Does This Winter Soldier Deleted Scene Tease A Black Widow Movie Prequel?
Walt Disney Pictures has released a new deleted/extended scene from Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The scene, which would have taken place in the second half of the movie (so, yeah, spoiler warning) features Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) disabling security protocols and dumping S.H.I.E.L.D. data onto the internet. Everything on Hydra, everything on S.H.I.E.L.D. — everything.
This also means that Natasha Romanoff would also be revealing a lot of her own secrets. The secrets tease a look at Black Widow's Marvel Cinematic Universe backstory. Could it have been seeds for an eventual Black Widow movie prequel? Watch the deleted/extended scene and lets explore the possibilities further after the jump.
After learning that Black Widow is dumping all of the secure data onto the internet, Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) tried to prevent the security breach by warning Romanoff that "none of your past is going to remain hidden. Budapest, Osaka..." None of it seems to phase her until he mentions "not the Children's ward..." which gives Natasha a nervous pause. "Are you sure you're ready for the world to see you as you really are?"
Could this be a tease of a possible further exploration of Black Widow's backstory in either a Marvel One Shot short film or a future stand-alone prequel feature film? That we don't know. We've heard rumors that Marvel has been working on a Black Widow stand-alone script for some time. (Guardians of the Galaxy co-writer Nicole Perlman even wrote a draft.) There have also been rumblings of a Black Widow/Hawkeye team-up film. But also remember, Marvel is developing a lot of things before deciding which stories should be greenlit. We don't know if either of those ideas are close to ready, and even then, if either explores Black Widow's past. But lets entertain the idea.
Its very likely that the "children's ward" comment could be eluding to the Red room program, a Soviet/KGB super-science division whose job it was to make super-spies. In comics, Natalia Romanov was one of the spies that came out of the program. It would be interesting to see what kind of experiments and what kind of serums Romanoff was exposed to. Maybe she even has super powers that we're yet to be aware of?
Black Widow Volume 2 Issue #1 had a mission set in Osaka, Japan. I don't own the issue so I don't know the significance, but it seems small.
As for Budapest, that backstory has been mentioned in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before. In The Avengers, Black Widow says to Hawkeye "It's like Budapest all over again." And Hawkeye responds "You and I remember Budapest very differently." Director/writer Joss Whedon often uses The Noodle Incident in his screenwriting:
The Noodle Incident is something from the past that is sometimes referred to but never explained (or, rarely, left conspicuously unexplained until a critical plot point), with the implication that it's just too ludicrous for words, and the reality that any explanation would fall short of audience expectations. Questions about it are often met with "You Don't Want To Know..."
So its possible that when those lines of dialogue appeared in The Avengers they were referencing nothing specificly from the comics or the development of future films. But to mention Budapest again in Captain America: the Winter Soldier tells me that Marvel is developing something further based on "Budapest". After the mention in The Avengers, fans took it upon themselves to imagine a prequel movie based on the Budapest remake:
