The latest Marvel movie is just as much an introduction to Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova as it is a farewell to Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff. This is made very clear in the post credit scene and everything it revealed about the future of the MCU.
**Spoilers for the post-credit scene of Black Widow below!**
The film ends with Natasha Romanoff AKA Black Widow heading to break Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) out of the Raft after the events of Captain America: Civil War (2016). Her story picks back up in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and ends with her death on Vormir in Avengers: Endgame (2019).
Marvel fans already knew her fate, which led to some criticism that Black Widow, while enjoyable, had very low stakes. Most of the new information came in the crucial post-credit scene of the film.
The post-credit jumps to after the Avengers have undone Thanos’s (Josh Brolin) snap and returned the half of the universe that was turned to dust. Yelena Belova goes back to Ohio to visit Natasha’s grave, where she is buried below a tree just like her unknown mother.
While Yelena is visiting, she is joined by Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Valentina was first introduced in the Disney+ original series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and fans have been suspecting that she is building her own team of dark Avengers – the Thunderbolts.
Now it is clear that she has at least two team members already John Walker AKA U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russel) and Yelena Belova as the new Black Widow. Perhaps Valentina, who is also known as Madame Hydra in Marvel Comics, is behind the sudden reappearance of The Incredible Hulk (2008) villain the Abomination (Tim Roth) who just returned in the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings trailer.
More importantly – the mission that Valentina hand-delivers tells Marvel fans when they will get to see Yelena again. She is sending the new Black Widow up against the Avenger she blames for her sister’s death…
None other than Clint Barton AKA Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner).
This is our first clue about the plot of the new series Hawkeye coming this fall to Disney+. So far Marvel Studios has not released many details about Hawkeye other than it will involve Clint Barton passing his mantle to the Young Avenger Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld).
It will also introduce Echo, a deaf Native American superhero who can mirror other people’s physical movements like Black Widow villain Taskmaster. Adding Echo made fans think that Hawkeye would be going up against Kingpin since the villain raised her after killing her father.
We already knew that Yelena was going to show up in Hawkeye, and now we know why. This stunning reveal sets up so many new plots for the future of the MCU all in one scene. Is Clint Barton going to get another Black Widow to join the Avengers or will Yelena end up killing the Avengers’ archer? And who knows how the controversy surrounding the Black Widow release has affected Florence Pugh’s opinion on staying with the studio beyond her next scheduled appearance.
We will just have to wait and see when Hawkeye comes to Disney+.
Let us know in the comments if you are excited for Yelena to come back in Hawkeye.