Black Widow Finally Pays Off a Key Avengers Moment with Loki

After years worth of anticipation (including some lengthy delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic), [...]

After years worth of anticipation (including some lengthy delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic), Marvel Studios' Black Widow movie is officially out to the masses, with the blockbuster film being available both in theaters and on Disney+. The film finally provides Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) with a solo adventure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, something that fans have wanted to see in the franchise for quite some time. The story, which is set between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, provided context for some key moments in Natasha's story — including paying off a moment that first occurred in The Avengers. Major spoilers for Black Widow below! Only look if you want to know!

The film revolves around Natasha and her found family being thrown into a conspiracy tied to the Red Room, the organization responsible for the Black Widow program. During her tenure as an Avenger, Natasha had believed that the Red Room was destroyed — and over the course of the film, we began to learn why. Natasha revealed that the infamous "Budapest" mission that she and Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) had brought up in Avengers was the final step in her deflection to S.H.I.E.L.D., and it involved killing General Dreykov (Ray Winstone), the man behind the Black Widow program. In order to kill Dreykov in an explosion, Natasha decided to utilize his young daughter, Antonia, as bait, and she'd believed that she killed them both in the process.

This plays off of an exchange between Natasha and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) in The Avengers, where he revealed that he's learned information about Natasha's past from a mind-controlled Clint. Loki taunts Natasha by mentioning "Dreykov's daughter, Sao Paulo, [and] the hospital fire" as incidents that had previously occurred in Natasha's past.

Of course, Black Widow also adds another layer to Natasha's belief that she'd killed Dreykov and his daughter, with the events of the film revealing that both survived the explosion. Antonia, who had been severely injured in the blast, was then experimented on and turned into Taskmaster, a masked supersoldier that Dreykov deployed on significant missions.

A moment later on in Black Widow also homages the Loki scene, with Natasha's taunts to Dreykov ultimately ending with her saying "Thank you for your cooperation", the same thing she said to the God of Mischief at the end of their conversation.

Leading up to Black Widow, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige had hinted that the scene between Natasha and Loki would be explored in some capacity.

"When you have a character like Natasha Romanoff, who has been in the MCU for over ten years, almost everything is an Easter egg. Almost every line, every story point, has been referenced before," Feige told On The Red Carpet earlier this month. "Particularly, there's a scene in Avengers, where Loki is behind glass on the Heli-Carrier and he's taunting Natasha with things. A lot of things that he taunts her with are things from her past that we didn't know about, that we learn and see first-hand in this movie."

Black Widow is now available in theaters and exclusively on Disney+ Premier Access. If you haven't signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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