The upcoming Black Widow prequel appears to be set to clear up one of the longest-running mysteries in the MCU: what the heck happened in Budapest? Nat and Hawkeye have been referencing this apparently highly significant mission in their lives ever since 2012’s The Avengers and it seems that Scarlett Johansson’s first Marvel solo movie will finally give us all the details.
HN Entertainment is reporting that Black Widow is locked in to shoot in Budapest, Hungary. Now, obviously, any location can fill in for somewhere completely different via the magic of film, so there’s a slim chance this might not reveal anything about the storyline. However, given how much we’ve been teased about Budapest in the past, it seems like a good bet that it’ll factor into the movie as we get to explore how Natasha Romanoff switched sides to S.H.I.E.L.D.
After all, Captain Marvel recently showed that Marvel likes to plug as many gaps in the franchise as possible. For instance, the revelation of where the Avengers name came from, how Nick Fury got the Tesseract and, most infamously, exactly what caused Fury to lose his eye (psst, it was Goose the Flerken). Because of the approach that the Brie Larson-headed prequel took, it’s easy to imagine Black Widow following suit.
For those who don’t recall, the first nod to the Budapest incident came when Nat told Clint that the invasion of New York reminded her of their visit to the city, leaving Hawkeye to quip: “You and I remember Budapest very differently.” Then, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Alexander Pierce warned Romanoff that all her dark secrets – including Budapest – would come out if she exposed HYDRA/S.H.I.E.L.D. And most recently, upon arriving on Vormir in Avengers: Endgame, Clint joked that the duo were “a long way from Budapest.”
If we’re right about the implications of filming taking place in Hungary, the Black Widow movie has a lot to live up to in making the Budapest event as action-packed as we’ve been told and we can’t wait to see what exactly happened there.