Marvel is Rolling Out a New Black Widow and More MCU Phase Four News

Did you think it was weird Marvel killed off Black Widow in Avengers: Endgame and then announced there was a Black Widow movie still happening later this year? It turns out that there’s a reason, and the reason is that Captain America isn’t the only character handing his mantle over to someone else.

Black Widow director Cate Shortland told Empire that the film will involve Scarlett Johansson passing the role of Black Widow onto a new actress and character, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova.

“[Kevin Feige] realised that the audience would expect an origin story so, of course, we went in the opposite direction,” Shortland tells Empire. “And we didn’t know how great Florence Pugh would be. We knew she would be great, but we didn’t know how great. Scarlett is so gracious, like, ‘Oh, I’m handing her the baton.’ So it’s going to propel another female storyline.”

Turns out there was another Black Widow waiting in the wings the whole time. Just off screen.

Out on the town having the time of my life with a bunch of friends. They're all just out of frame, laughing too. pic.twitter.com/VCbkZwWwvs

— nathan fielder (@nathanfielder) July 12, 2015

So what does this mean? Is Marvel going to be filling Avengers 5 with a bunch of second-stringers taking over for the original heroes from the first Avengers? If that’s the case, why not just recast the characters like the original plan instead of replacing them?

I honestly don’t think there’s going be an Avengers 5, at least not any time soon. See, you might think that the Avengers are the biggest property Marvel has, that it’s like the Justice League where they put all their biggest and best characters, but it’s historically just been a dumping ground for characters that couldn’t carry a title on their own. That’s why Spider-Man and Wolverine didn’t become Avengers until 2005.

Marvel has The Fantastic Four and The Uncanny X-Men back now since they bought Fox, and you better believe that those are the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Don’t believe me?

James Gunn said a few weeks ago that Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 would be the last in the series he directed, and the last one with the current characters. Do you really think that Marvel is going to try to catch lightning in a bottle again with this title? They used a weird group of cosmic heroes no one cared about except for a brief moment in 2006 and made a hugely successful movie trilogy with them, that’s not going to happen again.

Now Marvel has the X-Men. X-Men #1, The second monthly X-Men title that debuted in 1991, is the best-selling single issue of a comic book in US history, and contemporary X-Men spin-off X-Force #1 isn’t far behind. Do you really think that they’re going to dig for even more obscure Guardians of the Galaxy characters when they can make movies with Wolverine?

And Doctor Doom and Magneto are way better villains than Loki or Thanos. Seriously.