Headscratchers / Black Widow (2021)

---

Avengers in The Raft

• At the beginning of the movie, Ross mentions that Rogers is on the run, and they have everyone else in prison... "Barton, Wilson, the Incredible Shrinking Convict". Did they not notice that Steve broke Sam out before going on the run? Do they think he's still there?
  • Thaddeus "Wants To Pick A Fight With The Hulk" Ross is not the sharpest tool in the shed, and if the movie's events are happening concurrently with the third act of Civil War (or shortly thereafter, depending on how much time passes between Steve and Bucky limping out of Siberia and the breakout scene), then he may be too occupied with hunting Natasha to have learned that Rogers broke in and freed his companions, especially since Civil War establishes that Rogers incapacitated everyone aboard the Raft before freeing his team.
  • This movie happens after the bulk of Civil War, but before the Raft breakout (technically, Steve's been "on the run" since Berlin, so it's impossible for him to free Sam before). Nat specifically refers to intending to help break them out when she flies away in the Avengers jet. Bear in mind; after the escape, Clint and Scott stay behind, and Wanda and Sam leave with Steve and Nat.
  • And even if it didn’t take place before that, Ross could easily have lied to try to convince her to turn herself in. Though it has to take place before, as Ross found out about the escape immediately.
  • We don't know at what point after the bunker fight in Civil War that Steve broke the Anti-Accords heroes out. Considering that Tony told Natasha that Ross was going after her shortly after the airport fight, Ross is presumably coming after her between when Tony left the Raft to go to Siberia and when Steve broke them out which was probably a few days and the start of the movie could have taken place then. Also considering that Tony was back at the compound when the break in happened and Ross called for his help it was presumably around a day considering that his suit was shut down and he was left in Siberia and the compound is in New York.

Cold War

• Did the Cold War not end in the MCU when it did in real life?
  • It probably did, but the end of the Cold War was hardly the end of America and Russia spying on one another. In fact, if you assume Alexei wasn't rounding up when he said they'd been in America for three years as of summer 1995, that mission was probably planned as a direct reaction to the "official" fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991 — with the state in chaos, Dreykov went looking for a better way to secure the loyalty of his followers. He'd have pretended to be a good Communist to get Alexei on side, knowing that he'd be the absolute last man to be tempted by the luxuries of life in the USA, sent him to Ohio in early 1992, and then once the mission was done packed him off to prison so he could pursue his personal agenda of power without interference.
    • Dreykov could have just as well told him to pretend to be a Jew and ship him off to permanent exile in Israel, alongside the Million or so Russian olim. To drive the point home further, a lot of these Olim used to have prestigious jobs in the USSR and got relegated to menial labor in their new home, and what's more prestigious than the USSR's first supersoldier? Of course, given how proud Alexei was of being the Red Guardian, and how sincerely ideologically devoted he was, he probably wouldn't have stayed put or kept quiet.
  • It's possible Dreykov's organization was independent of the Russian government.
  • In the opening credits, Dreykov is shown in pictures with the likes of Bill Clinton and Condoleza Rice (as well as Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin), so it seems indeed like his organization is wholly independent from the Russian government and operates independently for the highest bidder.
  • It’s likely they didn’t change history. Alexei says “three years” (not “three years and X months”) because that’s how people talk.

Why is Alexei in jail?

• It seems a waste of his talents and abilities. If Dreykov wanted him dead, a bullet to the head would have done the trick. If he wanted him punished for something, a harsher, more heavily secured prison would do the trick, especially since it was fairly easy for him to at least assault the first few guards in the prison, let alone wander freely, and escaping would likely not be that difficult if he wanted to, but surely a super-soldier would be an incredible asset to Dreykov? After all, Bucky is also a super-soldier and Hydra made great use use of him as an assassin for years, and Dreykov does have access to various brain-washing techniques, so it's likely easy enough for him to have his own brute force weapon if a Widow isn't suitable. And it's not as if Dreykov isn't above using other tools such as Taskmaster to achieve his objectives.
  • Red Guardian couldn't escape because where exactly would he go? Sure thing he's a super soldier, but even they have their limits, and trying to escape through the harsh Siberian tundra is a plan as stupid as it gets. You're also overestimating the power of Winter Soldier an an asset. He was incredibly volatile, needed to be re-conditioned on each one of his outings and then put on a freezer for God knows how long. There's a reason why HYDRA was researching far better methods to brainwash subjects in the 90s and also tried to replace him with a number of super-soldiers. They were using Bucky because they didn't have any better option. The method through which Dreykov brainwashed his soldiers seems much more efficient, but also likely required for the subject to be conditioned from childhood. Kidnapping young girls was probably a pragmatic decision by the Red Room.
  • He mentions how he fell out of favor with Dreykov after the Ohio mission, which was probably caused in part by how he came to actually like being undercover and the love he started to feel for his girls. The period through which all this happened (1993-1996) was also one of big change for Russia, and a project which created a patriotic icon like Red Guardian was likely something that pertained to the entire government instead of simply the Red Room. Imagine if Secretary Ross were to kill Captain America for not following the Sokovia Accords, or simply have him die on an "unfortunate" accident. By the point Red Guardian became the relic of a bygone era (30 years after the collapse of the USSR), Dreykov likely just considered him an overweight screw-up and not a threat.
  • Sounds like typical Russian/Soviet behaviour to exile someone to a gulag when that person is longer any use to the nation.
  • The Ohio mission was a test to see if Alexi could adapt to the new way things were going to be fought, from the shadows and unseen by anyone, that Dreykov was taking the organization in. The overall brutish manner he ended up stealing the desired data in, very loud exit, and demand to be put back into the field rather then to undercover again all told Dreykov that Alexi wouldn't be able to handle the change in methodology. Additionally Alexi was beginning to ask uncomfortable questions about the declining situation in the Soviet Union risking a political scandal. He was too politically important and too tough to straight out kill without serious repercussions but imprisoning him far from the limelight to eventually die was easy enough.

How did Alexei become a super-soldier?

• There doesn't seem to be any indication of how he has the typical abilities of a super-soldier. Captain America was the test pilot for the program, and Bucky gained his abilities after experimentation from Hydra, but it's strange that there's no mention of how he has his powers. And if he's a unique case, then surely he would be held in a lab somewhere by someone trying to duplicate his abilities.
  • Most likely a successful recreation of the proper formula. As to why there wasn't more made, most likely Hydra found out about it and tried to destroy it. As for why there wasn't more made, one reason could simply be Russia changing leaders and said new leader thinking Super Soldiers were a money sink. Especially once Dreykov shows off his super mind control tech.
  • More likely, it's a less-than-perfect version of the formula. Notice that Alexei does not possess all of the powers usually given to Super Soldiers. He has super strength and the durability, but he seems to lack the speed and agility (notice he has trouble chasing the slow relatively moving plane, while Steve can outrun cars on the highway). If we take Isaiah Bradley's story into account, being the only person to survive a faulty version of the formula, it makes more sense. The Russian government could probably only get the formula to work on Alexei, and not to the perfection of Erskine's formula. They also elected to lock their super soldier up, but gave up on the project, while SHIELD/the US Goverment/Hydra kept trying. Dreykov also probably pulled some strings to ensure he wasn't experimented on, because any chance of successfully duplicating the formula would be competition for the Black Widow program.

Creator of the antidote?

• Who created the Black Widow conditioning antidote?
  • The person Yelena hunts at the beginning is an ex-Black Widow, who carried the antidote to the Red Room conditioning, so this would imply that either she at some point went rogue like Romanoff before the mental conditioning was applied to the modern recruits, or was exposed to the antidote after her own conditioning, and is trying to distribute it. But that still leaves the question as to who created the antidote? It might have been Melina, since she would certainly have the knowledge to create it, but there's no indication in the film to suggest that she did so.
  • Yelena said it was created by a former Black Widow — heavily implied to be the one she killed, since she said, "I killed the Widow who freed me."

Melina's multiple Red Room training

• The film mentions that she has undergone Red Room training five times. Why? Surely just once would be enough.
  • Not necessarily. They may have revised the training in various ways, and used one of the few previous survivors as a test subject. If she doesn't come out better, the new training is no better if not actually inferior. If she dies, the training might be too difficult. If she comes out better, they have a winner.
  • It's possible it was a hint as to the plan we see, in that her will and resilience meant she survived training but also needed more 'breaking' before she succumbed to the Red Room, but also meaning she is more capable of breaking out of her conditioning and making her own decisions. As for the 5x training itself, it could have been a combination of trial-and-error (as she's an early gen Black Widow) and so it either needed to be repeated similar to Winter Soldier), merely a result of an imperfect process, and/or the fact that Melina wasn't just a good soldier, she was a super-scientist. As a key intelligence for the Red Room, it's likely that she was too valuable to kill (either on a high risk mission or execution for rebelling) so repeat condition might have been the only viable option to maintain control.
  • Maybe the training varied each time due to changing eras.
  • Presumably, Natasha also went through it twice? After the mission's completed she objects to Yelena's age going into the program, when Alexei says she was even younger. And she's there with her when they end up going through it again. So it might just be a constant reconditioning.

Escaping Ross

• How did Natasha escape from Ross and his men at the end of the film?
  • Pure speculation, but given it's Natasha, it would be not surprising if, once Ross gave her medical treatment and allowed her to rest, she simply broke out using her spy skills before Ross got her into The Raft.
  • Heck, plenty of cars came. Beat up some folks, hop in a car, get in a car chase, and then hide once back in a busy area.
  • Natasha is one of the best Black Widows to have ever lived, a seasoned Agent of SHIELD, an Avenger and has (at that point in the timeline) held up against the Chitauri, Bucky and Ultron. A bunch of soldiers with bog-standard firearms aren't going to stop her from doing anything she doesn't want to do, especially given that Natasha has demonstrated she can fight as near to on par with Steve and Bucky as any non Super-Soldier can, both of whom recently tore apart a strike force roughly equivalent to the one that came after Natasha.
  • Given the day she had, the lack of preparation, and her willingness to confront Ross directly, the simplest explanation is that she bargained Dreykov's information for a reprieve.
  • A deleted scene shows her simply producing a makeshift lockpick, removing her cuffs, and disappearing from the military transport van mid-conversation while Ross has his back turned.

Madame B?

• How come Madame B. isn't so much as mentioned in this film? It seemed she was an important part of the Red Room.
  • Madame B was probably excised from the story since the story with Dreykov is much more personal for Natasha and company. On the other hand, it wouldn't be the first time in the MCU that a big villain was teased only to be replaced with someone else instead.
  • Considering how misogynistic Dreykov is, don't be surprised if Madame B. was killed offscreen for being no longer useful or something worst happened to her.

Dreykov Successfully in Hiding?

• OK, so Dreykov has been hiding in his air fortress for the past 20-ish years, and doing such a good job that Natasha didn't even know the Red Room was still around. ...How? How did neither SHIELD nor Hydra not find one shred of evidence that the Red Room was still around and that there were millions of Widows out there? The clouds being generated might have somehow hid the base from satellites, but considering how many politicians and powerful figures Dreykov had tight control of even after "dying," it doesn't make sense that not even Hydra could find them.
  • The number of the Black Widow operatives in the main page was highly exaggerated. If one counted the dots on the screen it would barely break the thousand mark, not to mention that Dreykov was supposedly able to personally control each and every one of them from his board. As for why they couldn't be found... S.H.I.E.L.D. was infiltrated by HYDRA literally from the start and none of the S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives were able to sniff out something.
  • SHIELD was infiltrated by HYDRA and since HYDRA would have found value in the Red Room, might have worked to keep it under radar of SHIELD. And after Dreykov's death and presumed loss of relevant research, HYDRA might not have any eminent reason to go looking for him specifically. And even if they believed his mind control tech was still around, it's not like HYDRA would have cared about him specifically - just his tech.
  • Presumably, one could assume that like HYDRA before them, the Red Room was banking on the "long-gone organization destroyed by the heroes" reputation to keep them clear of public scrutiny, the big difference being that HYDRA burrowed into SHIELD and grew from there while Dreykov used the fact that everyone thought he was deader than dead to rebuild in secret since everyone who would've gone after him thought he was no longer a problem.
• Or maybe Dreykov, the man behind the entire Soviet/Russian super-spy program for decades, rumbled the existence of HYDRA within S.H.I.E.L.D a long, long time ago and laid his plans accordingly. He ran a global network of brainwashed infiltrator/assassins alongside a blackmail and intimidation program aimed at the same world leaders and persons of influence HYDRA itself was targeting, him coming to hear whispers that “Hail Hydra” was less of a historical footnote than you’d think would be quite believable.
  • Consider also Alexei’s dialogue at Melina’s dinner table. He was sent to infiltrate a S.H.I.E.L.D mind control program but “turns out it was a HYDRA program”. When did he discover that? He’s been in prison for 20 years. But if he himself discovered the HYDRA infiltration during his mission, perhaps from stumbling across the Winter Soldier connection to the program, that would explain Draykov’s shift in tactics from running Russian spies to building his own secret underground network. He knew he wasn’t at war with S.H.I.E.L.D but with something far worse and more insidious than Nick Fury at his most diabolical.
  • Alexi wasn't the only guy in that prison, even if he was its only super-soldier. No reason he couldn't have heard about HYDRA's infiltration of SHIELD from some of the more recent inmates, once Fury and Natasha spilled the bean at the conclusion of Winter Soldier. Especially if said inmates were also disgraced Russian spies, and/or were incarcerated for computer crimes.
  • Or maybe one of those Red Guardian fans whose care-package cookies the guards kept stealing crowed about it in a letter. Odds are, they'd be thrilled to tattle on Captain America and his buds having been played for chumps by HYDRA.
• The real question, it seems to me, is: Where do they find a bank of clouds to hide in that doesn't dissipate for 20 years? Weather systems move! Or does Dreykov have weather technology to produce his own clouds as well? (In which case, wouldn't someone notice over the years that there's a more or less stationary weather system over Russia and get curious?)

Necessity of killing Dreykov's Daughter

• We're told Natasha had to wait for Dreykov's daughter to arrive in his room to confirm he was in the building, but if the bomb had already been planted inside, wouldn't her arriving at the front of the building serve as confirmation while allowing the innocent child to live?
  • It may have been that the bomb Natasha detonated was on Antonia's person, possibly in her backpack. That's why Natasha had to wait, she was hoping Dreykov would go greet his daughter and then get a face full of bomb. It might also explain how they survived — maybe Antonia had removed the backpack before her dad had arrived and it was not nearby when Natasha set it off.
  • It seems that Antonia was necessary because of her reaction. If she entered Dreykov's office and didn't respond like a daughter seeing her father, they would know Dreykov wasn't there. She was the only indicator that wouldn't false positive. And they couldn't wait for her to leave because Dreykov could leave as well or enter a secure room.

Red Guardian's personality

• What's with Red's change in personality? In the beginning of the film he comes off like a serious badass spy. He's played straight in the flashback. For some odd reason, he turns into a Homer Simpson type bumbling clown decades later.
  • In Ohio, he was on a serious mission. In the 'present', not only has he been locked up for over a decade, he's surrounded by people that, barring overwhelming firepower, really can't harm him even in his rundown state. Lastly, he's spent that time playing up his own legend. So the lack of danger and the long time means he's convinced himself he's invincible since he hasn't been in any real danger for such a long time.
  • The Super-soldier serum could be at work too. The serum has psychological effects on its users: Steve Rogers's innate nobility made him a Captain, Emil Blonsky was driven by the desire to keep fighting became a monstrous Blood Knight... with Alexei, he became a Boisterous Bruiser who has trouble taking things seriously and needs to be seriously pushed to get the best out of him.
  • The capacity to think for one's self is not something the old Soviet regime would've sought out in a candidate for their super-soldier program. Although well trained for his missions and formidable in combat, Alexi had clearly been over-indoctrinated by his handlers and the State, to a point where he's left floundering once he no longer has a revered authority-figure to tell him what to do.
  • There's hints even in Ohio of his later attitude - how messy his escape with the information was, the frequent resort to brute force... he's not a subtle fellow, and quite obviously not cut out for long term spywork, especially given his complaining about being undercover rather than on the frontlines. Plus, he's spent twenty years, likely increasingly depressed, in a Russian prison in the middle of Siberia, the ideology he devoted his life to contemptuously discarded by the country he served, which had contemptuously discarded him in turn. And he's left with only fan letters and arm-wrestling contests to console him. He's not so much hit rock bottom as burrowed into the bedrock.

End Credits Scene

• Keeping in mind that the Black Widow movie takes place entirely during the end credits of Civil War, that means Natasha had 7 years before her death. Did Natasha at no point until her death talk about/mentioned/discussed with anyone in the Avengers the events of this movie or tell her family (Alexi, Yelena, Melina) about who is in the Avengers and what they do? During the 5 year time skip in Endgame, she didn't ask these people for help to keep the world running. Or that during those 7 years Natasha did not make some sort of will/back up plan that in case of her death the surviving Avengers would not contact her family (Alexi, Yelena, Melina) and you know talk/help them in some way. To the point that Valentina Allegra De Fontaine can show up and tell Yelena that Hawkeye killed Natasha and Yelena just instantly believes her?
  • It's entirely possible that she never had a chance to interact with her family again after the events of this movie, whether because they were each always busy putting out different fires or because the others were killed off-screen by The Snap. It is still questionable that Yelena would immediately accept that an Avenger was responsible but there's no reason to think she would've had any more time with her sister unless shown otherwise.
  • When Natasha talks to Yelena about Clint in this movie, she makes it sound as though they were merely professional allies from S.H.I.E.L.D., not best friends. Given this, and combined with the sadness and anger in someone who's been trained their whole life to deal with problems by pointing at a target and taking them out, it would be easy to convince Yelena that Clint killed Natasha because of orders, personal gain, etc and watch her go after him.
  • On that note, how did Valentina Allegra De Fontaine know what happened on Vormir and was able to twist the context? The Time Heist isn't public knowledge. Seems like a coincidence that she happens to nail the one Avenger that really had a hand in Black Widow's death. Or did she just want Clint dead and she was lucky that it wasn't a complete lie?
    • It's also possible that she deduced it from the timing of Natasha's disappearance and her long-term partnership with Clint. Or it might have been made known that Natasha sacrificed herself to get the Soul Stone.
    • Presumably it's a hybrid of these two theories. The Avengers may very well have given a few details about the Time Heist, at least the parts related to Tony and Natasha's sacrifices and how they got everyone back, and while Valentina wouldn't have the specifics it's not a big stretch for her to fill in the blanks and then give Yelena something that sounds plausible enough to be probable.
    • It’s doubtful the Avengers would skip over the whole Natasha sacrificing herself for the greater good, so obviously Valentina is twisting things. However it’s doubtful the Avengers would tell anyone where Natasha is buried, which means in order for Yelena to find the grave, she would probably have to talk to an Avenger, and you know that Avenger is going to tell Yelena everything that happened with Natasha's death, emphasizing the self sacrifice for the greater good.
    • Given that her tombstone appears to be in a larger cemetery and there are various tributes and flowers at her grave, it seems her gravesite is known to the public, so she wouldn't need to speak with any Avengers to find out where it is. The Avengers wouldn’t have any reason to keep it secret, given that’s it’s most likely just a cenotaph, since her body was left behind on Vormir in an alternate timeline. As for why the exact circumstances of her death aren’t known, the Avengers probably don’t want the general public to know about time travel for fear of it being misused.
    • Maybe she's a fan of Scott Lang's podcast.

Natasha's choice of outfits and codename

• Dreykov created the Black Widow codename and outfit for his trained assassins. Why would Natasha want to keep the codename and outfit design after escaping him? When fighting alongside the Avengers, she chooses to wear outfits similar to the assassins.
  • Because of her training, it's all she really feels comfortable in. With Dreykov seemingly killed, she figured she could rehabilitate the name to be a hero rather than an assassin.
  • She may have initially had hope that any other Widows who were set free (she thought) by Dreykov's death would seek her out for help in starting a new life, if she retained a codename and battle garb they'd recognize. Maybe even Yelena, or others she might've bonded with on missions. When nobody came, Natasha assumed they were avoiding her out of resentment or fear of SHIELD, although in reality Dreykov forbade contact to conceal his operations.
  • It may also be that SHIELD officially gave her the codename of “Black Widow” either for the sake of simplicity (that may have been what they were calling her internally before she defected) or as a kind of hazing or warning (“we remember who you are and where you came from so keep in line”).
  • Or she just felt like claiming it for herself.
• It's a fairly generic Spy Cat Suit. SHIELD agents wore suits that were almost identical, which is what she wore for a long time as well. Also, Comic Book Movies Dont Use Code Names. Nat never called herself Black Widow in any of the movies. Other people used that term here or there, but she never did, at least not as a name.

Yelena's accent

• Even though both Natasha and Yelena grew up in the US when they were kids, why doesn’t Yelena retain her American accent in the present while her older sister does (we even see Natasha speaking with an American accent when she was still training as a Black Widow during a flashback in Age of Ultron)?
  • Yelena was young enough when brought to the Red Room that she probably lost her American accent over time, especially considering all the conditioning and brainwashing going on there. The Widows were intended to be able to blend in around the world, and considering that Natasha started training around the end of the Cold War (Alexei points out she was under six years old when she began training) they likely trained her from a young age to speak English fluently and with an American accent so she could more easily infiltrate in the US.
  • The ability to speak a language fluently without a discernible foreign accent is pretty much set around age eleven, and a person's native accent and vocal patterns are strongly influenced by the language environment around them up to that time. Yelena left America at age six, and then spent the next twenty or so years speaking primarily Russian and hearing English spoken by native Russian-speakers. Natasha was probably about twelve or thirteen years old when she left, and had spent the previous three years in America, speaking primarily English with native English speakers. So she would have developed a natively American accent when speaking English, and despite her young age, had crossed a linguistic development point after which she would retain that accent.
  • Additionally, Natasha's spent about 10 years now predominantly around English-speaking Americans. Her accent in Age of Ultron was likely either during a stint of accent training or simply not bothering Scarlett Johansson with the accent. She does speak in Russian-accented English like Yelena in the scene where they blow up Dreykov's daughter, meaning she probably lost it over time. Yelena probably hasn't spoken nearly as much English, especially around Americans, so she speaks with her natural accent - however, she could likely do an American accent if she felt it was necessary. Natasha also speaks Russian pretty sparingly in comparison to Yelena; understandable, as for most of the movie it's a part of her past she'd rather forget.
  • The Widows are some of the best spies in history, they're all probably multilingual and able to speak languages like English in different accents. In Agent Carter, we see one of their training facilities in Russia where the girls are taught to imitate Snow White's accent. For Nat and Yalena, it seems to be a matter of identity. Natasha probably associates the Russian accent with answering to Dreykov and her American accent with her post-defection days and her little taste of American family life. Maybe Yalena simply doesn't feel that way about her accent.

How'd they make it to Cuba?

• The airplane in the 1995 prologue is a Piper PA-28, which has a range of about 1600km. Ohio to Cuba is around 2100km. How was it able to reach Cuba, then? Also a plane like that doesn't fly that fast, so wouldn't the authorities have been able to intercept it during the 4+ hours it would have remained in US airspace?
  • There's nothing to say the plane wasn't jury-rigged in some SCI-FI-esque way to make the trip. It might have simply looked like a Piper PA-28.

Dreykov's survival

• As Natasha pointed out, she rigged at least five stories worth of bombs at Dreykov's Budapest building and confirmed his presence. How did he and his daughter survive that? She must had never checked for bodies because it would've been too unidentifiable when found.
  • From time to time, humans are known to survive some really intense and outlandish things that would've killed anyone else who had gone through those things. Presumably, this was one of those times for Dreykov and his daughter. That, or he had some secret way out that Natasha didn't know about, which is entirely possible when one considers that up until the movie started everyone thought he was dead.

Red Guardian's gut

• He’s been in prison for over two decades, but how did Alexei gain so much weight while he was locked up? One would be under the impression that being imprisoned in those conditions would make you skinnier...
  • The guards may have thought that a well-fed and chubby Alexei would be a much less dangerous threat, and it saves them the trouble of having to calculate how much to feed him to make him lose weight while not killing him from starvation, or worse, keeping him in his physical prime and risking the possibility of a breakout.

Gen 4 Twilight Sparkle Plush?

• During the pre-credits scene in Cuba, Yelena appears to be holding a small, purple stuffed toy. With a keen eye, it's no brainer that's Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony. But yet this Twilight plush appearing in 1995, exactly 15 years before the release of the 4th generation! Did the prop department made a goof? Was the script intended to show an older generation of MLP during this scene? Did Captain America traveled back through time to give Yelena a present from the future?
  • It's just a production goof, especially in a movie this big where there are so many details something as minor as a doll could go unnoticed. Though if you subscribe to the theory that Old Man Rogers has been in the main timeline all along, then he may have bought a fourth-generation MLP toy for some reason and kept it with him all this time for the sole purpose of giving it to Yelena.
  • This is one of those minor errors that the filmmakers don’t bother correcting because almost nobody will notice or care. They could spend the time and money to acquire a period-accurate doll (which likely isn’t easy to find these days) for a few scenes where it’s just a background prop, or they could just grab a modern doll and focus their time on parts of the movie most viewers will actually care about.
  • In-universe, it could just be that the Marvel Cinematic Universe follows an alternate history from our own, one where among other things, Twilight Sparkle hailed or had a lookalike hailing from an earlier generation of My Little Pony.

Rapidly aging Taskmasker

• Antonia is a child when adult Natasha blows up the building. When we see Antonia as an adult, she’s played by an actress several years older than Scarlett Johansson? Admittedly, Olga Kurylenko doesn’t look old by any means, and the scarring makes Taskmaster’s age impossible to guess.
  • Presumably the stress and trauma had the effect of making her look older than she actually was.
  • It's basically the trope Younger Than They Look in full effect.
  • A character doesn't need to be the same age as the person playing them. Even without the scarring, it's entirely possible for someone to simply look a little older than they actually are.

Surrendering to General Ross

• At the end of the movie, instead of leaving with Alexei and Yelena, Natasha intentionally stays behind so she can surrender to General Ross... And then in the next scene we see she has escaped from Ross and is free again. So what was the the point of surrendering to Ross and his men? Why didn't she just leave before they got to the scene, if she was gonna escape them anyway?
  • She probably did it to prevent her family from being discovered and subsequently captured. Since Ross is focused primarily on capturing Avengers, he would likely be too distracted with dealing with her, and not notice her "accomplices" trying to slip away from the scene.

How'd Natasha and Oksana get out?

• They had to have been given the same mind-control serum as the others. Natasha and Yelena were both taken at the same time, and Yelena was under its control when we first see her as an adult, so it stands to reason that Oksana and Natasha were also given the mind-control serum. So how did they escape the mind-control serum themselves? Oksana is the one who created it I think, but she would've had to have been freed in order to create it, which wouldn't have been possible unless she was freed. I'm so confused. Can anyone explain it to me? Am I missing anything?
  • Wasn't it mentioned in the movie that the serum was a relatively new invention? Before that the Red Room used more traditional brainwashing, from which Natasha was able to break free years ago, before the serum even existed. And apparently Dreykov allowed Oksana to retire from being a Black Widow, though she still continued to do research for him. But Yelena never broke free from the brainwashing, so she was still a Black Widow when the serum was developed, and she was dosed with it.
  • It is mentioned that Dreykov only resorted to mind control after Nat defected, explicitly to ensure that no one else ever had the chance. And Yelena mentions that Oksana was from Melina's generation of widows, so she definitely would've been trained using the same old brainwashing that Natasha was, not the mind control.

The Russian Prison

• Yelena and Natasha just wiped out an entire prison of people. They caused an avalanche that likely killed hundreds before damaging the electrical systems and communications since both would be above ground; and since the prison looks like it's far away from civilization, it's unlikely that the authorities will arrive in time to save anyone. That's not even mentioning that the guards are now trapped with the prisoners with likely little to protect themselves. Why isn't this brought up again?
  • It's at least a possibility that the prison could have backup generators somewhere. And I don't know why you're jumping to the conclusion that the guards wouldn't be equipped to protect themselves.
  • And by all appearances, the prison complex appears to be built in the middle of nowhere, so even if it wasn't buried beneath several feet of snow after the avalanche, the prisoners would have nowhere to go if they did overtake the guards. They'd be trapped and at the mercy of whatever help arrives to rescue them and would be easily subdued or killed if they refuse to comply. Therefore, while I could see some of the inmates trying to act out, the majority will probably recognize that the smartest move is to lay low and not cause too much trouble.
  • Also, rewatching the movie, the guards at the prison appeared to be very amply armed to keep the inmates under control, and as the helicopter is lifting off, Alexei looks back down at the prison, where you can clearly see that some of its structures are visible amidst the snow. It was by no means completely buried.

Where did they find Red Guardians costume

• Where did they find Red Guardians costume? Melina never expected to see him again so it's highly unlikely she had it, but once at Melina's Alexei has it.
  • The implication is that Melina kept it as a way of remembering Alexei, as she felt a certain amount of love for him and thought he was as good as dead.
  • Melina says she hasn't washed it since Alexei last wore it, which would seem to indicate she had it with her since then.

No male Black Widows

• Maybe I missed something, but does Dreykov have a deep hatred for women? Why aren't there any male Black Widows? Did he create a female army out of anger and spite? This feels more like "I want to have power over the opposite sex" rather than "I want to create an army to rule the world".
  • If you want to get technical, Dreykov does have male soldiers under his command, the masked dudes with submachine guns that capture our heroes at Melina’s house and take them to the Red Room. They serve as the bulk of the mooks we actually see our heroes fight inside the base. Beyond that, what you said is kind of the point. Dreykov is presented as a massive misogynist who himself is rather physically weak as noted by Natasha as shes goading him into hitting her to try to sever the nerve, with Nat eventually slamming her own head into the desk to do it herself because he couldn’t. He craved control, and combine that with the fact all the Widows wear a Spy Catsuit, it’s not hard to wonder what else the chemical mind control could be used for. As for the practical applications of the Widows, as for “wanting to take over the world”, well you don’t necessarily need an army. Get the widows into key positions in foreign governments and you could potentially rule the world through puppet leaders who ate the eye candy. It’s also important to note that this movie has strong social themes, namely that it has a mostly female cast that overcomes a controlling male figure that gets his rocks off abusing women.
  • This is just an educated guess, but historically speaking, girls are usually seen as being helpless, useless, and more prone to being abandoned than boys are... Because they couldn't do as much work, couldn't carry on the family name, couldn't make an impact on society, whatever the reasons were. But they'd be easier to pluck off the street since they're less likely to be missed and are available in much greater supply...hypothetically speaking, of course. Dreykov gives a nod to this when he remarks that they're the one resource the world has too much of.

Reconnecting

• Yelena asks Nat why she never tried to reconnect with her if she really thought the Red Room was out of commission. Nat replies that she assumed Yelena was off living a normal life and that she wouldn't want to see her again, which Yelena evidently doesn't buy. So... Why didn't Nat want to reconnect with her? Did she just not want to dredge up the memories?

Budapesht safehouse

• During a conversation between Nat and Mason (her "private contractor" guy), he says that since she doesn't plan on going back to Budapest, he has someone else rooming in the safehouse there in the meantime. Since we later learn that the antidote vials are among the stuff he brought back from there... Does that mean he's referring to Yelena? Did Yelena have to go through him in order to stay in the safehouse? If so, how did she know who he was in the first place? She's been working for the Red Room since she was six, and Mason seems like someone Natasha knew from outside of that.
  • Red Room or not, a spy might need to deal with Black Market dealers from time to time.
  • Or at least keep track of high-profile dealers like Mason.
  • Important to remember is that the widows are still conscious while being controlled by the Red Room. Yelena would still remember all of the experience and connections she drew upon before being freed.

Natasha's Sense of Smell

• In order to break away from Dreykov's pheromone lock, Nat has to sever an olfactory nerve in her nose, which she does by brutally breaking it on Dreykov's desk. We see Nat reset her nose bone afterwards, but no mention is made of the severed nerve. So did she lose her sense of smell from that?
  • According to some rudimentary research, damage to the olfactory nerve caused by a blow to the head like that is able to be repaired with time, although it's not always done 100% correctly and even actual medical treatment may not be capable of fixing what's wrong.
  • Maybe Nat knows a super-neurosurgeon and is certain that she can get the nerve fixed?
  • Possibly. Quite likely, even. The MCU does seem to be much more technologically advanced than our own.

Avengers finding the Red Room

• Yelena says that since sending Nat the vials, she’d been waiting to hear news of “Captain America taking down the Red Room.” Even if she was being a touch hyperbolic with that statement, how would she expect the Avengers to have known or found out the location of the Red Room? The vials don’t help them locate it, and if they’d already known its location beforehand, they wouldn’t have had to wait for the vials to take it down, would they?
  • They would have had to wait if they had wanted to avoid mass casualties of mind-controlled Widows. Or even wanted to have Black Widows working on their side.
  • Yalena thought the Red Room was a moving base on land, it's not that implausible to think the Avengers could storm the castle like they did with Von Strucker. Take Dreykov out, hack the console and with some mass-produced cure it should be doable for a group with the kind of resources the Avengers have access to (it's just a gas, drones could administer it to the Widows)
  • But would they have known that the Widows were being mind-controlled? Natasha had no idea until Yelena explained it to her, since it only started after she defected. Before then, it's said they used mental conditioning.

Why hide Taskmaster's gender?

• Yelena refers to Taskmaster as "he", so the Widows don't know that Taskmaster is a woman. Why? What's the point of hiding it?
  • There likely isn't a specific reason why, other than Dreykov being too misogynistic to think there's any reason to tell them. It's possible the proper soldiers he has working for him are in on it, but the widows are just expendable members of his mind-controlled puppet army. With no explicit need for him to tell them, he probably just figured "Why bother?"

Natasha's solution to Dreykov's pheremones

• If Dreykov can't be attacked while Natasha can smell him, wouldn't it have been easier (and far less painful) for Natasha to put a clothespin on her nose when confronting him? And if that wasn't enough to block out the scent, couldn't she have just walked 30 feet away out of smell range and then shot him?
  • She needed to learn how to access his data on the other widows before she killed him. As to after she found out, she was in Dreykov's personal office, where he undoubtedly spends a lot of his time. There's no telling how far she would have to go to be able to shoot him without his pheromones interfering. And it's likely she wanted to feel the personal satisfaction of knocking him around a few times before killing him anyway, after everything he'd done to her and girls like her.

Natasha's tracker

• So Natasha's plan to stop Dreykov was to have herself captured, get brought to the Red Room, then activate her tracker so Ross will come chasing after her... except that she left her tracker behind at the train station's restroom to distract Ross's forces while she took a ferry ride in Norway. Did she stop off at 7-Eleven and bought a few extra SHIELD trackers in a deleted scene?

The sisters' names

• Natasha calls her sister Yelena during their escape, suggesting that Yelena went by her real name while they were living in Ohio as children. If the idea was to be undercover Americans, using a name like Yelena that's pretty uncommon in the States wouldn't be the best choice, and she would have been too young when they first got to America to understand the idea of a cover identity. Natasha could have gotten away with using her own name, but why would Yelena still be going by Yelena as a "typical American child" in a "typical American family"?

---