Spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- The Red Room is a program that abducts young girls, subjects them to horrific abuse, and employs them as disposable objects against their will. The film's opening credits show a montage of Natasha and many other girls being transported in shipping containers and being forcefully dragged out by armed men, which has a particularly disturbing resemblance to real-life human trafficking. Malia J's cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is not helping. Highlights include:
- Masked soldiers forcibly dragging Yelena, Natasha and the other girls out of the shipping containers. As they do this, Dreykov can be heard in the background telling his soldiers which girls to take and which ones to kill then and there.
- The girls are forced to watch cartoons with subliminal messages as a part of the psychological conditioning.
- Some of the girls are briefly shown having their brains dissected by the Red Room.
- One girl is shown to have died from this, given she's covered with a bedsheet.
- Some girls are seen standing in a line, holding guns and shooting at targets as a part of their training, while Dreykov walks behind them, observing each one. He stops to look at one girl, and eagle eyed viewers will spot the girl being pulled back from the queue, implying that she was killed for not being good enough.
- If you've watched the scenes of the Red Room from Agent Carter, that combined with the aforementioned scene creates a terrifying image of a merciless organization that does not tolerate weakness and is willing to kill the girls in its' care.
- If you pause the opening credits at the right time, you can briefly see Dreykov wrapping someone, presumably one of the Widows, in a tight and forced hug.
- The MCU's version of Taskmaster is highly reminiscent of the Winter Soldier's sheer Implacable Man factor. Wearing the traditional skull mask, heavy armor and making use of the Menacing Stroll, Taskmaster's scenes ramp up the tension of the movie. You'd be forgiven for thinking that, at one point or another, she was about to groan "Staaaaaars..."
- First, as Natasha is driving at night, her car is very suddenly hit by a missile. As she leaves the wrecked vehicle, she can only witness Taskmaster slowly approaching her amidst the flames. Despite her best efforts, Natasha clearly stands no chance and is thrown down the river below. All she can do is swim away.
- The Reveal showing that under the mask is Dreykov’s daughter Antonia, horribly disfigured from the explosion that supposedly killed her and her father. What makes this moment unsettling is the dead-eyed glare she gives Natasha due to being under Dreykov’s mind control.
- The fact that Dreykov was willing to brainwash his own daughter just to create another soldier. What, "If she's not pretty, she's not my daughter"?
- Taskmaster's use of weapons, skills and tactics copied from one MCU hero after another, but with absolute ruthlessness that imperils innocent bystanders beyond counting, can drive home just how much of a Mook Horror Show the likes of Steve Rogers, T'Challa, or even sweet Peter Parker could put on if they really lost it.
- While Taskmaster is an intimidating threat, the film's true Big Bad, Dreykov, is even more unsettling. Being heavily inspired by real-life sex offenders such as Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, the film portrays Dreykov as an utterly repulsive human being. His climactic confrontation with Natasha, where he forcefully sits her down and leans close into her face, has an especially strong resemblance to an abuser gloating about his power over women. Which, in a sense, he is, considering he already engages in Evil Gloating and controls all the widows' movements.
- What makes Dreykov particularly nightmarish is the fact that, at face value, he's just an ordinary man. A pathetic, cowardly little man, who can't even physically defend himself when Natasha begins her Curb-Stomp Battle against him. But the sheer power that he wields, both over the world and especially the women under his command, make him feel like a far more down-to-earth and realistic villain than the MCU's usual fare.
- In the middle of a heartwarming scene between Yelena and Alexei, a bright blue light suddenly flashes through the windows, complete with a loud noise. Given how the scene was relatively very quiet up to that point, it’s certainly very startling.
- At the beginning of the movie, while still under mind control, Yelena goes after Oksana, who has the antidotes. During their brief scuffle, while it is bloodless and largely obscured, Yelena brutally stabs and guts her. When Yelena is freed from the mind control moments later by Oskana, she appears absolutely horrified at what she's done.
- Ingrid, one of the Black Widows, breaks her leg while chasing Natasha and Yelena. Dreykov uses his forced mind control to force Ingrid to electrocute herself using a taser on her wrist as punishment. Made worse by the fact that she was fully aware of Dreykov forcing her to kill herself. The poor girl barely has enough self-control to cry to Natasha, "He's making me do it!" just before she physically kills herself - proving she wanted to live but was killed because she outlived her usefulness to Dreykov.
- Yelena's description of what it was like for her being under the Red Room's mind control (and by extension, the rest of the Widows who are still under mind control) is absolutely horrifying. She was fully conscious and aware of what she was being made to do, but was unable to resist because the drugs used on her kept her mind fogged over just enough that she couldn't tell the difference between Dreykov's orders and her own thoughts.
- The mind control itself is horrifying when you realize Dreykov has control over not only the Widows' movements, but everything, down to their actual breathing.
- Also, Yelena's graphic description regarding how Dreykov sterilizes the Widows. (This was first brought up in Age of Ultron when Natasha mentions how Widows have a "graduation ceremony" where they are sterilized to ensure pregnancy can never occur, thus forcing them to focus solely on their missions.) They do this by performing radical hysterectomies on the girls, which involves total removal of all female sex organs, leaving their wombs literally empty. Her graphic details of how they use sharp instruments and "chop away" at their reproductive system until all of their sex organs are completely gone leave Alexei justifiably disgusted and revolted.
- When the mission to infiltrate the Red Room seems to be going south, Yelena ends up Strapped to an Operating Table so doctors can cut up her brain and see what the antidote did to make her immune to the mind control treatment. They will do this while she's fully conscious.
- Made worse by the fact that other young girls can be seen having their brains dissected by the Red Room in the opening credits, although viewers won't understand that that is what is happening until they watch the rest of the movie and see the aforementioned scene.
