Following an action-packed Big Game spot and new character posters released during the Super Bowl, Marvel Studios has premiered a new synopsis for Black Widow. In the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War, where Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) broke the law when helping a fugitive Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) escape capture, Natasha faces a day of reckoning with her shadowy past when she’s reunited with “sister” Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) and Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), both products of Russia’s Red Room and the Black Widow program, and Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), the Soviet superhero far from his glory days as Russia’s version of Captain America.
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“In Marvel Studios’ action-packed spy thriller Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger,” reads the updated synopsis. “Scarlett Johansson reprises her role as Natasha/Black Widow, Florence Pugh stars as Yelena, David Harbour portrays Alexei/The Red Guardian, and Rachel Weisz is Melina. Directed by Cate Shortland and produced by Kevin Feige, Black Widow — the first film in Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — hits U.S. theaters on May 1, 2020.”
According to Feige, president and producer of Marvel Studios, Black Widow is “one movie people have been asking [Marvel Studios] to make for a very long time, more so than any other film.” Set between the events of Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, where Widow was acting as a “secret Avenger” alongside Rogers and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), Black Widow will explore that time period as well as the years before 2012’s The Avengers.
“It’s great because you get to go back a little bit in time with her, right?” Harbour previously told ComicBook.com of Natasha, who perished when making a sacrifice play in Avengers: Endgame. “And you get to explore these events and that’s one of the things that was interesting to me in the movie was because you know the events of Endgame, so you get to explore how she got there and how she got there to make that choice.”
“I think that’s the interesting part of her narrative is that we get to go back and explore this period of time between the events of Civil War and that particular arc,” Harbour continued. “One of our things is we’ve [Natasha and Alexei] known each other for a really long time, and that relationship plays into the stuff that’s come beyond. The great thing about knowing the end of an arc, you get to go back and either foreshadow or play against it and it’s very joyful for fans to see these moments or prepped character beats come in at times.”
Black Widow opens May 1.
