The upcoming Black Widow movie will be set shortly after the events of 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, which ended with Natasha Romanoff in exile and with her fellow Avengers scattered across the globe.
By the time we next see Black Widow, in 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War, she’s once more fighting alongside her friends Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson, and according to a new theory from Screen Rant, her upcoming solo flick may explain exactly why she chose to reconnect with the old gang.
Next year’s release will serve as a rare opportunity to witness Nat operating independently from both the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D., but as we saw in the first Black Widow trailer, the heroine will still have a “family” of sorts to work and bond with.
Specifically, Scarlett Johansson’s character is set to reunite with her old KGB peers, including Yelena Belova, Melina and Red Guardian – three characters who will inevitably part ways with Nat by the end of the movie. With this in mind, the theory goes that Black Widow’s next (and seemingly final) adventure with her original “family” will somehow teach her the true meaning of that word.
Whether her KGB family ends up dying, betraying her or parting ways on good terms, it’s speculated that the whole experience will lead Nat to the conclusion that she belongs with the Avengers. This would explain not only why she gets back together with Steve, but also why she continued to keep the team together in the five years after the snap, and even why she was willing to sacrifice herself on Vormir to bring back her dusted peers.
Though this is still just a theory for the time being, it seems like a pretty well reasoned piece of speculation, and we’ll find out if there’s any truth to it when Black Widow hits theaters on May 1st, 2020.