Going into Avengers: Endgame, fans were prepared for everything; the surviving squad pulling off an epic mission, fallen heroes getting un-dusted and returning to the world of the living, Thanos tasting his just desserts, and much more. They were also bracing themselves for the possibility that some who were spared in Thanos’ universe-decimating Snap in Avengers: Infinity War would sadly not make it to the end this time around.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, there are major Avengers: Endgame spoilers incoming. Still here? Let’s continue.
Endgame featured fewer deaths than anyone had anticipated. Of the deaths in the movie, one was heroic and heart-wrenching, another wasn’t so much a passing away as it was a passing on, and one was completely unexpected.
It’s that last one that we need to talk about. It’s time to address what happened to Black Widow in Avengers: Endgame.
In the first act of the film, Black Widow serves as a strong leader who keeps the surviving Avengers in contact with one another five years after the Decimation. She organizes meetings at Avengers HQ, checking in with the other heroes around the galaxy to receive status updates on how the Earth and other worlds are faring. Black Widow also makes it her personal mission to track down her fellow original Avenger Clint Barton, who abandoned his Hawkeye identity and assumed his ruthless Ronin persona after the snap took his wife and children.
All this felt like Endgame was showing viewers that Black Widow could rise to the occasion to marshal the Avengers and company after they complete their Time Heist. If one or all of her teammates bit the dust, Black Widow could step up to continue leading the Avengers. She has the skill and the personality, and she’s been acting as a de-facto supervisor of the team for five whole years.
That’s not how things pan out. Black Widow never gets the chance to continue leading the way. She doesn’t even get to finish the heroes’ mission to travel back to the present day, because Black Widow is the first hero to die in Avengers: Endgame.
Her death comes when she and Hawkeye head back a few years into the past and touch down on Vormir, the remote planet where the Soul Stone is located. As everyone knows, in order to acquire the Soul Stone, one must make an equal exchange.
Thanos tossed his adoptive daughter Gamora off the cliff on Vormir to call the Soul Stone his own, and Black Widow and Hawkeye must do something similar in Endgame. It’s either her or him, they can’t both survive and get the Soul Stone.
Black Widow makes the bold decision to sacrifice herself and allow Hawkeye to retrieve the Soul Stone, help the Avengers bring the dusted back to life, and reunite with his family. And we know she dies: the film shows Black Widow laying motionless on the ground, blood pooling around her head. Longtime MCU fans are understandably pretty upset and confused about it.
While the movie made it seem like there’s little chance Black Widow can be revived, this isn’t actually the end for the hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel Studios is working on a Black Widow solo movie, directed by Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland, and is likely aiming to release it in theaters sometime in the next few years. Details about the film’s plot are sparse right now, but it’s reportedly planned to be a prequel set just after 2010’s Iron Man 2 and before the events of 2012’s Avengers. Meanwhile, other reports claim that Black Widow partially takes place in the time when Natasha served as an agent for the Soviet Union’s KGB organization, and then skips ahead to 15 years after the fall of the KGB in the 1980s.
Marvel has yet to confirm any story specifics, though a prequel-slash-origin-story set-up sounds pretty plausible. That would allow for an easy explanation as to why Black Widow is back on the big screen. The studio could also use the same digital de-aging technology it did with Samuel L. Jackson for his role as Nick Fury in Captain Marvel, which is set in 1995, to make Johansson look younger for a Black Widow origin story.
Meanwhile, Avengers: Endgame isn’t the true end of Phase 3 of the MCU, there’s still time for the franchise to hint at what’s next for Black Widow. She has connections to S.H.I.E.L.D. and to Nick Fury, having joined the team after working for the KGB, and we know Fury and Agent Maria Hill will appear in the real Phase 3-closer: Spider-Man: Far From Home. It’s possible the upcoming film could weave in mentions of Black Widow’s past, or feature a post-credits scene set a few decades in the past that teases the Black Widow solo movie. After all, a Black Widow is a kind of spider.
Then again… maybe not. It’s all a mystery for now, but fans should find comfort in knowing that they haven’t seen the last of Black Widow, even after her devastating death in Endgame.