At long last, the "Black Widow" solo movie has arrived and Natasha Romanoff is getting
her time in the spotlight.
In addition to potentially laying the groundwork for future stories, the prequel also offers
a few sly winks at the MCU and Marvel Comics.
Here are some Easter eggs you missed in "Black Widow."
When "Black Widow" moves to its present day timeline of 2016, our title hero is on the
run from probably the busiest Secretary of State in U.S. history, retired General Thaddeus
"Thunderbolt" Ross, who's convinced he's got her pinned down.
Natasha calls Ross on his cell, warning him not to embarrass himself.
It turns out that she's on a ferry in Norway, which, at best, puts Ross six time zones and
a continent away.
As Nat settles into her new home, courtesy of her ally and supplier, Mason, she cracks
a Norwegian beer and settles in to watch Roger Moore do his thing as Agent 007; apparently
she's a big enough James Bond fan to quote the film line-by-line.
This Easter egg comes in the form of her movie of choice, which Bond superfans will instantly
recognize as "Moonraker."
There are some obvious parallels between "Moonraker" and "Black Widow."
Both films feature an evil megalomaniac bent on world domination, pulling strings from
a remote base in the sky — a space station for "Moonraker" antagonist Hugo Drax and the
hovering Red Room installation of "Black Widow" big bad Dreykov.
Both primary antagonists also have a strong and silent heavy — Drax's chief henchman
Jaws and Dreykov's daughter-turned-puppet Antonia, aka Taskmaster — who only speaks
once, after their loyalty shifts.
When his sleeper cell-slash-family escapes the United States to Cuba, Alexei is thrilled.
After all, he was the Red Guardian, the Soviet Union's first and only super soldier!
He had no business flying under the radar in the American Midwest, stealing secrets;
he belongs on the battlefront.
"Ha ha ha!
Still fits!"
When Natasha and Yelena rescue him from prison, he describes their time as a faux family as
"tedious" and "boring," for which he tells an obviously upset Yelena he means no offense
in deriding the only family she had ever known.
As the movie goes on, Alexei's affections for his fake daughters come out from behind
the gruff and rigid exterior he shows the world.
But viewers paying close attention to his tattoos could have reached that conclusion
much sooner.
Those two roses on his bicep, one of which appears to have a drop of blood or tear falling
from it?
It just so happens that the names on the ribbon translate to Natasha and Yelena.
As Natasha and Yelena are flying in to free Alexei, their tablet showing the facility''s
layout gives away his location: Seventh Circle Prison.
Fans of certain Marvel Comics properties will know that there's an eight-issue run of the
Daredevil-Punisher team-up series called "Seventh Circle," but even though the Black Widow has
been associated with both of those characters previously, it's unlikely that's the intended
reference.
It seems much more likely that it's a reference to Dante's "Divine Comedy," more specifically,
"Inferno."
In Dante's 14th century poem, the seventh circle of Hell is where sinners who've committed
violence are tortured by centaurs and harpies.
Fans of classical Greek mythology may recall harpies — loathsome, screeching creatures
with the head of a woman and the body of a great bird — harassed Aeneas in Virgil's
epic poem the "Aeneid", spoiling his crew's food so they could not eat.
That sure sounds like a certain pair of prison guards who've stolen the baked goods Alexei's
fans have sent him.
Before his liberation from the Seventh Circle Prison, Alexei regales his fellow inmates
with the tales of his glory days as the Red Guardian — Marvel Comics' Soviet-Russian
foil to Captain America — as he nonchalantly takes on all comers in arm wrestling.
It's clearly a tale they've heard before, but one prisoner — credited as "Muscular
Gulag Inmate" to avoid spoilers — doesn't buy Alexei's story, pointing out that Captain
America was still frozen when the story supposedly took place.
Alexei isn't amused, asking "Are you calling me a liar, Ursa?" before slamming the man's
arm to the table, breaking it.
"Look at the big bear," he says mockingly.
It looks like we just met Mikhail Ursus, aka Ursa Major, a Soviet mutant who is able to
transform into a brown bear.
It's not the last time Alexei's heyday is mocked; at Melina's farm, he tries to comfort
Yelena, only to have his concern rebuffed.
She says, "The only thing you care about is your stupid
glory days as the Crimson Dynamo and no one wants to hear about it."
It appears to be meant as an insult — with Yelena either mocking his former code name
or actually forgetting it — which Alexei corrects.
But Yelena has actually invoked yet another Russian Marvel character, one we're unlikely
to see in the MCU in a version faithful to the source material.
Why?
Crimson Dynamo was the name Anton Vanko — father to "Iron Man 2" villain Ivan Vanko, aka Whiplash
— took when wearing his own powered armor.
As Yelena and Natasha are holed up in the rafters of a Hungarian subway station, the
two discuss the latter's previous time hiding out in Budapest.
Nat's already made a reference to Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye, in telling Yelena that the holes
in the safehouse walls were made by arrows, not bullets.
She then reveals that she and Barton spent two days hiding out there previously, at which
point the camera shows a series of games played on a ventilation duct.
There are a few games of tic-tac-toe and a game of Hangman, which someone seems to have
lost.
It seems to pretty clearly spell "butterfly," but it wouldn't make for much of an Easter
egg if it was that straightforward.
These insects have been cropping up in the MCU, with the butterflies in "WandaVision"
being the most recent example.
Perhaps the most direct connection is to Layla Miller, aka Butterfly, a Marvel Comics mutant
with a broad range of abilities; one of her powers is the ability to reanimate living
things, but without restoring their souls.
It's an intriguing reference, given the exchange on Vormir in Endgame, in which Natasha traded
her life to get Clint the Soul Stone.
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