Spoilers for all works besides Black Widow and What If…? are unmarked.
Agent Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
"The truth is a matter of circumstances; it's not all things to all people."
Birth Name: Natalia Alianovna Romanoff
Known Aliases: Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, "Natalie Rushman", "Fanny Longbottom"
Species: Human
Citizenship: American (formerly Soviet-Russian)
Affiliation(s): Red Room (formerly), KGB (formerly), S.H.I.E.L.D., STRIKE, Hammer Industries (formerly), Stark Industries (formerly), Avengers
Portrayed By: Scarlett Johansson, Ever Anderson (young)Foreign voice actors
Appearances: Iron Man 2 | Captain America: The First Avengernote | The Avengers | Captain America: The Winter Soldier | Avengers: Age of Ultron | Captain America: Civil War | Spider-Man: Homecoming note | Thor: Ragnarok note | Avengers: Infinity War | Captain Marvel note | Avengers: Endgame | Spider-Man: Far From Home note | Loki note | Black Widow | Hawkeye note | Thor: Love and Thunder note
"I used to have nothing. And then I got this. This job — this family. And I was better because of it."
Indoctrinated into the Red Room as a child and trained to be one of the deadliest assassins in the world, Natasha Romanoff worked as a Black Widow spy for the KGB. She eventually became a target for S.H.I.E.L.D., and the agent who caught her, Clint Barton/Hawkeye, offered to spare her life if she defected.
Since then, she's been a key agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and initially the only female Avenger. She kept surveillance on everyone from Iron Man to the Hulk, and is an extraordinary close-quarters fighter, but her determination to do good seems to come from the aftermath of an amoral past.
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- 10-Minute Retirement: At the start of Black Widow (2021), Natasha appears to be about to retire from the superhero world and vanish into obscurity. This lasts about a day, and then Taskmaster blows up her car while she's heading into town on a routine errand in an effort to steal a package Yelena sent her (that Nat hadn't even opened, or even intended to open).
- The Ace: She was part of a program designed to make women into perfect killing machines, and this is reflected in her being one of the best spies/martial artists in the world. When Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. wants to establish a new character as especially competent, someone will say "X is the best since Romanoff", implying she is one of if not the best of their agents.
- Action Girl: Badass Normal, but still fights alongside the other Avengers.
- Adaptation Name Change: In the comics, her full name is Natalia Alianovna Romanova, with her frequently going by the anglicized version Natasha Romanoff. In the MCU, she retains her first and middle name (though she still goes by Natasha) from the comics but her surname is actually Romanoff.
- Adaptational Nice Girl: She's far more open and social than her comic book counterpart, getting along with her Avengers co-workers and growing to view them as a family.
- Adaptation Personality Change: Natasha Romanov is a far more morally ambiguous character in the comics, with her character originating as a villainous KGB spy for many In-Universe years before she performed a Heel–Face Turn to good (and even then she became "only" an Anti-Hero). In the MCU, while Nat has had a history being a spy (to the point where she was recruited into S.H.I.E.L.D. since she wanted to be The Atoner on behalf of "the red in [her] ledger"), unlike the comics she gets recruited for S.H.I.E.L.D. and actually helps Nick Fury create the Avengers. Also, in the comics Nat is more of a lone wolf while in the movies (even her solo one) she's at her best with a team.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: With her whole surrogate family:
- Yelena isn't as close to her - in fact, she is a younger Black Widow, an Anti-Heroine and often acts as The Rival towards Natasha who she feels Always Second Best against - a far cry from the little sister she is portrayed as in the MCU.
- Melina Vostokoff is an enemy of Natasha called Iron Maiden in the comics and explicitly younger than her. Here, she's older than both Natasha and Yelena, acting as their surrogate mother.
- Natasha and Alexei Shostakov were married in the comics to each other before they became Black Widow and Red Guardian. In the MCU, Alexei acts as a father figure to her and Yelena.
- Adaptational Wimp: This version of Black Widow is strictly a Badass Normal, having never taken the Red Room's version of the Super Soldier Serum as she did in the comics.
- Affectionate Nickname: Clint calls her "Nat" in The Avengers, a sign of their more intimate relationship. Steve does it at least once in The Winter Soldier, showing they've formed a close friendship. By the time of Endgame, even General Okoye is comfortable calling her "Nat".
- Affirmative Action Girl: She joins Pepper Potts as the second plot-relevant female in Iron Man 2.
- Age Lift: The Winter Soldier states she was born in 1984. In the comics Natasha's birth year is unknown, but she is one of the few superheroes not bound by Comic-Book Time and is upward of fifty thanks to a longevity-inducing serum. She and Yelena are also closer in age to each other, whereas their comic book counterparts were decades apart.
- Aloof Big Sister: When she and Yelena first reunite, their relationship is frosty. Natasha's Big Sister Instinct manifests later.
- Alternate Self: There are five Black Widow variants. Unlike the Sacred Timeline counterpart, at least two of them are never shown dying.
- Ambiguous Situation: For a time, it was left unexplained how she was part of the KGB; she would have been seven years old when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, and a flashback in Age of Ultron reveals she graduated in her late teens. Her solo film finally clears this up by showing that she was taken into the Red Room after the fall of the Soviet Union.
- Animal Motifs: Downplayed. Besides her alias, the only things referencing black widows are her "Widow's Bite" and the red hourglass symbol on her belt.
- Animal-Themed Superbeing: Of the Animal Alias variety; "The famous Black Widow".
- Anti-Hero: Especially prominent in The Winter Soldier, where she contrasts with Steve. She has a lot of red in her ledger that she's trying to wipe out by being an amoral spy.
- Apologetic Attacker: In Civil War, to the point where she goes out of her way to confirm that she and Clint are still friends while they're in the middle of a fight.Nat: We're still friends, right?Clint: Depends on how hard you hit me.
- Arm Cannon: Her bracelets have an energy weapon that fires crimson bolts, which can stun a Red Room assassin in one shot.
- Armed with Pepper Spray: While taking down Justin Hammer's security guards, she steals a can of pepper spray from one of them and sprays another guard.
- The Atoner: Hinted at in The Avengers and made all the more evident in The Winter Soldier. One of her main motivations for doing what she does is to make up for her past as an assassin ("wipe the red from my ledger", as she puts it) by doing good. Despite her often amoral actions, she feels her work for S.H.I.E.L.D. and for the Avengers is accomplishing that. She's legitimately distraught when she discovers that instead of doing good, she has ben doing an uncertain amount of HYDRA's dirty work, though in the end it shows serious character development that she's willing to make every bit of her tainted past public knowledge to stop HYDRA.
- The Baby of the Bunch: Of the original six Avengers, but it's heavily downplayed. If one were to look at their chronological birth years in the MCU, Thor is obviously the oldest, having been born sometime around 964-965 A.D., followed by Steve (1918), Bruce (1969), Tony (1970), Clint (1971), then Nat (1984). However, with Steve having gone into the ice for almost seventy years, this puts Nat as the second-youngest instead, with Steve being physiologically younger than her. As of The Avengers, the first time both would meet each other, Natasha would have been 28 years old in 2012 whereas Steve physiologically would have only been 27 at the time.
- Badass Biker: In Age of Ultron, she sports a motorcycle and uses it quite proficiently.
- Badass Bookworm: A spy who can not only mow through dozens of Hammer security in a whirlwind of acrobatic martial arts in the time it takes Hogan to finally beat down one guy, but also speaks several languages—including Latin, despite there being no practical reason to know how to speak it—and can easily hack through Ivan Vanko's re-programming job on the Hammeroids in minutes, shutting them down without breaking a sweat.Romanoff: The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly.
- Badass Normal: A former assassin with gadgets, guns, good aim, and even better close combat skills. That's still enough to qualify her as an Avenger even though everyone else on the team has superhuman abilities or super technology. She takes out her fair share of Chitauri and Ultron Sentries, nearly throttles the Winter Soldier, can hold her own against the size-shifting Ant-Man, and can land hits on members of the Black Order, who give even superpowered individuals a run for their money.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: As a former bad guy, she's more open to performing morally ambiguous actions. For instance, when conducting a High-Altitude Interrogation, their captive scoffs at the possibility of Captain America throwing him off the edge. Cap admits it isn't his style... it's Black Widow's.
- Bash Siblings: With her teammates in the Avengers, particularly Captain America and Hawkeye.
- Battle Couple: She and Bruce Banner fell in love while working together to destroy Ultron, though their romance is short-lived.
- Better as Friends: Her romantic subplot with Bruce is quietly dropped after Age of Ultron, and their interactions are completely platonic throughout Endgame, likely because their lives have gone in such different directions post Time Skip — she's Mission Control for a new team of Avengers, and he's reconciled the Hulk to himself and returned to his research.
- Bifurcated Weapon: She can connect her two batons together to make a bō staff.
- Big Sister Instinct:
- Natasha was fiercely protective of Yelena when they were kids, to the point of grabbing a gun off a soldier and threatening to shoot if they tried to put her "sister" into the Black Widow program. When they're both adults, she reminds Yelena to put her seatbelt on. Also, shortly after Yelena is thrown off Dreykov's exploding helicopter, Natasha dives down to put a parachute on her plummeting little sister.
- During Infinity War, Natasha is determined to protect both Wanda and Vision from Thanos and the Black Order.
- Birds of a Feather: With Clint Barton because they're both assassins.
- Black Bra and Panties: She wears these underneath her dress in Iron Man 2, which Happy doesn't mind taking a peek at while driving her to Hammer Industries.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: She's the redhead to Yelena's blonde and Melina's brunette.
- Blue Is Heroic: Natasha has blue eyes and sometimes wears a Spy Catsuit with blue highlights and some of her weapons emit a blue glow.
- Broken Pedestal: How she feels towards S.H.I.E.L.D. in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. She had initially joined them thinking that it would help her redeem some of the bad things she did in the past. The revelation that S.H.I.E.L.D. was heavily infiltrated shatters that completely.
- Captured on Purpose: For her first scene in The Avengers, she's being held captive by a bunch of Russian thugs, but only because she's letting them do so. As soon as she has the information she needs, Nat whups all their butts to hell and back in record time without so much as a hair out of place.
- Celebrity Paradox: Spongebob Squarepants was referenced in Iron Fist and Avengers: Infinity War (where Natasha appears, to boot). Scarlett Johansson voiced Princess Mindy in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.
- Character Catchphrase: "I only act like I know everything."
- Character Development: She's introduced as a cold, straight-laced assassin (partly because she's posing as a covert spy under Tony Stark's employ in Iron Man 2 and since she doesn't like him, feels no reason to open up) but her time with the Avengers (particularly Steve Rogers and Bruce Banner) exposes more of her vulnerabilities. Over time, her desire to be part of a family and to protect that family becomes more central to her character.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: She’s just a normal human with no superpowers, but the training of the Red Room allows her to keep up with a super soldier. And she is even capable of defeating Corvus, something that not even Captain America could do.
- Childish Bangs: She has these in the flashback scenes in Age of Ultron.
- Child Soldier: Started working as a spy at a very young age. Nat would've been only 6 or 7 when the KGB was dissolved if the MCU goes by real-time. Agent Carter reveals there was an entire school dedicated to training young girls as agents; it was even called the Black Widow Training Ground.Banner: And your actress buddy, is she a spy too? Do they start that young?
Romanoff: I did. - The Chosen Many: When Natasha mentions her biological mother to Melina, Melina reveals that Natasha was chosen for the Widow program because through genetic testing, they found an amazing specimen in her. Initially, Natasha thought she and the other girls for the program were picked because they were unwanted street kids.
- Code Name: "Black Widow", though it's used only a couple of times.
- Color Animal Codename: Played With in that her code name Black Widow's namesake spider is actually called that and not combining a color and an animal together like the trope is supposed to be.
- Color Character: The Black Widow.
- Color Motif: Red and black are the colors usually associated with her. However, she did a brief stint as the yellow to Cap's blue and Falcon's red in Infinity War when she dyed her hair blonde.
- Combat Parkour: Her gymnastic-like movements in battle are almost unrivaled.
- Combat Pragmatist:
- When her fight with the Brainwashed and Crazy Hawkeye starts getting rough, she resorts to biting his hand.
- She's not above utilizing Groin Attacks in Civil War or anytime, really.
- Composite Character: It's more composite and decomposite roles, than characters, in Captain America: Civil War, in regards to Spider-Man. She is the one that ultimately changes sides during the conflict, while Peter stays on the same side but is Demoted to Extra. In contrast, in the comic the movie takes its name from, Spider-Man is basically the protagonist and changes from Iron Man's side to Cap's.
- Consummate Liar:
- When Nick Fury commissioned his own lie detector, he specifically wanted one Black Widow couldn't beat. Whether that actually happened, he isn't saying.
- In a deleted scene from Civil War, Black Panther actually suggests that she may be so good at lying that she can't recognize genuine honesty anymore.T'Challa: You are not used to the truth, are you?
- She tricks Loki. She tricks the God of Trickery.
- Cool Aunt: To Clint's children, who are as excited to see her as they would be with their father.
- Cool Big Sis:
- Aside from being physiologically older than Captain Rogers, Natasha is the mature voice of realism and calm reason to pull her "little brother" back to ground, should his idealism be incompatible to the grim realities at hand.
- Black Widow establishes that she was this to Yelena. While their "family" was a cover story, Yelena adored Natasha and looked up to her during their childhood. Even as adults, Yelena still thinks highly of her sister and gets upset when Natasha tries to dismiss their connection as not being real.
- Cowardice Callout: When calling out her deep-cover parents, Natasha says that Alexei may be an idiot, but Melina is a coward for participating in the creation of the very same mind-controlling serum which Dreykov used on Melina's other deep-cover daughter.
- Cunning Linguist: Fluent in English, Russian, French, German, Chinese, Italian, Latin, and various other languages, according to Iron Man 2 and The Avengers.
- The Cynic: In diametric contrast to Steve Rogers' Wide-Eyed Idealist. She has seen far too much of how ugly the world can be since childhood, and refuses to see the silver lining of any black cloud. Played for tragic laughs five years after the Snap, when she half-jokingly tells Steve "If you're about to tell me to look on the bright side, I'm about to hit you in the head with a peanut butter sandwich" when he tries to reassure her that the environment is starting to improve after the disappearance of half of Earth's population.
- Cynic–Idealist Duo: Has this dynamic with Steve. Natasha is someone who doesn't like trusting others while Steve is an idealistic and compassionate man who tries to see the best in everybody. The two manage to become great friends despite this huge difference in their core values.
- Damsel out of Distress: In The Avengers, she is seemingly captured by three gun-wielding goons. Seconds later, one of the goons receives a phone call from Agent Phil Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D, telling him to give the phone to a rather-annoyed Natasha, who tells him that she's working. When he reveals that Clint has been compromised, she then proceeds to knock out all three of her kidnappers — while still tied up.
- Dance Battler: If flashbacks in Age of Ultron indicate anything, the Tykebombs from the Red Room were trained in classical ballet. This is supported in Agent Carter where the 1940s Black Widow mentioned that she's a ballerina.
- Dark Action Girl: She used to be an assassin for Dreykov and his Red Room prior to her Heel–Face Turn.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Loki hints at a number of awful things in her past and says that her ledger is 'gushing red'.
- In Avengers: Age of Ultron, it's also revealed that all Widows are sterilized as a final ceremony to complete their training so as to avoid any distractions and focus solely on their missions, something Natasha deeply regrets.
- Dark Is Not Evil: She is a hero who wears an all-black sneaking suit.
- Deader than Dead: To get the Soul Stone before Thanos could in Avengers: Endgame, she sacrifices her soul at Vormir so Clint could collect the Stone. It's outright stated that in spite of the stones' collective power, this exchange was irreversible, with Hulk even saying that as hard as he tried to bring her back in the Unsnap, he was unable to. Natasha is permanently and absolutely dead.
- Deadpan Snarker: There's a lot of emphasis on the deadpan part throughout the movies.Romanoff: [after tricking Loki into revealing his plan] Thank you for your cooperation.
- Deliberately Distressed Damsel: In her introduction scene in The Avengers. As Joss Whedon commented, "This is my entire career in one scene: Look, she's helpless! No, she's kicking their asses!"
- Deliberate Injury Gambit: After lulling Dreykov into a false sense of security allowing her to get close, Natasha breaks her own nose in order to sever her olfactory nerve, rendering her immune to the pheromone that was preventing her from attacking him.
- Demoted to Extra: In Infinity War, she only has five minutes of screen time, has fewer lines, and overall has a smaller role compared to her previous appearances.
- Designated Girl Fight: In Infinity War, she fights with Okoye and Wanda against Proxima Midnight.
- Determinator: Natasha never gives up. She's the only member of the Avengers to be a constant member of the team from its first incarnation all the way through the five years post-Snap to Endgame if we count Cap's Secret Avengers team in the break between CW and IW.
- As Thanos slowly walks towards Vision and Wanda during the Final Battle in Infinity War, Cap and Okoye can at least rely on their vibranium shield and spear, but Natasha rushes at him with a taser.
- Deuteragonist: Of The Winter Soldier next to Captain America, the guy in the title.
- Dies Wide Open: After she falls to her death so Clint can have the Soul Stone, we're treated to a shot of her corpse that shows her eyes still fully open.
- Disappeared Dad: When Red Skull calls her "Daughter of Ivan" in Avengers: Endgame, she admits to Clint that the reason she believes him so easily is because she never even knew her father's name. This could mean two things: either he left before she was born, or she was inducted into the Red Room at such a young age that she couldn't even remember him. In Black Widow, Melina and Dreykov talk about Natasha's mother but make no mention of her father.
- Don't Make Me Destroy You:
- After the Avengers have defeated Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight in Avengers: Infinity War, Natasha tells them that they have no desire to kill them.Romanoff: We don't want to kill you. But we will.
- During the final battle of Black Widow (2021), she tells the brainwashed Black Widows that she doesn't want to hurt them.
- After the Avengers have defeated Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight in Avengers: Infinity War, Natasha tells them that they have no desire to kill them.
- The Dreaded: Thaddeus Ross knows exactly how dangerous Romanoff truly is in battle, which is why he deployed an entire SWAT squadron in an attempt to capture her in Black Widow (2021).
- Dual Wielding: Nat does this with most of her weapons, be it guns, electrified batons, or tonfas.
- Dude Magnet: Natasha gains a number of male admirers. Tony thought she was attractive, Happy couldn't keep his eyes off her while she was undressing, Steve seemed appreciative of their Fake-Out Make-Out, Bruce had Unresolved Sexual Tension with her, and
Word of God confirmed Sam has (or had) a small crush on her. - Dye or Die: Sports blonde hair in Infinity War in order to better hide from the authorities. In Endgame, she lets her natural red grow back during the Time Skip, resulting in mostly red hair but with a blonde tinge halfway through.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: Even though she did not die in battle, this is a woman who unhesitatingly gave her life for the Soul Stone so that trillions may live once more.
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- Endearingly Dorky: In The Winter Soldier, she growls, "Shall we play a game?" and begins to explain the reference to Steve (who, amusingly enough, already understood it). She also sends work-related text messages with smileys, and her flirting/gushing about Bruce in Age of Ultron has to be seen to be believed.
- Exact Words: Pulls one on Black Panther in Captain America: Civil War. When T'Challa tries to stealth killing Bucky, Natasha electrocutes him which buys time for him and Steve to escape. When T'Challa looks at her angrily after the act, she tries to justify herself with this trope.Natasha: I said I would help you find him, not catch him. There's a difference.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: She has a different hairstyle in each installment, but this trope is not in effect until she becomes a fugitive after Civil War when she dyes her iconic red hair blonde. She goes back to red post Time Skip in Endgame with some blonde streaks thrown in.
- Fake American: In-Universe, as explained in The Avengers.Romanoff: I'm Russian, or I used to be.
- Famous-Named Foreigner: The House Romanoff
was a big deal. - Fear Is the Appropriate Response: Natasha is the poster child of grace under pressure and calm in the face of danger. It could be a mission on a boat with terrorists, a city being invaded by aliens, or being hunted by HYDRA, and she'll still find the time to bust out Casual Danger Dialogue while trying to find Steve a date. The only time this vernier of unshakability comes off is the first time she met and had to deal with the Hulk. She's petrified of being in the same room with Banner in the beginning, and after a near-death experience facing the green giant is left quaking in a Troubled Fetal Position in a corner of the Helicarrier. Given that the Hulk is "an enormous green rage monster" that's The Juggernaut with mountain-breaking levels of Super-Strength, this is absolutely justified.
- Fiery Redhead: Though she is usually calm, she is still a rather aggressive fighter.
- Fire-Forged Friends: She and Clint originally tried to kill each other, but ended up working together to take down Dreykov and grew to become the best of friends.
- Foil:
- To Steve Rogers. She lies for a living and he can't tell a lie to save his life, but their partnership in The Winter Soldier shows that they're still both agents with issues adjusting to their current lives.
- To her arch-nemesis, Dreykov. Where Nat fights openly as an Avenger in the name of peace and freedom, Dreykov is a corrupt politician commanding an army of Widows from the shadows while never doing any of the dirty work himself, and is obsessed with subjugation and personal power. While Nat has no blood relatives, she has found two 'families' and formed deep bonds with them, whereas Dreykov has a living daughter, but enslaved her to make her another one of his super agents.
- Foreshadowing: Her conversation with Loki in The Avengers is massively prophetic for the events of Civil War and Avengers: Endgame:
- "I've got red in my ledger, I'd like to wipe it out." Natasha will do anything for redemption and to do the right thing, even if that means she's not alive to see the consequences of her actions.
- "You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers." While at the time this foreshadowed S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA's infiltration, each of these sinners corresponds with the dark sides of Steve and Tony in Captain America: Civil War. The service of killers is Tony's team, related to Tony's dark past as a weapons manufacturer. The service of liars is Steve's team, related to Steve hiding the secret of the deaths of Tony's parents. In the film, Natasha is on both sides at different points.
- "Your ledger is gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change that?" Clint does end up proving to be no more virtuous than herself when he goes on a killing rampage after the death of his wife and kids in Endgame, and she sacrifices her life to save him rather than let him die for his sins as Ronin.
- Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Her bodysuits are tailored to show her curves.
- Genocide Survivor: She's part of the one half of the universe that didn't die from the Snap in Infinity War.
- Good Is Not Nice: In Iron Man 2 and in regards to Tony in general, with a tendency to try and make people back down when she thinks she ought to be dealing with something herself, seemingly more or less because Tony requires a more forceful personality around to keep him in check.
- Good Is Not Soft: In The Avengers, she's rather respectful and polite to the people she has to work with — even Tony — and shows her lighter side more often, especially to Banner who she is assigned to keep tabs on. However, she's still extremely ruthless when it comes to doing what needs to be done, make no mistake. In the comic book prequel to Iron Man 2, it's revealed that she got the job at Stark Industries in the first place by (non-fatally) poisoning one of the candidates.
- Good Wears White: She wears a white tactical suit during her mission of terminating the Red Room.
- Grappling-Hook Pistol: Natasha has a wrist-mounted grappling hook that she can rapidly shoot at anchor points to stop her falls.
- Gratuitous Russian: Her last name, Romanoff, is masculine and should really be Romanova. In The Avengers, she speaks decent Russian (although not like the native she's supposed to be) while working undercover and being interrogated by a Russian general. At the end of that scene, she exclaims, "Bozhe moi!"note after finding out that Coulson wants her to bring in Bruce Banner, the only person that terrifies her.
- Groin Attack: In Iron Man 2, she hits one of Hammer's security guards in the crotch while breaking into the the facility Ivan Vanko's hiding at. In Civil War, she does this to Ant-Man during their fight in the airport.
- Guile Hero: Her primary interrogation method is manipulating the egos of her targets to make them think they have her in a state of weakness, so they are more prone to accidentally giving her information while gloating. Just ask Loki.
- Guns Akimbo: Ever since her first appearance in Iron Man 2, Natasha has had a preference for using two pistols and shooting them together. In Iron Man 2, it was a combination of Walther PPK/S and Hechler & Koch USP Compact, then a pair of Glock 26 in subsequent movies.
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot:
- An inversion, at least when compared with Hawkeye. Natasha is a crack shot, but she's an even better martial artist.
- Played straight with Hulk in Age of Ultron as he loves smashing things (his canonical Signature Move being "Hulk Smash" even) while Natasha herself prefers gunning her opponents.
- She and Steve Rogers also fit this trope whenever they're together, seeing as his weapon is his legendary shield, while Nat—as mentioned above—prefers guns.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: In Civil War she's Team Iron Man at first, but switches sides to hold off Black Panther and allow Cap and Bucky to escape and complete their mission. Given both sides are heroes, it's difficult to tell if she was a heel or a face or neither before or after.
- Head Desk: Natasha's method of severing the nerve to prevent the scent of the pheromone preventing her from attacking Dreykov is to slam her head hard on his desk targeting the nose, breaking it.
- Head-Turning Beauty: During Iron Man 2, once she first comes in, Tony turns his head and is downright hypnotized, and later Happy almost crashed his car because he was watching her getting changed into her Spy Catsuit in the rear view mirror.
- The Heart: Not in the same way as Hawkeye, but an important part of her job on the Avengers is managing the personalities of the superpowered members. In Ultron, her role has evolved into calming down the Hulk when the battle is over.
- Heel–Face Turn: She used to be an assassin, but changed her ways after Hawkeye chose not to kill her when on a mission to do so.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: She is quite fond of leather gear.
- Hero Antagonist: Reluctantly works against Captain America and the Anti-Registration team in Captain America: Civil War. Both sides are heroes, but this is Steve's story.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In Endgame, Natasha travels in time with Clint to get the Soul Stone on Vormir. Faced with the same dilemma as Thanos in Infinity War, she jumps down the cliff on her own volition despite Clint's best efforts to prevent her from killing herself. Clint tearfully gets the Soul Stone afterward, allowing the Avengers to complete their own Gauntlet.
- Heroic Suicide: As mentioned above, she willingly lets herself fall to her own doom to ensure that Hawkeye can take the Soul Stone back to their timeline. No fakeouts, she has to actually die to make it work.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Her M.O. Her interrogation techniques rely not on questioning someone, but on making them feel in control and letting them do their own talking. Her fights usually involve using something of her opponent's (the chair they tied her to, their own weapons, even their shadow) to make her moves.
- Honorary Aunt: To Hawkeye's kids. Clint and Laura even end up naming their third-born Nathaniel. It would have been Natasha, but Nat turned out to be a boy.
- Hourglass Plot: Her entire relationship with Hawkeye in the Avengers movies of the Infinity Saga. In the beginning, he saves her (an assassin) instead of killing her because he believes in her, and tells her that she's not beyond redemption in spite of her past crimes. By Endgame, he's committed several crimes of his own as a vigilante, but she sacrifices her life for him because she believes that he's got enough time to make up for it, as he believed in her all those years ago.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: With Bruce Banner if he's in Hulk form. They work closely together in Age of Ultron.
- Iconic Sequel Character: She makes her first ever appearance in the second Iron Man movie.
- I Don't Pay You to Think: She says a variant of this to her Friend in the Black Market Rick Mason when he starts wondering what she will do without the Avengers in Black Widow (2021).Natasha: I don’t pay you to worry.
- I Know You Know I Know: She has this type of conversation with her adoptive sister Yelena when she sneaks into her apartment in Black Widow (2021).Yelena: I know you’re out there.
Natasha: I know you know I’m out here. - Improvised Weapon User:
- From beating down her captors with the chair they tied her to, to working out how to fire a Chitauri blast lance just by grabbing one. There's a theme here…
- In the beginning of Civil War, Widow manages to beat a terrorist by assaulting him with a basket she picked up around the marketplace.
- In-Series Nickname: "Nat" or "'Tasha", by Clint, Steve, Fury, and Laura. It eventually extends to the other members of the team by the time Endgame starts.
- I Owe You My Life:
- To Hawkeye since he chose to spare her on a mission to kill her, instead recruiting her so she could work on atoning.
- Becomes this with Steve Rogers as well, when in Captain America: The Winter Soldier he saved her from the old S.H.I.E.L.D. base when it was targeted by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents after the two of them went rogue.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery:
- In The Avengers, Natasha floors a trio of Russian gangsters while tied to a chair in a Little Black Dress. Humorously, she makes sure to retrieve her heels once finished.
- In Age of Ultron, she dodges and shoots at rogue Iron Legion bots while still wearing her party dress from earlier.
- Killed Off for Real: Fought with Clint Barton over who should be the sacrifice in exchange for the Soul Stone. She won and killed herself, allowing Clint to obtain the Soul Stone. Bruce Banner stated that he had attempted to use the completed Infinity Gauntlet to resurrect Natasha, but couldn't. The writers and directors have since stated that the nature of obtaining the Soul Stone means that her death is final, and she will not be coming back.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: In Age of Ultron, she tearfully reveals to Bruce that the Red Room sterilizes their alumnae during "graduation day". However much she might want to have her own children, she can't. Natasha makes due by being an Honorary Aunt for her best friend's children (i.e. the Barton kids).
- Legacy Character: Agent Carter reveals there was a Black Widow school where young girls were trained to become agents as early as the 1940s.
- Lightning Bruiser: Best shown in many of her fight scenes, Natasha has the agility befitting for a master assassin, and is incredibly tough, able to get back up as soon as possible after powerful hits.
- Like Brother and Sister: How the directors have described her relationship with Steve. She'll tease him and is generally an Anti Heroic foil to Captain America, but they care for each other deeply. She comforts him at Peggy's funeral, and he works to support her in her new post-Decimation role as the new leader of the Avengers.
- Like Mother, Like Daughter:
- During the fight between Alexei and Melina against Taskmaster in Black Widow, Melina is shown landing on the ground, posed in the same Three-Point Landing that Natasha often uses.
- While we barely know how Natasha's birth mother was like, Nat seems to have inherited her strong determination.
- Little Miss Badass: During the opening flashback of Black Widow, she's able to disarm a soldier and take his weapon at the age of 11.
- Lovely Angels: Goes up against the Winter Soldier with Sharon Carter. Does it again against Proxima Midnight with Okoye.
- Made of Iron: She is a normal human who doesn't wear high tech armor, and she endures some major hits throughout the series.
- In The Winter Soldier, the titular assassin shoots her in the shoulder but she is still able to operate a grenade launcher and was bleeding for quite sometime before the wound started bothering her. She was also unbothered being blown away by an explosion and took being thrown against a car by the Winter Soldier's metal arm without any complaint. Falcon (without his suit) and Sharon Carter were instantly knocked out by the same move.
- In The Avengers, she takes a backhanded blow to the abs by the Hulk and gets up once her fear and shock wears off, limping for only a short period of time. Then again, this could easily be pure determination at work.
- In Civil War, Wanda throws her back-first into a shipping crate and she hits her spine on it. She's up and about in no time. She also gets choked by Bucky's metal arm, complete with the whirring noises that indicate he's really putting effort into it. She comes off without even a mark and was able to talk through it; even Steve showed far more discomfort. She was also able to walk off a grenade explosion by keeping a mook between her and the grenade.
- In Black Widow, her endurance matches that of super soldiers; she survives a car crash and falls from a great height, and just walks it off.
- Male Gaze: Her rear end gets a lot of camera shots, especially in The Avengers and Black Widow.
- Man Bites Man: While fighting a mind-controlled Hawkeye in the Helicarrier, she bites him when he tries to stab her with a knife.
- Meaningful Name: Meta-example. The redheaded Natasha is played by Scarlett Johansson.
- Memetic Badass: In-Universe. In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., she is the go-to example of badassery in the secret agent department, just like Melinda May is for combat expertise.
- Mirror Character: To Gamora. Both are orphaned at a young age and were taken in by morally dubious people who trained them to become deadly assassins. They also end up joining a heroic team to protect others while also retaining a complicated relationship with their respective adoptive father and sister before ending up dying for the Soul Stone. However, Natasha manages to reconcile with her adoptive father and willingly gives her life to resurrect her adoptive sister. Gamora on the other hand, is still on bad terms with her adoptive father and reveals the location of the Soul Stone to save her adoptive sister, only to be sacrificed against her consent.
- Mission Control: Briefly during Tony and Rhodey's battle against the drones and Vanko in Iron Man 2. In Endgame when the remnants of the Avengers are trying to keep the Earth and other planets from falling apart, she organizes and advises the rest of the dispersed team through hologram projection.
- Missing Mom: She believed that her biological mother dumped her on the streets as an infant. Melina eventually admits that her mother didn't give her up voluntarily and spent the rest of her life searching for Natasha. Dreykov confirms this and reveals that the woman was executed because her search threatened to expose the Red Room to the world.
- More Hero than Thou: In Endgame, she and Clint fight to sacrifice themselves for the Soul Stone first in order to spare the other. In the end, she "wins".
- Ms. Fanservice: Downplayed. Being played by Scarlett Johansson meant that she was bound to fall under this trope and her scenes in her first film, Iron Man 2, were so filled with fanservice that some reviewers continued to dismiss her as nothing but eye candy for two or three more films, despite the fact that it was significantly reduced from The Avengers on. She briefly shows her midriff in The Winter Soldier, but she quips that the bullet scar on her navel means "bye-bye bikinis". Steve lampshades back "Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now."
- Murderous Thighs: Her Signature Move. She uses thigh chokes in combat at least Once per Episode and sometimes more. She has yet to use them as a killing move, though—when she's facing multiple opponents she uses it as a quick way to knock people down, and when she's only facing one they tend to be superhuman.
- My Greatest Failure:
- Out of all the red entries in her ledger, the one for General Dreykov causes her the most shame because she used Dreykov's young daughter as bait and blew up both of them. Loki taunts her about this in The Avengers, and she later admits to Clint that he sincerely got under her skin with that one.
- A close second is one of her Red Room missions which involved a hospital fire in the children's ward. Both times when it's brought up, by Loki in The Avengers and Alexander Pierce in a deleted scene in The Winter Soldier, she's visibly unnerved.
- My Greatest Second Chance: In Black Widow, she discovers that Dreykov's daughter, Antonia, is still alive and has been mind-controlled like the Black Widows into an assassin. She expends every effort to avoid killing Antonia this time and successfully breaks the mind-control.
N-Y
- Nice Girl: While she can be a cynical Anti-Hero, she's a very loyal and supportive friend to her teammates, especially Steve, Clint, and Bruce.
- No Periods, Period: Justified. After Alexei makes a joke about her and Yelena being on their periods, Yelena reveals that the sterilization process they went through as part of the Black Widow program involved removing all of their reproductive organs. Therefore, they can't get their periods.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever it was that happened in Budapest — which was first mentioned in The Avengers — remains a total mystery to anyone but her and Hawkeye. The two apparently remember it differently. Resolved in her solo film, which explains that the Budapest mission was the final step in her defection to SHIELD.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Scarlett Johansson is playing a Russian spy, but you wouldn't get that from her distinctly American accent. Justified in the sense that, as a Russian spy, she was instructed to learn how to disguise her voice to sound American and she later just made that her default accentnote . Flashbacks to her past in her title movie show that Natasha did have a Russian accent growing up, and she still had it when she defected to SHIELD with Clint during the Budapest mission.
- Not So Stoic:
- Her run-in with the Hulk makes her lapse into a brief state of terror, and she's shown sweating and trembling in fear more than any other member of the team. She admits to Hawkeye that "monsters and magic" are not something either of them was trained to cope with.
- She cries in Captain America: The Winter Soldier when she thinks Fury is dead. In a lighter example, Natasha seems to have warmed to Steve by the end of that film, as she cracks a few jokes and makes film references.
- She also freaks out a bit when Ultron rips his old form apart mid-sentence. Of course, that's exactly the reaction he was trying for.
- She's visibly shaken at the end of Avengers: Infinity War when she realizes that half of the universe has just been killed.
- She spends nearly every moment in Endgame distraught, tired, and mournful because of the Decimation and fighting against Hawkeye to perform the Heroic Sacrifice.
- Number Two: Becomes this to Steve in the New Avengers at the end of Age of Ultron as the only returning veteran after Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Iron Man all depart for different reasons.
- Odd Friendship: With Steve Rogers by The Winter Soldier. She's a chameleon-like spy and he's a straightforward soldier. They make it work.
- Offhand Backhand: While fighting Justin Hammer's security guards, she pepper sprays the last guard in the face without looking.
- Oh, Crap!: In The Avengers, when Bruce slowly starts to lose control and transform into the Hulk while her foot is trapped under debris. Especially when the target of Bruce's rage at the moment is her.
- Omniglot: Natasha is fluent in Russian, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, and Morse code.
- One of the Guys: She consistently fights alongside male-dominated teams and gets along with just about every single male ally she has. She's usually the only female on the team aside from one or two other members like Wanda, Carol or Nebula.
- One-Woman Army: While Happy is busy fighting one Hammer security guard, Romanoff's already taken out ten of them without much trouble.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- After seeing her combat skills in Iron Man 2 and early in The Avengers, her constantly controlled terror in the presence of Bruce Banner establishes just how dangerous the Hulk is.
- Also in The Winter Soldier with the eponymous antagonist. With an out of control Hulk, she at least fires a few bullets before running. When she comes up against the Winter Soldier, she just runs.
- Steve is pleased to see how open she is around Bruce, noting she must really have it bad for him considering she's not the most open person in the world.
- After suffering through five years of a post-snap world in Avengers: Endgame, Natasha can't help but break down in tears upon ending a conference call with her fellow heroes.
- Out of Focus: Due to the large amount of characters in Infinity War, she only has around five minutes of screen time in the film after having lots of screen time in her previous appearances.
- The Paragon: Arguably, both a) in the short window she became high-profile since the Battle of New York to the Avengers Civil War, and b) with her post-Snap leadership of the Avengers and her Heroic Sacrifice. Yelena noted how, even while Natasha was technically a wanted fugitive at the time, she's the one "little girls call their hero".note
- In a Deleted Scene of Black Widow (2021), she encounters a girl roleplaying as Black Widow amongst her Avengers-roleplaying friends—much like how Steve encountered a kid who looks up to him.
- This continues after her death: Hawkeye (2021) portrays her as memorialized in Rogers: The Musical, a girl watching shows up with her hair done in Natasha's Endgame-era braids, and she (together with the original six Avengers) is recognized in a memorial plaque for the Battle of New York.
- In a
- The Paragon Always Rebels: Up until she was brought in by Hawkeye (as detailed by The Avengers (2012)), there has never been a publicly-known defection from an active Black Widow of the Red Room. That said, her solo film downplays this and shows she was not the only one: Oksana and more importantly, Yelena and Melina, were eventually shown to be involved in an effort to finally take the Red Room down.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She's the shortest of the original six Avengers, and yet holds her own against burly dudes, alien invaders, and Super-Soldier Bucky Barnes.
- Pipe Pain: While securing the engine room in the Lemurian Star, she knocks out the last pirate by picking up a nearby pipe and hitting him in the head with it.
- Platonic Life-Partners:
- Hawkeye is her closest confidant and best friend. Loki sneeringly asks if it's love and she shoots down the idea. In Age of Ultron, she's shown to be good friends with his wife and kids, whom the other Avengers didn't even know existed. Endgame reveals that Natasha and Clint care for each other so much that they qualify as each other’s “that which you love” sacrifices needed to obtain the Soul Stone.
- She later develops a close friendship with Steve.
- During The Winter Soldier, they open up emotionally to each other and end up as close friends.
- Throughout Age of Ultron their strong dynamic is often emphasized to the point of them leading up the new Avengers lineup together by the end.
- In Civil War, while she sides with Tony, she still considers Captain America her true friend and repeatedly advises him to work with Tony, and eventually defects and helps Captain America and Winter Soldier escape in the airport at Leipzig.
- By Infinity War, the two of them and Sam have been vigilante fugitives for some time. As a team, they work seamlessly together.
- Play-Along Prisoner: This is part of her MO.
- In The Avengers, she's tied to a chair in a warehouse, being slapped around by Russian thugs who want to know what she knows, when Coulson calls and tells her that Hawkeye has been compromised. She objects that she's performing a successful interrogation, then puts him on hold, beats the tar out of her captors while still tied to that chair, and easily escapes.
- In Black Widow, she allows Dreykov to be in control right until he reveals the information she needs, and then attacks him and forces him to flee.
- Pop-Cultured Badass: She playfully quotes WarGames while hacking into Arnim Zola's computer in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and is enough of a James Bond fan to quote along to Moonraker in her solo film.
- Portmanteau Couple Name: In-Universe there are people shipping her with Quake, calling them "Quack".
- Pre-Asskicking One-Liner: Gives one before taking out many of Batroc's pirates.Natasha: Hey, sailor.
- Primary-Color Champion: Natasha has red hair, blue eyes, and she sometimes wears a Spy Catsuit with blue highlights. Her weapons also emit a blue or red glow in battle while some of her equipment has yellow/gold on them.
- Professional Killer: Before joining SHIELD, she was an assassin. After joining SHIELD, she tries to be something more.
- Promoted to Love Interest: She has had little interaction with Bruce Banner in the comics, but becomes his love interest in Age of Ultron. This is partially because Bucky Barnes and Daredevil, Widow's two major love interests in the comics, have no real connection to her in the MCU continuity, while with Hawkeye and Red Guardian her connection is changed to be a Like Brother and Sister platonic relationship with the former and a father-daughter-dynamic with the latter.
- Red Baron: According to The Avengers, she is "the famous Black Widow" to post-Soviet Union countries.
- Red Is Heroic: Her hair is red and Black Widow (2021) has her using weapons with red motifs.
- Redemption Equals Death: In a way. She expresses a desire throughout the Infinity Saga to atone for her past and "wipe the red from my ledger" as she puts it. In Endgame, her sacrifice directly allows the reversal of the Decimation and bringing trillions back from the dead, so one can interpret this as her final redemptive act.
- Scars Are Forever: In Winter Soldier, Steve asks her how she knows so much about the Winter Soldier. She shows him a bullet scar on her gut.
- Seen It All: In Endgame, Natasha notes that after she's reached the point of getting e-mails from a talking raccoon, there's not much left to impress her. At the same time, she's still awed she gets to travel through space.
- Sensual Slavs: She "used to be" Russian but when she does speak in Russian, it's very seductive as per the character.
- Sexy Secretary: As part of her Stark Industries cover, she becomes the latest secretary at the company and she knows that Tony Has a Type. She's first hired as Tony's personal assistant and later becomes Pepper's, as she is the new CEO of the company.
- She-Fu: Utilizes a lot of flips and slides in her fighting style, though she does also use other kinds of close combat.
- Ship Tease: As the only girl on a team of straight dudes, she gets teased with Steve, Tony, Clint, and most especially with Bruce. However, most end up becoming Platonic Life-Partners (see above).
- Shipper on Deck: She spends a lot of Captain America: The Winter Soldier casually suggesting people Steve should ask out on a date, even during less-than-opportune moments. There is an emphasis on Sharon/Agent 13. In Avengers: Endgame, she switches track to Cap and his old flame Peggy Carter, as she gets a big smile on her face when she sees that Cap still has Peggy’s picture.
- Ships That Pass in the Night: In-Universe, people ship her with Quake.
- Shock Stick: Natasha uses a pair of electroshock batons during the final battle of Avengers: Age of Ultron.
- Sibling Team: Natasha and Yelena are this during their mission of terminating the Red Room in Black Widow.
- Signature Move: Strangling or throwing someone to the ground by wrapping her legs around their neck/upper torso. Courtesy of Scarlett Johansson's usual stunt double, Heidi Moneymaker, and appropriate for a character named after a spider. Agent Carter reveals this move was part of the training program. Bucky is the only person in the entire series who it doesn't work on.
- Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: In The Avengers, Loki tries to lecture her on it. Not that she needed any lecturing in the first place:Natasha: Love is for children. I owe him a debt.
- Single Woman Seeks Good Man: With Bruce.Natasha: All my friends are fighters. And here comes this guy who spends his life avoiding the fight because he knows he'll win.
- Slave to PR: Why Natasha supported the Accords in Civil War. Not that she agrees wholeheartedly, but she feels that if the Avengers show they are willing to compromise and co-operate then they could reduce some of their bad press, and likewise stave off even worse fetters on their activities.
- Smart People Know Latin: One of the many languages she speaks, as she proves to Tony in Iron Man 2.Romanoff: Fallaces sunt rerum species.note
- The Smurfette Principle: The only female Avenger at first. She loses this status in Age of Ultron when Scarlet Witch joins The Team.
- Sneaky Spider: She's a stealthy assassin who uses a codename derived from a spider.
- Spy Catsuit: This is her "work outfit" so to speak because she is a spy. During her solo movie, she dons a white version of the suit.
- Static Stun Gun: Natasha has wrist-mounted stun guns that generate a high amount of voltage or can shoot electrified discs, allowing her to shock people up close and afar. They're aptly called Widow's Bite.
- The Stoic: Has a generally dour, serious demeanor. In her solo movie, it contrasts her sister's flippancy and snarking.
- Sue Donym: Her alias in Iron Man 2 "Natalie Rushman" is basically an anglicized version of her name.
- Superhero Packing Heat: Has a pair of handguns on her, for when hand-to-hand is not sufficient (which, for her skills, shows how tough the threat has to be).
- Super Wrist-Gadget: "Widow's Bite", two prototype electricity weapons that fire from her wrists. She uses these several times to take down Chitauri foot soldiers.
- Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: In Captain America: Civil War, she tried to warn Steve to not get involved and, despite fighting him and the Anti-Registration Avengers, at the end of the brawl she deliberately allows Steve and Bucky to escape by incapacitating a pursuing Black Panther as the two board the Quinjet.
- Team Mom: Interestingly, she seems to fall into this role for the Avengers more often than not. She's quite the emotional support to Hawkeye, Cap, and even Iron Man especially in The Avengers and Captain America: Civil War. At one point in Avengers: Age of Ultron, Natasha even complains about having to pick up after "[the] boys" like they’re a bunch of kids and she's the babysitter. It comes to a head in Avengers: Endgame where she is keeping tabs on everyone and treats the Avengers like they're her family. When she dies, the original Avengers become absolutely distraught.
- Territorial Smurfette: Subverted. Tony Stark expects this to happen with her and Pepper, but the two of them get along fine. Pepper takes it as a sign of Tony's arrogance that he'd assume another Love Triangle would form over him.
- Three-Point Landing: She does this pretty often, to the point she's even the page image. Lampshaded in Black Widow (2021), in which Yelena constantly makes fun of her for it.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl:
- She has this dynamic with Wanda Maximoff. Whereas Natasha is a calm but aggressive hand-to-hand fighter who dresses in all black and is One of the Guys, Wanda is more emotional, wears a dress, jewelry and long hair into battle, and occupies a position closer to Everyone's Baby Sister (except to Vision, who becomes her boyfriend).
- She also has this dynamic with her surrogate younger sister Yelena, especially when they were children. In the flashback to their time in Ohio in Black Widow (2021), Natasha has short hair, wears active clothing, and loves riding her bike, while Yelena has long blonde hair, wears pink, and has a My Little Pony plush.
- Tragic Keepsake: Yelena's green vest becomes this to her after the fifth episode of Hawkeye reveals she got killed by the Snap in Infinity War.
- Tron Lines: Her costume in Age of Ultron has blue accents in it, which are reflective so they glow when lit the right way.
- Tyke-Bomb: Raised as an assassin by a Russian general who wants to control the world from the shadows.
- Undercover as Lovers: In The Winter Soldier, while on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D. and doing some hacking in a mall, Cap and Natasha pretend to be fiancés looking up honeymoon sites.
- Underhanded Hero: She fits this trope to a tee. She's an assassin trained by Leviathan, the Russian equivalent of HYDRA, before eventually turning on the other Black Widows and joining S.H.I.E.L.D..
- Undying Loyalty: Despite being a morally ambiguous spy, she has immense loyalty to Nick Fury and later, to Captain America. It is best demonstrated with her willingness to make all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets public — including the atrocities in her own past — to destroy HYDRA because that was Steve's plan.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The information she leaks to the internet on S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA is used by Zemo to enact his plans in Civil War to drive the Avengers apart.
- Use Your Head: During her interrogation scene in the first Avengers movie, she takes a Russian weapons dealer out with a headbutt. Later, during the same fight, she hits one of his henchmen with the back of her head.
- Waif-Fu: In Iron Man 2, she blows through a building's security detail with a combination of non-lethal weaponry and improbable martial arts — all in the time it takes Happy Hogan to take down one guard with conventional boxing technique.
- Walking Armory: Two Shock Sticks that can turn into a staff, two bracelets that can fire electric blasts, taser disks, handguns, and a garrote.
- Weak, but Skilled: She has no superpowers unlike the majority of her teammates. Despite this, she holds her own in the battlefield because she's an extremely skilled hand-to-hand combatant, assassin, spy, and knows how to use just about every gun and melee weapon out there.
- Weakness Turns Her On: What does the tough-as-nails and attractive Natasha Romanoff see in the nebbish and scruffy Bruce Banner? Why, it's his weak, vulnerable, and scared soft center. Precisely, Bruce being Willfully Weak because he's scared of hurting others.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: She basically disappears from the rest of Captain America: Civil War after she tells off Tony after the airport brawl to go into hiding. The next time we see her in Infinity War, she's caught up with the rest of the renegade Avengers and is fighting alongside Steve and Sam. Her solo movie, Black Widow, shows what she was up to in-between Civil War and Infinity War (for starters, she did go into hiding, as General Ross didn't take well her tasing Black Panther).
- With My Hands Tied: In her first scene in The Avengers, she takes down most of the Russians interrogating her while tied to a chair.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
- Noticeably terrified of the Hulk, which gives her an uncharacteristic lack of composure in his presence. This is something Banner picks up on immediately. Worse still, Natasha's fears come true when she finds an enraged Hulk rampaging directly at her, and it's as scary as you'd imagine. No one would really hold this against her.
- Ends up fighting the Winter Soldier while clearly terrified, since the last time they met he nearly killed her, and did kill the person she was protecting.
- The Worf Effect:
- Downplayed as she does sucker punch him several times and shoots him in his goggles (which would have shot him in the eye if he wasn't wearing said goggles) but she falls victim to this against the Winter Soldier, spending nearly their entire fight running away from him. She is under much greater stress against him than she ever was against Loki or the Chitauri, which demonstrates to the audience just how scary the Soldier is. This is justified as the Chitauri were so threatening because of their strength in numbers, and while they possessed enhanced strength like Captain America and the Winter Soldier, they had such terrible close combat skills that they make the Hulk look like a martial artist. She also never had to physically fight Loki (who is even stronger than Cap) and instead engaged him in a battle of wits, an arena in which they are much more evenly matched.
- Emotionally, as the most unflappable member of the Avengers, something's gone horribly wrong if she's, well, flapped. Such as a portal spewing alien armies into New York, or the Winter Soldier. Which is, admittedly, a perfectly sensible precaution.
- Workaholic: In Endgame, Natasha buries herself in work to forget the Decimation. It doesn't work at all, with her trying to address an underwater earthquake before being shot down by Okoye.
- Would Hurt a Child: One of the more shocking revelations in her solo film is that in order to accomplish her mission of assassinating General Dreykov in Budapest, Natasha used Dreykov's young daughter Antonia as bait to lure him out in the open so she could detonate a bomb planted in his office, and did this while fully aware that the kid would be caught in the blast radius. When Yelena coaxes her into confessing this, Natasha justifies her actions as a necessary evil and writes Antonia off as collateral damage, though she is later shown to feel guilt for it.
- Wrestler in All of Us: In both Iron Man 2 and The Avengers, she frequently employs the Frankensteiner (headscissors takedown with a backflip) to battle opponents. This is actually based on the real Russian Martial art called Sambo. She just added some American-style moves to complement her high agility.
- You Just Told Me: Her favored means of interrogation is getting someone else to interrogate her, and their questions reveal their intentions and/or plans. She pulls this on the Russian smuggler, General Dreykov and Loki. Just to reiterate: she tricked the Norse god of mischief.
- You Killed My Mother: Part of the reason why Natasha is willing to take down Dreykov is that he is responsible for the death of her biological mother.
Variants
King Loki's Natasha Romanoff
Agent Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
"You won't win. Not against me. Not against S.H.I.E.L.D."
Species: Human
Citizenship: American (formerly Soviet-Russian)
Affiliation(s): S.H.I.E.L.D., STRIKE, Stark Industries (formerly)
Voiced By: Lake Bell
Appearances: What If...?
On Earth-51825, Natasha was framed for the death of Tony Stark.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: She gives a pretty epic one to the STRIKE agents guarding her after she escapes her handcuffs.
- Dead Alternate Counterpart: To the Black Widow of Infinity Ultron's universe, who is allowed by the Watcher to migrate to this Natasha's universe and take her place as a reward for saving the multiverse.
- Death by Adaptation: She dies 13 years sooner than her Sacred Timeline counterpart.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation: Rather than die sacrificing herself so Clint can obtain the Soul Stone, Natasha in this timeline is killed by a vengeful Hank Pym.
- Frame-Up: Target of one: Natasha injects Tony with a syringe of lithium dioxide, where a shrunken Hank kills him from the inside, making it look like she was wholly responsible for Tony's death.
- Killed Offscreen: We never actually see how Natasha is killed; the last we see of her, she was dragged away into the darkness by Hank.
- One-Woman Army: Natasha breaks out of her handcuffs with ease and beats up a STRIKE team by herself.
- Slipped the Ropes: She gets handcuffed by Rumlow as part of the protocol to take her to Alexander Pierce for questioning. After sitting down on the truck she was being transported in, she easily uncuffs herself before trying to make small talk with the agents until she gets bored of them and reveals that she already slipped her handcuffs.
- Super Window Jump: She does this after Bruce Banner transforms into the Hulk in front of her.
- Tranquil Fury: After learning that Hawkeye has been killed, she goes quiet and calmly asks Nick Fury, "Who do I kill?"
Zombie Apocalypse Natasha Romanoff
Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
Species: Human
Citizenship: American (formerly Soviet-Russian)
Affiliation(s): Red Room (formerly), Avengers
Voiced By: N/A
Appearances: What If...?
On Earth-89521, Black Widow was overwhelmed by the undead horde alongside the other Avengers.
- Never Found the Body: We see her get overwhelmed by the horde but unlike the other Avengers involved in the bridge fight, we never see her again afterwards, leaving it uncertain if she turned, got completely devoured, or managed to get out.
- Uncertain Doom: Although we see her get dogpiled by the zombies in the scene where the Avengers get Devoured by the Horde, we never see her zombified form during the rest of the episode, leaving it unclear whether or not she managed to escape or if she died and subsequently turned.
- The Voiceless: She doesn't speak any lines in the only scene she appears in.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After the Avengers are attacked by zombies at the beginning of the episode, the rest of the Avengers, except for Natasha, appear later in the episode as zombies or as survivors. Her fate is unknown.
Infinity Ultron's Natasha Romanoff
Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
"We're just stories to you. We're not real. You watch us fight, win, lose. Tell me, did you make popcorn while Ultron murdered my friends and burned my world to the ground?"
Species: Human
Citizenship: American (formerly Soviet-Russian)
Affiliation(s): Red Room (formerly), Avengers, Guardians of the Multiverse
Voiced By: Lake Bell
Appearances: What If...?
On Earth-29929, Black Widow is one the only survivors of Ultron's conquest along with Hawkeye, and seek a way to shut him down for good.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: She is the last hero to join the Guardians of the Multiverse in their final battle against Infinity Ultron. Later on, she joins Captain America and Captain Marvel in fighting against King Loki's army.
- Adaptational Curves: Due to spending years fighting Ultron's forces, Natasha is more muscular in this universe than in most others.
- Adaptational Personality Change: Likely due to the stress of being the only other survivor of a more or less dead world, this version of Widow is much quicker with a quip or a joke than the Sacred Timeline version, in contrast to her version of Clint being much more depressed than his Sacred Timeline counterpart.
- And This Is for...: As she fires the arrow containing Arnim Zola's program at Infinity Ultron, she whispers, "This one's for you, Clint."
- Armor-Piercing Question: She asks the Watcher if he made popcorn while Ultron murdered her friends and destroyed her Earth.
- Big Damn Heroes: The Watcher transports her to the universe where most of the Avengers were assassinated just in time to save Nick Fury from being brainwashed by Loki.
- Canon Immigrant: She gets migrated to Earth-51825 by The Watcher as a reward for helping defeat Ultron and because her homeworld has become an extinct wasteland thanks to Ultron. After all she's been through, she thanks Uatu for giving her a new home.
- Charles Atlas Superpower: She is able to knock down Loki with a kick.
- Dead Alternate Counterpart: Subverted, as she's the only survivor of her universe.
- Determinator: Even after Ultron destroyed the Avengers and blasted the Earth into nuclear winter, she still won't stop fighting to defeat him. This is in contrast with Clint, who has crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
- Doppelgänger Gets Same Sentiment: Despite this being the first time they met, with Natasha likely only knowing of her due to her friendship with Steve, when Captain Carter interacts with her she shows the same level of trust she would with her version of Natasha, who is apparently her best friend. The same is true when she saves the alternate Nick Fury, who is quick to figure out she can't be his Natasha but senses that she is trustworthy.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After losing her entire universe, including her friend Clint, to Ultron and losing the only means (i.e. Infinity Stones) to restore it, Natasha finally gets a happy ending from the Watcher as a reward for saving the Multiverse: he brings her to to the universe from episode 3, where most of the Avengers were killed, so she can take the place of their fallen Black Widow.
- Empowered Badass Normal: Doctor Strange Supreme grants her and her arsenal a protection spell during the final battle against Infinity Ultron.
- Genocide Survivor: She's the only person to survive Ultron killing all life in his universe.
- Improbable Aiming Skills:
- Using Red Guardian's shield, she fires some impressive trick shots and multi-kills that would make Captain America proud.
- She shoots Ultron in the eye with a virus arrow she's while riding a motorcycle in midair while Ultron is enveloped in a blinding white light.
- Knee-capping: Does this to Arnim Zola on both of his knees after uploading his consciousness into an Ultron Sentry to make sure he doesn't betray her and Clint. Because he's in the body of a fragile robot, it destroys his legs.
- Last of Her Kind: She is the last human in her world and likely the last sentient being left in the universe with Infinity Ultron killed and Zola being trapped in a pocket dimension.
- Lovely Angels: Fits this with Captain Carter. The two use their respective shields together (i.e. a double Charging Star from both of them) against Infinity Ultron, and the two are able to work out a plan to infect Infinity Ultron with Armin Zola.
- Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Locates Red Guardian's shield while searching the KGB's archive and takes it with her while escaping the Ultron drones. She uses it to pull off some Steve Rogers-style ricochet moves, which makes it easy for her to fight alongside Captain Carter. Unfortunately, the shield doesn't appear to be vibranium or otherwise as tough as the Captain's, and it gets disintegrated when Infinity Ultron unleashes a pretty powerful wave where the Captain's shield is undamaged by the same blast.
- Post-Apunkalyptic Armor: Wears rusted armor cobbled together with shoulder and knee pads.
- Pyrrhic Victory: She successfully manages to kill Ultron, but at that point, Ultron had already killed all life in her universe including her fellow Avengers while the Infinity Stones are sealed away in a pocket dimension, rendering them unable to be used in potentially restoring her Earth. Thus, Natasha doesn't want to return to her universe unlike the other Guardians as there's nothing left for her there. The Watcher, out of sympathy, decides to send her to a world where most of the Avengers were assassinated so she can take the place of its deceased Natasha.
- Replacement Goldfish: Uatu takes her to the universe where Hank Pym killed Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Thor, Clint and her counterpart so she could take the place of its Black Widow. She arrives just in time to save Nick Fury from Loki, who notes that she isn't his Natasha but he senses the same spirit.
- Sad Clown: She quips and jokes around more than usual, but it's implied that she uses this to cope for the hellish situation she's in because of Ultron.
- Sixth Ranger: To The Guardians of the Multiverse. It's implied that Uatu didn't personally recruit her unlike the others because he foresaw her joining the team when the other members get transported into her earth. She also becomes this to the replacement Avengers from King Loki's earth.
- Sole Survivor: With Hawkeye's sacrifice, Black Widow is the last remaining Avenger and possibly the only organic being left in her universe.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Compared to her Sacred Timeline counterpart and her other variants in this show, this Black Widow is the only one who survives the events of what happens, though at a heavy cost.
- Take Up My Sword: Uses Clint's bow to fire the arrow containing Armin Zola at Infinity Ultron.
- Unkempt Beauty: Because of living in a post-apocalyptic Earth and thus having no time to take a bath or wash her clothes, she's covered in dirt and sports a more disheveled hairstyle. She still looks very pretty regardless.
- Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: She incapacitates Loki with his own scepter in the final scene of Season 1.
- You Can't Go Home Again: After defeating Infinity Ultron and saving the Multiverse, Natasha tells Uatu that she will not go back through the door to her universe, as there's nothing left for her there. Uatu anticipates this answer and instead takes her to a new universe to call home.
Captain Carter's Natasha Romanoff
Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
"Okay. Let's hit the road."
Species: Human
Citizenship: American (formerly Soviet-Russian)
Affiliation(s): Red Room (formerly), KGB (formerly), S.H.I.E.L.D., STRIKE, Avengers
Voiced By: Lake Bell
Appearances: What If...?
On Earth-82111, Black Widow is good friends with Peggy Carter, who became the super soldier Captain Carter in this universe.
- Ambiguously Bi: A lot of her interactions with Peggy have flirtatious undertones, with her expressions when seeing Peggy together with Steve coming across as either a Jealous Romantic Witness or a supportive friend who knows she can't have her.
- Ascended Extra: After having a brief and unimportant role in the Season One finale, she has a much bigger role in the Season Two episode "What If... Captain Carter Fought The HYDRA Stomper?" as the deuteragonist.
- Best Friend: Is this to Captain Carter, who knows a lot about Natasha's background and even refers to her as a "BFF" when talking to Natasha's counterpart.
- Deuteragonist: Serves as this in "What If... Captain Carter Fought The HYDRA Stomper?" with the later half of the episode giving her as much focus as Peggy due to the involvement of the Red Room in the story.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: She's this with Captain Carter.
- In Spite of a Nail: During the opening mission from The Winter Soldier, she is trying to convince Peggy to go on a date with a coworker the same way her Sacred Timeline counterpart did with Steve.
- In the Back: She knocks Batroc out by electrocuting him from behind.
- Small Role, Big Impact: She's only a minor character in the Season 1 finale, but it's her close friendship with Peggy that allows the latter to convince the Natasha of Infinity Ultron's universe to join them against Infinity Ultron, and ultimately leads to that universe's Natasha gaining the opportunity to finally end Infinity Ultron's threat.
The Freak's Natasha Romanoff
Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
"Oh, no, I've got this. See you at the party."
Species: Human
Citizenship: American (formerly Soviet-Russian)
Affiliation(s): Avengers
Voiced By: Lake Bell
Appearances: What If...?
A variant of Natasha Romanoff who was busy hunting down an ex-HYDRA assassin when Justin Hammer invaded Avengers Tower.
- Kinda Busy Here: Happy calls her while she's being held at gunpoint by a HYDRA assassin.
- Princesses Prefer Pink: She wears a rather flattering pink princess ballerina outfit.
"It's okay."
