Marvel fans unite as another highly anticipated film set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been released, featuring our favourite powerful female assassin.

We as the audience have been waiting for the Avenger Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson, to be the lead in her own film for around eleven years since she was first introduced to the Marvel films. And finally, that moment has arrived as the first film installment of Phase 4 of the MCU. ‘Black Widow’ serves as a standalone origin story surrounding the life of Natasha, preceding the events of the final installment in the Avengers film series Endgame, in which we see (spoilers and heartbreak ahead) Natasha sacrifice herself in order to save Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and half the universe.

At the start of the film, we see Natasha and her apparent sister Yelena Belova, played by breakout star Florence Pugh, as children, with what appears to be their parents. However, what begins as an ordinary family scene quickly turns on its head, as the parents, who are actually undercover Russian agents, escape to Cuba with the girls. Soldiers then take Natasha and Yelena to an assassin training program known as ‘Red Room’ in Soviet Russia. Here we see where Natasha acquired her kickass fighting skills she uses in several Avengers films.

The two girls reunite years later. Along with their fake parents Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), and Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), they head off to free the other ‘Widows’ who were trained in the same place as Natasha and Yelena and are being controlled through mind control.

It seems a little strange that Marvel decided to suddenly create a solo Black Widow film, as the franchise has introduced many new shows and movies since Endgame in 2019, and Natasha/Black Widow was beginning to become a distant memory. However, it seems Marvel isn’t ready for fans to forget about one of the most iconic and original Avengers just yet.

Natasha is easily one of the first female superhero characters that fans were introduced to way back in 2010, when she appeared in Iron Man 2 alongside Robert Downey Jr. She has since had roles in several Marvel films, all of which have been relatively small or haven’t added much to the overall film, yet despite this, she is still a favourite among fans.

The comedy element to Black Widow, particularly the comedic one-liners and care-free insults we see from Yelena, really adds to the plot and offers a nice relief from the intense action and fight scenes. We also see a lot more of Natasha’s personal life and her personality in more detail, which allows the audience to empathise a lot more with her and come to know her as her own character, and not just the side character that she was in a lot of the Avengers films.

With two kickass female leads, ‘Black Widow’ really emphasises the importance of ‘girl power’ and refutes the outdated idea that females need a man to protect them. There is a heart-warming element to this film as well, as there is a strong emphasis on family and facing up to the past.  

There are some seriously good action sequences in this film, but at some points, it seems as though the film relies solely on the fighting and action sequences to help the plot progress. The film is very fast-paced and sometimes a little complicated to understand, probably as events that occurred over several years have been crammed into one singular two-hour movie, and as (again, spoilers) Natasha is dead in the present day, there can be no more ‘Black Widow’ films to continue the story or split it up into different parts.

Instead, the film introduces a possible new Avenger to the team, Yelena herself. Perhaps Florence Pugh is set to take over Scarlett Johansson’s role as the new Black Widow? The film’s ending definitely leads the audience to believe this, as we see present-day Yelena set out to avenge Natasha’s death, as she falsely learns that Clint Barton was the one responsible for her death. It’s a nice setup, and it leads quite conveniently into the Hawkeye series that’ll be coming to Phase 4 of Marvel and will join ‘Loki,’ ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,‘ and ‘WandaVision‘ as a tv series on Disney+.

If you haven’t yet watched Black Widow, it will be arriving on Disney+ in a few days among all the other Marvel tv shows and films mentioned above, and it’s definitely worth a watch, especially if you’ve been a big Marvel fan since the start.