Warning! This article may contain spoilers for Black Widow. Read at your own risk!
It has been years and finally, Black Widow got her own film, and while it is not technically an introductory film like what Captain America, Thor, or Iron Man had, it showed briefly her origins and how she became the badass woman that she is along with what she had gone through to but what is it really like to be a Black Widow and what does it take to be one?
What is it Really Like to be a Black Widow?
There are no flowers on the fields or dewdrops on the leaves. To be a Black Widow, while you become a ruthless assassin with all the tools and skills plus the hero pose where the legs are stretched and the hands webbed on the floor, it is more of a tragedy than a sparkling or shining moment like what Captain America had gone through.
As for Natasha, she was able to escape such a life and was able to make something out of herself and become an Avenger, what Yelena called a poser on magazines with little girls looking up to her and with the people saved being indebted to them as the heroes who fought off the villains. But for those who remained in the program, it was not so much of a fairytale; it is the opposite.
Black Widows used to be little girls with no homes or taken from their families to be trained and cultivated to become killing machines. At a young age, as seen in the film, they were shipped off to the Red Room where they would undergo relentless training and even have their bodies physically altered and even to the point where they were controlled.
Yelena even described the reason why Black Widows couldn't have children. Their reproductive organs don't exist anymore as it is taken forcefully out of their bodies so they couldn't become mothers. They were even considered by Dreykov, the man behind the Red Room, as girls who are a "natural resource the world has too much of."
None of them wanted to become a Black Widow and yet, they come out as one. Not everyone survives the training and hardships that they go through as some die in the process. While Natasha was able to get away, it was shown in the film that hundreds of girls across the world did not but thankfully, a widow from the previous generation made an antidote, some sort of gas that removes the control over these girls.
By the end of the film, they were able to give the widows the free will they once lost for more than half of their lives. Indeed, if there is something to take away from the film, it is that women always look out for each other.
Black Widow is now out in theaters and on Disney Plus Premier Access.