Black Widow Clip Reveals Red Guardian In His Costume

Marvel’s Black Widow has released a new clip that shows off Stranger Things star David Harbour getting back into costume Soviet Super Soldier Red Guardian. The new Black Widow clip expands on a scene that’s been teased from the first trailer, in which Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), her sister Yelena (Florence Pugh), and surrogate mother Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz) all reunite for drinks at the dinner table, when father-figure Alexei Shostakov (Harbour) makes things awkward like only a dad can, by flexing-out in his old Soviet super-soldier costume. If nothing else, it’s a good look at the moments of levity Black Widow will offer fans.

The family dynamic of Natasha Romanoff’s backstory is a curious thing. Black Widow’s trailer and promos have shown off hints of a subplot about how the cover story of being a family was detrimental to Yelena, in particular, as she mistook the mission to be a genuine family bond. In a larger sense, Black Widow‘s character arc for Natasha seems to hinge on the theme of the super-spy truly accepting that family is a deep-seated need in her life (and dare we say… her soul?), and that her Soviet cover story wasn’t just a mission as she may have coldly made her believe. It would help explain (read: justify) Widow’s arc of grief and depression in Avengers: Endgame (when her Avengers family is lost) and why she ultimately sacrifices herself to put that family back together.

The question a lot of Marvel fans have is also just how the other characters featured in the scene above will factor into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, going forward. Yelena already has a future as the new Black Widow, appearing in the Hawkeye Disney+ series. Assuming Melina and/or Red Guardian survive Black Widow they could be part of a new threat arising in the Russian espionage world; even if they don’t survive, there is still plenty of Cold War-era stories about Red Guardian and Melina as a Black Widow spy that could be explored in prequel series. If fans end up loving the characters, anything is possible…

Synopsis: Following the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016) Natasha Romanoff finds herself alone and forced to confront a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Romanoff must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.

Black Widow hits theaters and Disney+ Premium Access on July 9th.