Avengers Writer Confirms the Marvel Hero That Almost Died Instead of Black Widow, And Why It Had to Be Natasha

From the start, it was clear that one of the Avengers would have to die on Vormir to get the Soul Stone in Avengers: Endgame. Thanos had already killed Gamora to get it in one reality, in the previous film Infinity War; in another, it would take somebody killing a loved one again — and in this case, it had to be one of the heroes doing so. Even if the act in and of itself is decidedly un-heroic. Thus, Hawkeye and Black Widow were put in that position — again, it was familial — in this case, found-familial — love rather than romantic love being tested.

Clint and Natasha fought each other for the right to be the sacrifice, both being trained assassins who were always prepared to die on missions. Ultimately, Natasha paid the final price, despite the fact that she had a whole movie to herself coming up. Killing off the only original female Avenger was a controversial call — with Scarlet Witch now seemingly dead as well, and Shuri probably due to relinquish the Black Panther mantle, an uncomfortable pattern might be emerging. One of the writers has revealed they definitely thought about that fact quite a bit.

It Could Have Been Hawkeye

At a Q&A with Forbes following a recent Avengers: Endgame Encore screening, co-writer Stephen McFeely revealed the thought process behind the decision to kill off Black Widow, and how he and Stephen Markus briefly considered Hawkeye instead. “Because it’s not a small thing to kill off a principal female character in the MCU, we tried a version of Hawkeye,” he said. Turned out his female coworkers weren’t having it. As he recounts it, they told him, “Don’t you do this to her. Don’t you take her heroic moment and give it to him.” On the plus side, McFeely said he knew killing her would hurt, and, “I want to make you feel the worst you can feel.”

One of his misgivings was that the plot had to keep moving so fast that there wasn’t a lot of time to really take in the death. The writers’ solution was to add more dialogue at the end that acknowledged her sacrifice as well as Iron Man’s. Also, given that a version of Gamora did come back, it helped to have Hulk, one of the smartest guys in the room, say “I tried to bring her back,” admitting that, as a certain BBC Time Lord might say, there did seem to be some wibbly wobbly, timey wimey leeway. The MCU committed to it, though — Natasha has remained dead, and her variants confined to the What If…? multiverse.

Aside from kicking the audience in the feels, McFeely gave another reason the sacrifice had to be Natasha’s. “In the big picture, she’s got red in her ledger, and she’s been trying to make up for that her entire life,” he said. “That’s why when she found the Avengers, they were a new family for her. So, this idea that she could save her family, in the greater sense of that, was really important.” Hawkeye, as we had learned previously, already had a family of his own. Natasha, well…we hadn’t yet met Yelena, Red Guardian, and Melina, and they were a huge mess of a fake family. Now, in Yelena and Kate Bishop, we effectively have successors for both in whatever comes next.

Would you have rather seen Hawkeye die? Throw some text on our ledger in comments.

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