WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Marvel’s Black Widow, playing in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one of Natasha’s (Scarlett Johansson) most painful experiences was the ordeal she experienced with Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo). They seemed destined for a romance, but Bruce inflicted a deep, tragic cut that proved the real way to hurt her was emotionally, not physically. It came in Avengers: Age of Ultron when Hulk ditched the team, leaving Nat to think Bruce abandoned her after they discussed her horrid past, why she wouldn’t be able to have kids, and also why them being together just wouldn’t work. Thankfully, Black Widow heals these wounds somewhat by inadvertently giving Nat a mission to get over this major Hulk trauma.
Admittedly, it did feel a bit selfish of Bruce to do this, but he was also trying to protect her as much as he was his own heart. He knew Nat being with him would endanger her and make her a target outside of Avengers duty. But most of all, he couldn’t balance his Jekyll and Hyde act internally, and seeing as all this was a lot to deal with, cutting the emotional baggage of a romance with Nat made sense — something he’s also done with Betty Ross in the past.
What really wrecked Nat was that she felt helpless — like she didn’t have a say in things. Given that she used certain methods to calm Hulk down and bring his human form back as well, it did feel like she could free Bruce from the beast within had he given her a fair shot.
Nat runs into this split-personality problem in Black Widow when she discovers what the Red Room is doing in its revamped state. Dreykov (Ray Winstone) is no longer using psychological conditioning to create femme fatales like he did with Nat; he’s using mind control to brainwash his new breed of assassins. The sad thing is, as Yelena reveals, they’re trapped in their bodies and can see and feel the murders. However, they can’t do anything, so it’s basically two people in one vessel, akin to the problems Bruce had with his Jade Giant.
Nat flinches upon hearing how these drones are made, so it seems it does trigger memories of the battle that Banner had. She clearly hates hearing about this internal maelstrom once more, but this time, seeing as she has the chemical cure in the form of a gas that an older Widow made before dying, Nat can actually provide a solution and stop these women from being victims and pawns in Dreykov’s sick game.
It’s why Natasha uses her reunited family to go take the Red Room down as it’s about giving agency back to the women and stopping Dreykov from making them Hulks he can control. Nat knows how badly Bruce was in pain from this and how it shut him off from the world, so now she’s course-correcting things in his name, while also filling a hole in her own life.
She eventually succeeds in ending this version of the Red Room and killing Dreykov, giving Yelena and the family another vial of the cure and details on the other sleeper Widows to free them from their programming. Ultimately, this may explain why Natasha got over the failed romance when she reunited with Bruce in Avengers: Endgame as she already worked through this pain by freeing her ‘sisters’ and put to bed her own demons with the Russian spy program.
Directed by Cate Shortland, Black Widow stars Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, O-T Fagbenle as Mason and Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff, with William Hurt as Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross and Ray Winstone as General Dreykov. The film is playing in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access.
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