Black Widow director Cate Shortland reveals an alternate post-credits scene that might have suggested a different fate for Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson). Spoiler warning for Marvel’s Black Widow. After flashing back to 2016 for the majority of its 134-minute runtime, telling an untold story set in-between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, the spy thriller ends with a post-credits scene in the present-day MCU (circa 2023 or 2024). Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) visits Natasha’s modest gravesite in Ohio and whistles a long note, part of a call-and-response the two sisters did when they were kids.
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Shortland told Variety the creative team behind Black Widow considered ending the film with a response to Yelena’s whistle, revealing: “We never put it in. But we talked about it.”
Instead, Black Widow ends with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) offering Yelena a shot at the man she says is “responsible” for Natasha’s death: Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), who returns in the Disney+ original series Hawkeye. A whistle might have suggested Natasha somehow survived her sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame, but Johansson is laying the character to rest with her MCU swansong in Black Widow.
“Honestly, I feel like it feels great to leave a party when it’s still raging and I think that this film [Black Widow] feels very much like it’s alive and fresh and powerful and I feel really pleased with it,” Johansson told ComicBook.com. “I feel really happy with the work that we’ve done for this decade of time and, you know, it’s bittersweet to say ‘goodbye,’ but if you love something, you need to set it free!”
In Marvel Studios’ 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.
Marvel’s Black Widow is now playing in theaters and streaming on Disney+ Premier Access.
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