue. If you're ready for a deep dive
into the world of Marvel spies, here are all the lines in "Black Widow" that are more important
than you realized.
Several lines in "Black Widow" are callbacks to 2012's "The Avengers," the movie that proved
that Marvel could successfully convert the feeling of comic books to the big screen.
"The Avengers" is the film that lays the foundation for all future Natasha Romanoff character
work, and "Black Widow" wastes little time picking up those threads.
Consider, for instance, Natasha's first encounter with Bruce Banner in "The Avengers," when
he's tricked into meeting with her by a small, deceptive little girl.
"And your actress buddy, is she a spy too? They start that young?"
"I did."
This proves true during the opening sequence of "Black Widow," which flashes back to Natasha's
childhood. She objects to the Red Room taking Yelena into training because "she's only six,"
but Alexei, her surrogate father, reminds her,
"You were even younger."
"Black Widow" takes place after 2016's "Captain America: Civil War," which sees the heroes
who fought alongside Steve Rogers imprisoned by the U.S. government. It also sees Black
Widow switch sides mid-film, ultimately coming around to Steve's point of view. So it makes
sense that "Black Widow" shows us the fallout from that decision, with Secretary of State
Thaddeus Ross coming to arrest Natasha. He says,
"We got Barton, we got Wilson, and the other guy, the incredible shrinking convict."
The line is just the latest in a running gag where nobody in the Avengers knows who Scott
Lang is. When he tries to verbally spar with Tony Stark from his prison cell in "Civil
War," Stark walks right past him.
"Who are you?"
"Come on, man."
When Lang returns from the quantum realm in "Avengers: Endgame," he comments that no one
ever knows who he is.
"They're Hulk fans. They don't know Ant-Man. Nobody does, nobody does."
Even by his fellow Avengers, Scott is typically only referred to by dismissive nicknames rather
than his hero moniker, making Ross' dismissal par for the course.
While some lines in "Black Widow" reference events that take place within its fictional
universe, others speak to the meta-narrative surrounding the film. For example, one line
calls out how long it took following her MCU introduction for Black Widow to get her own
solo movie. And by the time it finally happened, she was already dead.
To its credit, the script acknowledges this injustice instead of pretending it never happened.
When Yelena tells Natasha why the master of the Red Room, General Dreykov, never came
after Natasha despite the fact that he escaped death at her hands, she explains it's because
it's unwise to attack an Avenger. She tells Natasha that it's obvious that if Dreykov
came after her, one of her fellow heroes would likely come to avenge her. But she refers
to the other Avengers as "the big ones," prompting Natasha to ask what she means by that. Yelena
replies,
"Well I doubt the god from space has to take an ibuprofen after a fight."
While she could simply be referring to Natasha's diminutive size relative to her peers, this
line could be a nod to Black Widow always being treated as secondary to her male companions.
Almost immediately after their conversation about "the big ones," Natasha and Yelena switch
to another meta-conversation, this time regarding Natasha's signature pose.
"Why do you always do that thing?"
"What thing?
"The fighting pose, you're a total poser."
Again, the commentary here is about Black Widow's image and the fact that the MCU has
mostly been interested in her as a physical object up to this point. And yet, despite
that, people really do love the Black Widow character, and the stuff she does on the silver
screen is still pretty cool. By the end of the film, Yelena acknowledges this, and even
tries out the pose, subtly nodding to her own future role as the new Black Widow.
After spending some time catching up, the Black Widow sisters' conversation turns to
the difference between a killer and a hero. While Natasha insists that she's left behind
the former and embraced the latter, Yelena argues that Natasha's popularity doesn't wash
the blood off her hands. Yelena gets in a pointed jab when she says,
"I'm not the killer that little girls call their hero."
This is the moral conundrum that Natasha has grappled with since the beginning. Can an
assassin be a hero? What does the Black Widow's celebrity status imply, when she's adored
by young girls around the world despite the sins of her past? This isn't the first time
that "Black Widow" addresses the central conflict that inhabits both the character of Natasha
Romanoff and her place in the cultural landscape. It's an issue the MCU will likely still have
to grapple with going forward, since Yelena will be faced with similar questions in a
different context.
After being separated as children, Yelena tells Natasha that she made up an imaginary
life for her former spy family. She tells her that she pretends that her parents still
live in Ohio, while her sister moved out west and became a science teacher. However, she
says that Natasha only works part time now following the birth of her son. As for her
pretend nephew's father, Yelena says,
"Your husband, he renovates houses."
While in the MCU this is just a happy fiction Yelena tells herself for comfort, the lines
have some real-life significance. When he's not playing Natasha's best friend Clint Barton,
a.k.a. Hawkeye in the MCU, actor Jeremy Renner has a lucrative side business renovating and
flipping houses. And while Barton is happily married to Laura Barton in the MCU, the line
is likely a nod to all the fans who had once hoped to see Clint and Natasha pair off. The
duo may be solely platonic on screen, but this exchange seems to indicate that some
people behind the scenes at Marvel also not-so-secretly wish these two would get together.
Prior to "Black Widow," the most we ever saw of Natasha's inner conflict came during an
infamous scene in "Avengers: Age of Ultron." In it, she tells Bruce Banner that she was
sterilized as part of her Red Room training.
"You still think you're the only monster on the team?"
At the time, this line caused a storm of controversy from people who thought the script was equating
the inability to have children with monstrousness. "Black Widow" returns to this idea by having
Yelena brutally describe the forced sterilization in a moment of dark humor. She also asks Natasha
at one point if she ever wished for kids.
Deliberately reminding the audience of the "Age of Ultron" criticism might seem like
a misstep, but the "Black Widow" narrative makes it very clear that Natasha and Yelena
are victims of abuse, not monsters.
Alexei Shostakov, the Russian agent posing as Black Widow's father that we meet early
in the film, was formerly a Russian superhero called the Red Guardian. When we catch up
with Alexei in the modern day, he's in prison, using his super strength to beat people at
arm-wrestling. After Natasha and Yelena break him out, he asks Natasha if Captain America
ever mentioned him after they fought in the 1980s, calling Steve Rogers,
"My great adversary in this theater of geopolitical conflict; not so much a nemesis, more like
a contemporary, you know? Co-equal. I always thought there was a great deal of mutual respect."
While Red Guardian really did fight Captain America in the comics, Steve Rogers was frozen
in ice from 1945 to 2011, making an encounter in the '80s seemingly impossible. However,
considering the MCU's wonky time-travel mechanics and recent introduction of variants in "Loki,"
it's possible that Alexei really battled a different version of Steve in the 1980s after
all.
While Natasha and Yelena see Alexei as having committed unforgivable wrongs against them,
Alexei takes pride in helping them become two of the world's deadliest assassins. Totally
incapable of taking a hint, he embraces Natasha and Yelena, telling them,
"Your ledgers must be dripping, just gushing red!"
As any MCU fan worthy of the title will remember, this line is a direct reference to an exchange
in "The Avengers." When Natasha visits Loki in his cell to help Clint Barton, she says
she owes Barton a debt.
"I got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out."
Loki responds by revealing that Barton told him all about Natasha's murderous past — including
a reference to "Dreykov's daughter," which finally pays off in "Black Widow." He tells
her she has committed too many wrongs to ever account for.
"Your ledger is dripping. It's gushing red!"
The reference is extremely on-the-nose, but we can only imagine how jarring it must've
been for Natasha to hear it.
Another satisfying callback to Natasha's scene with Loki in "The Avengers" comes later in
"Black Widow," after she's confronted General Dreykov. In the "Avengers" scene, Natasha
acts intimidated, but it's all a ploy to get the God of Mischief to give away his plan.
"Thank you for your cooperation."
When Natasha pretends to be helpless against Dreykov in "Black Widow," it's reminiscent
of her "Avengers" introduction, which also saw her feigning helplessness. Although the
narrative does an excellent job of convincing viewers that Dreykov has power over Natasha,
it turns out that she's actually been in control of the situation the entire time. The reveal
is made clear when she thanks Dreykov for his cooperation.
We never thought we'd get the backstory for the vest that Natasha wears in "Avengers:
Infinity War," but "Black Widow" gave it to us anyway.
As it turns out, the vest initially belonged to Yelena. It was the first thing she bought
for herself after being freed from Dreykov's mind control. She can't get over how cool
it is, and the sisters repeatedly exclaim over the fact that it has pockets, a tongue
in cheek nod to the lack of utility common in women's clothing. When Natasha leaves her
family behind at the end of "Black Widow," Yelena gives her the vest, saying,
"I guess you should take this, I know how much you like it."
"I like your vest."
"I knew it, I knew you did. It's so cool, right?"
If there's any one line in "Black Widow" that hits you right in the gut, it's the moment
when Melina tells Natasha to take care of herself, just before they separate. Natasha
responds,
"Don't worry, I got this."
Sadly, we have no reason to think that Natasha ever saw any members of her adopted family
again. It's possible that future MCU installments will reveal that they met up a few times in
the couple of years between "Black Widow" and "Infinity War," but we don't know for
sure. Seeing her restore her bonds with her old family while knowing her ultimate fate
is difficult to watch, given her sacrifice in "Endgame." Ultimately, Natasha decided
to go against Melina's final piece of motherly wisdom, opting to give her life in order to
save the world.
Like almost every installment in the MCU, "Black Widow" is a movie about found family.
The reforming of Natasha's dysfunctional secret agent family helps her change her attitude
toward the Avengers. She goes from accepting their dissolution at the beginning of the
film to resolving to put them back together by the end. In the final scene, she says,
"It's funny. My whole life, I didn't think I had any family. Turns out I got two. One
of them is a bit of a mess right now. I'm gonna go break a few of them out of prison,
see if I can't help patch things up."
This implies that it was Natasha, not just Steve, who hatched the plan to break the incarcerated
Avengers out of prison at the end of "Civil War." Later, her sacrifice helps reunite billions
of families throughout the universe. Ultimately, "Black Widow" shows that although Natasha
Romanoff may claim to work better alone, she truly does have a soft spot for family.
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