The Marvel Cinematic Universe has done an effective job of building a vast timeline filled with notable events across different time periods. While films or comics have helped to fill in the blanks on some, there are still some events that haven’t been explored. One of the biggest moments in MCU history that fans really want to know more about is the backstory behind Black Widow and Hawkeye’s mission in Budapest. Now, according to Scarlett Johansson, fans will finally learn about what happened during that fateful mission, but when and how will it come into play?
Scarlett Johansson recently explained that ahead of the upcoming Black Widow, everyone at Marvel agreed that viewers needed to learn what happened to Natasha and Clint in Budapest. Although it began as a small line in The Avengers, Johansson and company knew that fans were hoping to learn more about it:
We all agreed that we had to find out what happened in Budapest. That started out as this throwaway line which Joss Whedon threw into Marvel’s The Avengers as a funny moment between Hawkeye and Black Widow. That’s Clint and Natasha talking about their history, and you get a fun little Easter egg for fans to theorize about. We thought that if we don’t go back to Budapest and find out what really happened there, people will feel unsatisfied. I wondered what did happen there?
So how much of it will we actually learn about? Well, in the upcoming Marvel’s Black Widow: The Official Movie Special Book (via Screen Rant), Johansson confirms that the upcoming solo film won’t focus too heavily on Budapest but that the situation does serve as a jumping off point for the movie:
We often talked about what is going on in Natasha’s head. I really think that Natasha is haunted by the fact that she has this past that she feels so guilty about. Unfinished business is that sense of guilt that follows her around, which all stems from what happened in Budapest. Black Widow is not about what happened in Budapest, but it’s a huge jumping-off point for us to understand the heaviness of Natasha’s burden.
This is definitely exciting news for longtime fans of the MCU as, up until now, we’ve only been able to imagine what could have happened during Natasha and Clint’s trip to Budapest. During the events of The Avengers, Nat went as far as to compare it to the Battle of New York, something that Clint quickly shot down. Still, it seems things got a bit dicey while they were there.
In addition to Budapest, fans can also expect Black Widow to take a deep dive into Natasha Romanoff’s past with the Red Room and the trauma that resulted from it. The past will certainly return in a big way when Nat returns for the film, and Scarlett Johansson seems more than ready to take it on.
Black Widow is set to arrive in theaters on May 7, 2021.
