Given the MCU’s historic run and increasing release frequency in a pre-COVID world, it’s as unbelievable that we’re approaching 2 years since the last MCU film outing as it is that it took this long to feature Scarlett Johansson’s titular character, the Black Widow Natasha Romanoff, in her own film. 

In all the ways so many areas of life have a tinge of sadness present given all the real world loss we’ve suffered, it’s hard not to have a similar feeling about the “what could have been” regarding what perhaps should have been a trilogy of films of our favorite Red Room graduate, considering 3 of the original 6 Avengers had their own film trilogies.   

That said, as much as we can mourn what might have been, what we do get in Natasha’s pseudo-origin story is most assuredly worth the wait. 

The film nimbly dances between the raindrops of the MCU’s bigger tentpole outings, specifically nestling this adventure chronologically between Wars both Civil and Infinity. In going off the grid after assisting Cap and crew in their airport escape, Natasha gets pulled into the orbit of a new cast of characters and a plot filled with espionage and intrigue. 

Marvel is known for bombastic action set pieces, but rarely have they been deployed so confidently and so unrelentingly as they are in Black Widow. Part Mission Impossible, part Bourne Supremacy, Black Widow sees Natasha and crew in all manner of action, including staging prison breaks, engaging in car chases, punching, flipping, kicking, even posing - one of the film’s best comedic bits is new-to-the-MCU Florence Pugh’s Yelena’s ongoing ribbing of Natasha for her ‘posed’ landings during fights.

Speaking of Pugh, the MCU’s golden casting touch continues unabated. Between David Harbour getting to cut loose (in a way Stranger Things has only hinted at) as Russia’s washed-up answer to Captain America, the Red Guardian; Rachel Weisz delivering a subdued maternal flair as Melina; and the real standout finding Pugh completely owning every scene she’s in. To the point that however foregone a conclusion it might have been for Yelena to become MCU’s new Widow, it’s always a roll of the dice replacing a flagship character like Nat. But Pugh is a worthy inheritor and will hopefully get the multi-film justice Johansson was denied.

All in all, Black Widow isn’t just better than one might expect, it’s as excellent as it needed to be.