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How Black Widow Will Return After Avengers: Endgame

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Avengers: Endgame made us say farewell to a number of our original heroes, but only two seemingly bit the dust for good: Tony Stark’s Iron Man, and Natasha Romanoff’s Black Widow. It doesn’t seem very likely at all that Tony will be making a reappearance considering his character arc has been more or less completed, but Black Widow is a different story. She’s come a long way as a character, of course, but it’s not like we, the audience, got to see where she came from in the first place. There are plenty of mentions of her being a ruthless killer, but very few showings of it.

It looks like this will be rectified with Black Widow’s upcoming movie. The film is supposed to be a prequel and will more than likely cover Natasha’s time in the Red Room and her meeting with Hawkeye. But the MCU is a joined universe. The fact that the universe is shared between all of the movies and characters that reside in it is what gives the MCU its greatest charm. With that said it would be a bit odd if Marvel just happened to release a Black Widow prequel after having killed off the character. It would be out of place, almost like a side story or lost episode that Marvel forgot to air when the character was still alive and kicking ass. In short, the movie would have no place in the upcoming major story arc of the MCU, unless the studio did something like, say bring Black Widow back to life.

If Black Widow is resurrected, it’ll be because she has a new role to play in the MCU, and her prequel will be a way to define what that role is, such as taking down the Red Room once and for all. Still, Hulk used all six Infinity Stones and failed miserably to bring her back — some nonsense about how a Soul Stone sacrifice can’t be undone. But this is a film franchise based on comics, so even if the Infinity Stones can’t bring Black Widow back there’s definitely some other convulsion that exists that can, and we think we have a few ideas as to what those could be.

Time Travel

Through some act of God, the Avengers still have their miraculous time travel machine by the end of the Endgame — despite their base being blown to hell with it inside and despite the fact that its a stupid convenient way for them to solve all of their problems. Let’s look at this way. Thanos won. He actually succeeded. He wiped out half of the universe and then prevented any do-overs by using the stones the destroy themselves. To rectify this, the Avengers decided to build a time machine to return to points where the stones still existed. Why not just apply this same concept to Black Widow?

Yeah sure, the timeline they take her away from would be screwed, but who cares, they don’t have to live in it. Alright, alright, they’re Avengers: they would care about screwing up other people’s timelines (the folly of being heroes), but Captain America proved there’s a way around that as well. Here’s how it would work: The Avengers go back in time just before Black Widow decides to try sky diving without a parachute. They pluck her from this timeline and return her to the present, explaining to her that they succeeded. Black Widow lives out her life until she’s old and grey, and then they return her to Vormir, where only seconds will have passed. Then Black Widow happily throws herself off the cliff again, and voilà, the timeline’s correct again. Hell, if they wanted, they could grab Tony, too, right before he snaps and then just return him as an old man. This method, of course, fails if Black Widow or Tony end up getting themselves killed before they can be returned to their proper time, but it is still a possible way to get Black Widow back.

The Power Cosmic

Marvel has the movie rights to Fantastic Four. Fantastic Four is famous for the Silver Surfer and Galactus. The Surfer and Galactus are famous for the Power Cosmic, and the Power Cosmic is famous for being absurdly broken. It can, for instance, bring the dead back to life. The Infinity Stones may not have had the power to bring Black Widow back, but the Power Cosmic just might.

In the comics, of course, the collection of all six Infinity Stones, beats the Power Comic, but these are the movies, and power scaling here is different. For example, for the most part, the MCU has tried its best to keep it heroes as grounded to realism as possible. Some heroes get buffs, like Captain America, and some heroes receive nerfs, like the Hulk. With Captain Marvel however, it looks the MCU is ready to start introducing some comic-level shenanigans and beyond. In order to present a threat bigger or equal to Thanos in the next generation of movies, Marvel might introduce the Power Cosmic, and give it a giant buff once they do. Enough of a buff to ignore the rules of the Soul Stone and restore life to those who have been lost by it: Gamora and Black Widow.

Galactus is, of course, not going to use his almighty powers to bring Black Widow back, but the Silver Surfer on the other hand… Why he does decide to bring back Black Widow is something we haven’t thought as far ahead, mainly because we don’t have knowledge at the moment as to what direction the MCU is going in, but if Natasha serves a higher purpose in the stories to come, there’s no reason why he wouldn’t do it (or at least no reason that he couldn’t be convinced out of).

The Multiverse

This is probably the worse way to bring Black Widow back since it wouldn’t really be our Black Widow, but it’s a way nonetheless. In Spider-Man: Far From Home, there’s a small chance that the multiverse might come into play. Peter Parker himself drops the term in the most recent trailer as of the time of this video’s release. If it turns out to be true, then this means there are quite possibly an infinite amount of Black Widow’s that Marvel can throw into the main MCU universe.

How they pull off bringing Natasha back through use of the multiverse would work similarly to how they would pull off bringing her back through time travel. The Avengers would use whatever machine Mysterio used to get from his universe to the MCU’s and pluck a Natasha that most resembles their own from the multiverse. There you go, Black Widow is back in action, or, at least, a Black Widow is back in action.

Once again, the main issue with this method of resurrection is that you’re bringing in an entirely new Black Widow. She has none of the experiences we’ve seen her have over the course of the first MCU storyline: she has none of the bonds with the other Avengers members, and she’s a possible target of the #NotMyBlackWidow hashtag, which is a tragic fate to suffer indeed.

If this Black Widow isn’t like ours, it does give Marvel the chance to go in a new direction with her. We don’t know why they would, but they could. The MCU could explore how she assimilates the place of the previous Black Widow, or they could even give her a story arc similar to Captain America: He was a man out of time, who, instead of accepting his present decided to return to his past, and she would be a woman who’s out of her own universe and trying to find a way back. Something along those lines. Both would be associated with trying to get home in anyway.

The Soul World

We don’t know how the Soul World really works in the MCU, but at least we do know it exists in some capacity. It’s possible that Black Widow was taken there when she killed herself. Now that the Soul Stone doesn’t exist in her reality, however, maybe its hold on her has weakened. The Avengers might have the ability to go in and get her out themselves now. Doctor Strange would be the best one for this mission. He knows the most about alternate dimensions and can travel the easiest between all of them. If the Soul World is accessible now, Doctor Strange can figure out a way to get in, take a few members with him and then bring Black Widow back.

It would probably take a bit of time and research to workout the specifics of the Soul World, though. According to Spider-Man, right after he died he simply woke right back up a second later with Doctor Strange telling him its been five years. This means it’s pretty likely no one knows what he Soul World is like with the possible exception of Doctor Strange. The MCU could even use Black Widow’s rescue to introduce other character who may have been sacrificed to the Soul Stone that we don’t know about.

While this is the least likely method of bringing Back Widow back, it’s purest way to do it. It would be a clean resurrection that doesn’t rely on pulling another version of Black Widow from somewhere else. It would be like Soul Stone is simply giving her back. The only other method comparable to this would be using the Power Cosmic, but, if the MCU wants, they could riddle this method with all kinds of side-effects and repercussions.

Wrap Up

The Infinity Stones may suck, but the MCU has a few tricks they could use to bring back Black Widow if they wanted to, some are already available and some have been teased for the future. The method of choice simply depends on how the MCU wants to continue telling Natasha’s story. If they want her to start over, they can use the multiverse theory. If they want her to continue from where she left off they can use the time travel or personally pick her up from the Soul World itself. If they want her resurrection to have an air of mystery to it, they can use the power cosmic whenever they decide to introduce it into the MCU.

Time travel is the most likely method if the group does decide to bring her back. It’s quick, sensible, and there’s no other real reason that the Avengers would still have the time machine. If it solved a problem as big as Thanos for them, why wouldn’t it be able to solve this for them as well? Bringing back Natasha could just be the start. Maybe Thor wants Heimdal and Loki back. Maybe Wanda wants to grab the Vision. Eventually the group gets so used to breaking time that Marvel decides to use their mistakes as a way to get Kang the conquerer involved. Kang becomes the “big bad” for the fifth Avengers film, and the Avengers learn their lesson. They will of course, be keeping Black Widow and whoever else they decided to save, though. If they beat up Kang in the fifth movie it's not like he’s going to be able stop him. They’ll just understand that from now on they can’t bring anyone else back that they’ve lost. Spider-Man won’t be diving back to save Uncle Ben for instance.

If Marvel doesn’t want to use time travel, they still have the other three methods available. Using the Power Cosmic to bring back Black Widow would be an interesting way to tie the Silver Surfer and the rest of the Fantastic Four into the MCU. Galactus, would also be making an appearance of course, even if he doesn’t have any direct involvement with Natasha’s resurrection. Regardless of how the MCU decides to bring Black Widow back, having her around is a good way to boost confidence in her prequel movie.