Black Widow isn’t an unsurprising title for Marvel’s upcoming solo movie about super spy Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), but it is a bit boring. Fortunately, there’s a simple, accurate change we could make: Black Widows.
Rachel Weisz, who plays a character named Melina, has confirmed to IGN that there are at least three women with the Black Widow title running around in this movie. As this is basically a prequel to the story of the Black Widow we know, that only makes sense. We’ve always known that the program that Natasha went through wasn’t just for her alone.
Comic Book transcribed the video:
"There are quite a number [of them]. I’m a Black Widow and Scarlet and Florence [Pugh]. There are quite a lot of other characters that you meet who are also Black Widows. I call tell you that Melina has been cycled through the Black Widow Red Room program by the time the film starts. She started being cycled through when she was a child and so, she’s a highly accomplished spy and assassin. But I can’t tell you her relationship to anyone else."
Weisz might not be able to tell us about “her relationship to anyone else,” but we can certainly theorize now that we know a bit more about what’s going on. Uproxx points to a fan theory saying that Melina is actually the villain/antihero the Taskmaster, but in the comics, Melina Vostokoff is best known as the Iron Maiden, a rival of Natasha Romanoff’s from within the program.
Rachel Weisz will portray Iron Maiden in the upcoming Black Widow movie!!!! pic.twitter.com/D4Z4U1qcbK
— sofia | she/they (@foxymcneilia) July 21, 2019
Perhaps the movie will show Melina receiving the metallic suit that gives her the name, which she takes it in order to try and defeat Natasha once and for all. There might even be some connections to the Winter Soldier’s metallic arm, in the sense that the suit could be presented as the product of the same research that gave Bucky his arm.
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Pugh, by the way, plays a spy named Yelena Belova. There are pretty significant age gaps between these actors, with Pugh the youngest at 23, Johansson at 34, and Weisz at 49. It’s possible that Yelena is sent out first, as a younger, more expendable assassin, with Melina emerging later after a potential failure to possibly team up with the Taskmaster.
With May 2020 so far away, we have plenty of time to learn about who Melina and the rest of the Black Widows really are.
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