Avengers: Age of Ultron To Explore Black Widow's Deadly Backstory

In a recent interview with IGN (via CBM), Avengers: Age of Ultron star Scarlett Johansson teased that her character will get quite a bit of backstory in the upcoming superhero sequel. "In Avengers 2 we go back..we definitely learn more about Widow's back-story, and get to find out how she became the person you see," Johansson said. "All of these characters have deep, dark pasts, and I think that the past catches up to some of us a little bit." That makes sense, given that pretty much all we know so far about her character is that she's seen palling around with Bruce Bannner -- the other Avenger with the darkest, most private past (all of Tony Stark's sins, for instance, have happened with the whole world watching and Captain America is pretty unimpeachable).

In spite of rumors to the contrary, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige recently said that he didn't see Black Widow as their best option for a female-led superhero film. "I think [Black Widow] has a central leading role in [Captain America: The Winter Soldier]. What people are really saying is 'When are you doing a standalone female superhero movie?' The answer is: I don't know," Feige said in a recent interview. "We only do two a year, we know more or less what's coming up through '16/'17. With Widow what's great is the interaction with all the team members, and the question is whether we want to pluck her out of that." Johansson recently revealed that she was pregnant, which has caused some juggling of the Age of Ultron shooting schedule but which will not impact her role in the film or the movie's plot.