Natasha Romanoff

And the Avengers lineup here is, um, Goliath, you know, Hank Pym, Wasp, Janet Van Dyne, Black Panther, T'Challa, Hawkeye, Clint Barton.

We mentioned there's, like, cameos of, uh, Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, and the three, like, kind of ... three of the founding Avengers, Thor, you know, Steve Rogers, Captain America, who appeared in issue four, so he wasn't technically a founding member-

Right

... and, uh, Iron Man, Tony Stark.

Yeah.

Um-

I might pick at that too, or dispute that a little bit, but the next scene where we get to is, like, um, Hawkeye and Black Widow.

And so he goes in, and basically she gets mad at him for standing her up 'cause-

They will talk about Storm.

Now of course, with like The Avengers, you know, taking over, you know, the Marvel IP over the last few years, you know, Wanda and Black Widow really did climb up the ranks.

I mean Wanda most especially.

However, Storm has the potential to be Tony Stark level, and I dare argue, and I was talking about this with From the Ashes, I will die on this hill, that Wanda was more popular during WandaVision and Multiverse of Madness, was more popular than Tony Stark.

Blake, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, they usually...

Natasha Romanoff.

Yeah.

Jake Lockley.

And then they throw the spear at him.

What was your plan if he didn't catch it? Was your plan to just go over the fence and go over the tracks and go and collect your spear from the body of a dead guy? And then, you know, Falcon comes in, Black Widow comes in, fine.

You know, they're fighting CGI stuff.

It doesn't do anything for me.

They're like, oh, we did it.

And Black Widow just says this really awkward line where she's like, we don't want to kill you, but we will.

And it's like, what? What is this? What does this even mean?

What is? mean it's like genuinely i don't know why it's like on the same line when peter dinklage's character is like you'll be killed during this process and so i was like only if i die and then it's like yeah that's how it works it's like the same lens that it just feels like it's great but yeah there's so many questionable lines like the one moment when everybody comes back into the avengers compound and they reunite with bruce and bruce is like hey everyone i'm here and then now and bruce the exchange eye contact then sam's like yeah this is this is awkward So what I'm trying to get at is that this film is just filled with aura moments.

From an imperfect send-off to an OG Avenger that just sadly came too late, to a quietly brilliant title that finally figured out how to make the most out of some flawed heroes, talking about these two films together really is the best way to examine their impact.

Will Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff return in Secret Wars to complete the set of the OG6? And how did Yelena and the Thunderbolts reframe how we see the Avengers function in the MCU after Secret Wars? And assuming it's going to be one of the Thunderbolts who totally dies in Doomsday, who's it going to be? Congressman Bucky Barnes? Red Guardian Alexei Shostakov? The sad, doom-scrolling John Walker? Well, pour yourself a bowl of Thunderbolts Wheaties this Saturday morning and join us as we go down the road.

I don't think this was a good Black Widow movie, but I also don't know what a good Black Widow movie would have been.

The script is kind of all over the place.

And we know from Age of Ultron that this is horribly abusive and awful for these young girls.

But both sisters, we find out together, went through it together.

So everything horrible that we know about Natasha going through, Yelena also went through.

So now we're in 2016, which is kind of weird to be doing in a Marvel movie at this point because things are after Endgame and after Far From Home.