Written by Alyssa Kortright
Scarlett Johansson and Linda Cardellini in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Marvel Studios
"At some point we all have to choose between what the world wants [us] to be and who we are." - Natasha Romanoff
Growing up, I loved princesses and fairies. I enjoyed the pretty dresses, listening to the beautiful music, and being inspired by stories of kindness, courage, true love, and happy endings. Superheroes and their worlds were a completely foreign concept to me. When my brothers got interested in Marvel superheroes, they dragged me and my sister along with them. Now, years later, I’m a huge superhero fan, particularly of the Avengers.
From early on, my favorite Marvel character was Black Widow, a.k.a. Natasha Romanoff. Before I watched any movies or knew much of anything about her, there was just something about her that stood out. My first real exposure to Natasha was in the animated TV series “The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” (if you’re a Marvel fan looking for something to watch, check this one out – it’s amazing!). She wasn’t one of the main characters but was a double (or technically triple) agent working, as far as anyone knew, for HYDRA. Natasha was once the best friend and partner of Hawkeye, a.k.a. Clint Barton, who she betrayed early on in the show. Hawkeye came after her to get revenge, but when his life was in danger, Natasha risked blowing her own cover to save her friend. It turned out that she had never actually switched sides, but was instead collecting information from HYDRA for Nick Fury. I’ve always been intrigued by spies and disguises, and I was fascinated by this mysterious, undercover agent who was so unpredictable, always in control, and able to get into and out of any situation.
Natasha is a layered character who grows and changes with each comic, TV show, and movie she appears in, so for this article, I’m going to focus on the version of her that I’m most familiar with – the MCU’s Natasha Romanoff. Throughout the eight movies she appears in, Natasha’s outside facades are peeled back until we witness her true self in her final movie, her solo feature Black Widow. Despite Natasha’s dark past and violent reputation, she becomes, over the course of her appearances, a character that Catholic, pro-life movie watchers enjoy rooting for, due to the values she has learned to demonstrate.
Pro-Life and Pro-Family
Scarlett Johansson, who plays Natasha, is notoriously pro-abortion, and Natasha herself was trained from a young age to be a killer. Ironically, however, I have found pro-life and pro-family messages in Natasha’s words and actions, as well as throughout her solo film. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Natasha reveals that as part of her training, she was forcibly sterilized by the Red Room at a young age, preventing her from ever having children. As she puts it, the Red Room wanted to eliminate “the one thing that might matter more than a mission.” After the lives she has taken, the loss of her ability to have children seems to be her deepest regret. When Scarlet Witch gives each Avenger a vision of their worst nightmare, Natasha’s includes the sterilization procedure, along with brutal training and being made to commit murder, all while still a teenager. In the same movie, she is shown to have a close relationship with Hawkeye’s children and is looking forward to the birth of his third child, who is to be named for her. Natasha asks Clint’s wife Laura how “Little Natasha” is doing and, when informed that the unborn child is actually a boy, teasingly whispers to Laura’s belly: “Traitor!” Natasha clearly realizes that Clint and Laura’s baby is a person, despite not yet being born. In Black Widow, Natasha’s forced sterilization is brought up again by her adoptive sister Yelena, who underwent the same procedure while in the Black Widow program. Yelena, too, is angry and wistful about their situation, though more cynical and less outwardly emotional about it than Natasha. In one scene, after a fight in which Yelena was mildly wounded, Natasha and Yelena are recovering outside in a peaceful town where they watch children playing and parents lovingly leading them home for the night. Yelena asks Natasha if she ever wanted children. Although Natasha doesn’t answer, she gazes at the children with a sad smile for some time after Yelena’s question. The final Avengers movie, Endgame, was, at one point, supposed to include Natasha starting and running an orphanage for children whose parents were turned to dust by Thanos’ snap. This was not put in the final film, but I think it would have been a fitting conclusion for Natasha’s pro-life story thread of a woman who was herself orphaned and seems to have wanted children of her own.
Natasha spends her entire life searching for the love of a family. For many years, she believes that her birth mother abandoned her as a baby. When she is finally told that her mother did not abandon her and, in fact, died trying to save her, Natasha cries and admits that she “thought about her every day of [her] life.” For three years, Natasha and Yelena were raised as American children as part of an undercover mission. They rode bikes, learned about nature, watched cartoons, took silly photos, and loved their secret agent “parents.” Although this part of their lives ended cruelly and abruptly, those three years are a time that both look back on as the life they wish had continued. Natasha grows to see the Avengers as a sort of family and, when the Civil War occurs, she does everything she can to first try keep them together and later to repair the damage to their relationships. When half of this “family” is wiped out by Thanos, Natasha is devastated. She works tirelessly for five years to keep the Avengers project going because, as she says, the Avengers inspire her to “be better.” As much as I hate the decision to have Natasha die in Endgame, the reason she chose to sacrifice herself ultimately lines up with her unlikely pro-life, pro-family perspective. Either Natasha or Clint must die to obtain the Soul Stone, helping to reverse Thanos’ snap and bring back their friends and family members, along with half of the world’s population. Both are heroically eager to do this, but Natasha is determined that Clint will stay alive. Although Natasha has several people who love and care about her, and although she does not wish to die, she knows the importance of Clint’s family remaining whole once his wife and children return to life.
The Black Widow movie, whether intentionally or not, includes more pro-life messaging outside of the words and actions of Natasha herself. The movie’s villain, Dreykov, completely disregards the dignity of human life. Dreykov heads the Red Room, a secret Russian organization that buys and abducts girls as young as infants and trains them to be assassins. Throughout the film, particularly during the first fifteen minutes, the Red Room is a clear representation of the evils of human trafficking. Yelena explains to Natasha that only about one girl in twenty graduates the program, and Dreykov kills the ones he doesn’t use. She says sadly: “To him we are just things. Weapons with no face that he can just throw away.” Dreykov himself confirms this, allying himself with the same people who treat women like objects and perform sex-selective abortions, when he says that he will conquer the world using “the one natural resource the world has too much of: girls.” He even turns his own daughter into one of his human weapons.
A final example of the pro-life thread in Black Widow occurs during the opening credits sequence, which many agree is one of the most haunting scenes in any Marvel movie. At the end of the sequence, a quick montage of Natasha’s early life is shown, including baby pictures, her birth certificate, and photos of her as a young child. But the first thing that flashes through this montage is an ultrasound picture, confirming that the character known as Natasha Romanoff was the same unique person even before her birth.
Anti-Communism
Besides its pro-life undertones, the film Black Widow contains anti-Communist messages. The movie begins during the Cold War when Alexei and Melina, two Russian spies, are undercover on a mission in Ohio with Natasha and Yelena, then little girls, posing as their daughters. Once the mission is complete and SHIELD is on their trail, Alexei, a staunch Communist, rushes the fake family to a plane headed first to Cuba, then “home” to Russia. Yelena, only six years old, is at first cheerfully oblivious, but Natasha is filled with dread at the thought of returning, and even Melina tells Alexei that she doesn’t want to go back either. On their way out, Natasha stares longingly at their peaceful neighborhood, at a kids’ baseball game, and at a bridge lit up with an American flag. Before she and Yelena are brought back to Russia and the Red Room, Natasha pleads in vain with Alexei to let them “stay in Ohio.”
When the four “family members” reunite twenty years later, each is, in their own way, disillusioned with the values of the Communist system, which has continued in the shadows of the Red Room. Alexei is angry at having been sent to prison on the whim of Dreykov, his former friend. Although he initially does not understand why Natasha and Yelena are so angry with him, he eventually comes to realize what was stolen from him and from them, saying: “When they came and took you away from me, no cause is worth that.” Melina has continued working for Dreykov, feeling like a “mouse born in a cage” with no choice but to obey. She has developed a chemical that controls the minds and actions of defenseless girls and women. For years, Melina refuses to ask questions or think about the lives her invention has destroyed. However, she does keep a photo album with pictures of her “daughters.” When she learns how her chemical was used to subjugate Yelena, the younger of the two, Melina is jolted into reality and agrees to help bring down Dreykov and the Red Room. Meanwhile, Natasha and Yelena make it clear that they hate the Communist system in which they were raised and want to destroy it for good. Yelena views her three years in America as “the best part of [her] life.” She resents the horrible way she was raised afterwards and wants to make choices for herself. Even the idea of buying her own vest for the first time fills her with delight. Natasha has already managed to escape her old life and has lived in America as a spy and Avenger for several years. When Alexei remarks that Natasha has been indoctrinated by the West, she argues that she “chose to go West” because there, she felt welcome and “like family.” It is probably no coincidence that the Avenger Natasha is drawn to the most, aside from Hawkeye, is Captain America, who embodies the values she admires and ultimately comes to emulate. This choice to adopt American values shaped Natasha into a hero who does not hesitate to give her life for others.
Redemption
Natasha has committed many crimes, both in the service of the Communist Red Room and while working for SHIELD, the U.S. spy organization to which she defected when the Red Room’s brutality became too much to bear. In The Avengers, Natasha makes it clear that her primary purpose is to “wipe out” the “red in [her] ledger.” In every movie, Natasha drives herself further and further to atone for her crimes, which, it is revealed, are many. During a scene in which Natasha is trying to learn Loki’s plans, he asks her if it’s possible for her make up for everything she has done. He lists the names of deadly occurrences in which she was involved, clearly striking a raw nerve in her.
One of these incidents, which is touched on further in Black Widow, is the death of Dreykov’s daughter. When defecting to SHIELD, Natasha was tasked with killing Dreykov and destroying the Red Room. Natasha, who was still more of a hardened assassin than the hero she would later become, blew up the building containing Dreykov and his young daughter, Antonia, in a decision she seems to have regretted almost immediately. In watching the movie, I found this choice to be puzzling at first. Natasha is one Avenger who generally seems to be concerned about making sure bystanders are not harmed. But maybe the guilt brought on by this horrible decision is what caused Natasha to later consider the people around her who aren’t involved in the fight.
Near the end of Black Widow, Dreykov reveals to Natasha that although Antonia was badly injured in the blast, she did not die, and he now mind-controls her as another deadly fighter, Taskmaster. Natasha immediately wants to know if Antonia can hear her, and Dreykov laughs at her desire to apologize. In the final battle aboard a fiery, crashing airship, Natasha refuses to save herself until she has saved Antonia, who, as Natasha has predicted, immediately attacks her. Once on the ground, Antonia attacks Natasha again. Natasha fights back only enough to overpower Antonia and free her from Dreykov’s control. As the two collapse, Natasha sobs an apology to Antonia. Antonia is relieved that Dreykov cannot control her anymore and apparently forgives Natasha. Natasha Romanoff is a flawed person who has done horrible deeds, but as she has grown, so has her desire for forgiveness and redemption.
The MCU’s version of Natasha Romanoff is a character who, in spite of the horrors of her earlier years, is pro-life, rejects Communism, and longs for redemption, all of which are Catholic values. Given the way in which she grew up, she was most likely raised with no religion at all. However, Natasha spent many years in the U.S. and particularly with Captain America, who is often believed to be Catholic. In the end-credits scene for Black Widow, Natasha’s gravestone is adorned with several Roman Catholic holy cards, including images of the Infant of Prague and the Blessed Virgin Mary. So, perhaps the Catholic Faith helped Natasha to become the hero she was always capable of being and to find the peace she sought.
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