Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanoff, is one of my favourite characters in the MCU. (A tough, brilliant red-headed assassin with crazy martial arts and weapons' skills... it's not a stretch.) As a result, I'm not happy about what happened to her in Endgame. (This is your last warning about spoilers.) But I don't think it's quite as bad as some have made out. With some tweaks, it could have been a very powerful moment. Allow me to take a minute to run through her character arc and then I'll discuss where it could have been strengthened.
We were introduced to Black Widow in Iron Man 2. She'd been inserted into Tony Stark's staff to keep an eye on him at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s request. At first, she seems like just a pretty face but then we see her true skill set as she takes out an entire hallway of bad guys in seconds during the final conflict.
We next see her in The Avengers. She's tied to a chair with a Russian guy preparing to rip out her tongue. Then he gets a phone call from Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. and suddenly we the audience realize that Widow is actually using the Russian guy's bragging to (what he thinks is) a helpless victim to gather intelligence. She then beats up all of the guys in the room while still tied to a chair.
For her next scene, she's collecting Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk. She lures him to an isolated part of the city and talks him into coming back to S.H.I.E.L.D. to help them find the stolen Tesseract (the blue glowy cube for non-geeks). She has a fairly minor role in ferrying people to the Helicarrier, but still shows every sign of confidence and competence. She is the one who gets Loki to reveal his evil plan, by pretending to react to his gloating, which encourages him to keep talking. He thinks he's hurting her but instead, he's telling her what he intends to do.
Widow tries and fails to keep Bruce from turning into the Hulk. But she then deliberately lures him away from populated areas of the ship. To have that level of presence of mind while being chased by a giant green rage monster is impressive. It's easy to see why a lot of people glommed onto Widow as their heroine of choice. We also shouldn't forget that she is the one who retrieves Loki's sceptre and closes the wormhole to stop the alien invasion.
Lots of good moments with just these two films. She demonstrates intelligence, skill and a sense of humour. She clearly regrets her past as an assassin, referring to it as red in her ledger, a debt she owes the rest of the world. It's a classic redemption arc.
Her character gets deeper with Captain America: Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron. In Winter Soldier, she's a pivotal character. She keeps Captain America alive and helps him on his quest to find the titular Winter Soldier. And when she realizes that H.Y.D.R.A. has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D., she is the one who releases all of their secrets to the public, including her own. (And there's another kick-ass fight scene where she infiltrates the H.Y.D.R.A. elite.) In Ultron, she got a romance arc with Bruce Banner (which did not end well, a perennial sore point for me with the Marvel and DC universes). She's got the guts to tell him how she feels, too, despite not knowing if he feels the same. She is effectively managing and overseeing the team, though Cap still functions as the inspirational team lead.
In Captain America: Civil War, she is the voice of pragmatism, cautioning both sides about dramatic action, but also the only one of the Avengers who is there for Cap during Peggy's funeral. She is the one who expresses regrets to T'Challa (the Black Panther) over his father's death. She makes the final decision to join Cap's side during the airport scene, but like the consummate spy she is, she keeps herself in a useful position for as long as possible.
She is ubiquitous in the MCU films. If they need something done, chances are they've asked Widow to do it. She is always watching and aware of multiple levels of intention and interaction. And she does it so reliably and flawlessly that she is often dismissed as a minor character.
That brings us to Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. Widow has clearly been on the run with Cap and the others who refused to sign the Sekovia accords. She's been monitoring Vision and Wanda's developing relationship, keeping an eye on a potential vulnerability but allowing them to have their human moments. She fights Thanos's alien invaders and helps to coordinate the massive battle at the end of Infinity War. In Endgame, she's taken over what's left of S.H.I.E.L.D. and has clearly dedicated her every waking moment to protecting Earth and helping to deal with the devastation post-Snap. She and Cap are still friends, both of them struggling to cope. She and Hawkeye are sent after the Soul Stone and she sacrifices herself so that the Avengers will have a chance to restore everyone who was lost in the Snap.
It's a heck of an arc and one that would be breathtaking except for two points.
1) Widow's sterilization and referring to herself as a monster in Avengers: Age of Ultron
2) The fact that she is killed and apparently unmourned by her teammates (and doesn't get brought back along with the vast majority of everyone else.)
The sterilization is a touchy point and a lot of people were very upset at the implication that a woman who is unable to be a mother is somehow a monster. I'm not sure that was what was intended, but that is basically what ended up on screen, so this is one of the areas that needs tweaks.
I think the conversation in Ultron was meant to echo back to things that happened in previous films. In The Avengers, when Widow goes to retrieve Bruce, they have a conversation in an empty home. At one point, Bruce gently rocks an abandoned cradle and comments "I don't always get what I want." Earlier in Ultron, we see Widow interacting with Hawkeye's children, clearly loving being Auntie Nat. In general, she displays a great deal of compassion and empathy. She is the one who sits and talks to the people on the team when they're having a hard time. (Hawkeye in Avengers, Cap in Winter Soldier, T'Challa in Ultron, etc.)
She reveals that as part of her "graduation" from assassin training, she was sterilized. She bites her lip as she says "it's efficient" because it removes the possibility of the one thing that could be more important than the missions assigned by her handlers. She then finishes with "still think you're the only monster on the team?"
As written, that's problematic. However, I think the intention was for her to reveal that she destroyed something she deeply wanted in order to be an efficient killer. So much about Widow's character is about her making the choice that she thinks is right, regardless of the consequences to herself. In the case of the sterilization, that's a choice that was taken from her. With a little tweaking to add context, this could have been a very powerful statement about bodily autonomy and added motivation to Widow's overall goal of wiping out the red in her ledger, i.e. balancing out the great harm that she acknowledges she has done. I think she sees herself as a monster because she allowed others to make her choices for her, to turn her into a weapon in the hands of amoral individuals. Surrendering her agency and allowing her choice to be a mother to be taken from her in order to be a killer would be a soul-scarring moment. Infertility is a painful and devastating thing to go through for those who yearn to be parents, so that could have been a moment which showed how much Widow still struggles with what occurred during her years as an assassin.
Without the dropped ball of the infertility scene, I don't think Widow's death would have disappointed fans quite as much. There's a great deal of the tragic hero in her arc and character, so one could make an argument that this was always planned and intended. (I think the way the Soul Stone was handled is actually one of the weaker parts of Infinity War and Endgame. It was intended to be a set of emotional hits but, due to inconsistencies, doesn't quite play out as intended.)
In the Endgame scene, Widow and Hawkeye battle to sacrifice themselves. They need to get the Soul Stone to save everyone who was wiped out in the Snap. So this is exactly what we would expect heroes to do. In the final moments, Widow tells Hawkeye that it's okay to let her go. If the Russos were going to insist on her death, then I would have much preferred a final reference to wiping out the red in her ledger. That by sacrificing herself, she will finally feel she has atoned for the harm she has done in the past.
That would have been powerful, it would have reinforced the redemption arc and been consistent with her character's theme of making her own choices.
Instead, it ended up reading like Hawkeye was more valuable because he had a family, even though he'd been on a multi-continent murder spree. Widow was the one literally holding both the team and Earth together but her life meant less because she couldn't have children.
I'm really hoping that was not the intended message.
I would have preferred that Widow lived, that she would have seen restoring everyone as finally moving her ledger to the black. It also could have been awesome if she'd had the chance to step in as a mother and adopt some children. Even more awesome, she and Bruce could have gotten a happily ever after (okay, that last one was probably never going to happen because comic heroes almost never get HEAs, which is why I write them now). But it was very possible for her to get everything she wanted and still be a kick-ass superhero. That would have been incredibly satisfying to me.
And like I said, if she had to die, then it could have been much more impactful and still given a sense of closure to her arc. There needed to be more recognition of her sacrifice than a thrown bench and a two minute conversation. These are superheroes who regularly defy the laws of nature. When faced with bad choices, they find a third option. It was disappointing that her death seemed to be accepted so quickly and as inevitable.
Her death should have been mourned and her actions celebrated the same way Tony Stark's were. It should have been recognized that she made a choice to save the world by sacrificing herself, knowing that this was the final choice of her life. That's noble, top-level hero stuff and she deserved more than a passing reference.
I still love the character, and the whole 10 year MCU arc. No story is ever entirely perfect and with so many characters and intertwined storylines, mistakes and disappointment are inevitable. And the disappointment over Widow's death will inspire more stories, pushing people to create the stories where it goes "right", whatever they define that to be. I still believe that the 22 films comprise an amazing arc of unprecedented storytelling, one that gave movie audiences the same feeling I used to get reading cross-over editions and Marvel Event stories. It introduced the world to superheros and showed everyone how powerful these stories could be. I don't know that we'll ever get another experience quite like this, and I'm thrilled to have gotten to share it with so many others.
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