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Spoiler-Free Vague Endgame Afterthought (READ LAST)

The last we saw of Black Widow in Infinity War, she was taking on a role of higher leadership than previously seen before, and this role continues into Endgame. Everyone reports to her, even the ones off the planet. Her role as a facilitator also continues, but her actions are recognized as important both by the other characters, and by the format of the movie itself. While both she and Bruce Banner have left their romance completely behind despite working together, she walks an interesting line of vulnerability; we see her more emotionally vulnerable than she has ever been, though she still takes control of her physical vulnerability in a way both similar to and heightened from her past experiences.

Endgame also gives special emphasis to the presence of more female superheroes in the universe than previously recognized, including Captain Marvel, who both takes on a leadership role, and builds on her protector status she established in her solo movie. This special attention hints at a building expanse of female superheroes in the MCU, and whether or not they become Avengers by title, they will likely take on new narrative roles and establish more ways to convey vulnerability.

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Introduction

Unless you’ve been frozen for the past 70 years, you’ve probably seen a superhero movie or two, or at least the posters. Over the past two decades, pop culture has seen an increase in superhero films, many of which build on each other in sequels or a wider universe. While most of these films feature a man as the main character, female superheroes are often present around them, even if they don’t have their own movie. But how do we understand superheroes who are women and their role in the narrative? I investigated the female Avengers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to find out how these superheroes are presented to us, and what we can learn from them.

From the first appearance of the Avengers in 2012 to the most recent installment in the saga: Avengers: Infinity War, the Avengers have seen the membership of Black Widow and the Scarlet Witch.

Black Widow’s poster for Avengers: Infinity War. You’ve probably noticed that though her hair changes from movie to movie, this one is the most drastic change yet. Coincidentally, as I’ll talk about later, she also steps into a more masculine role by this point in her narrative.  

Scarlet Witch in a pivotal moment in Avengers: Infinity War. At this point in the movie, she is central to the story, with her actions guiding the plot. However, these actions are ultimately reversed.

While other women are involved in the narrative, these two have a superhero title aside from their name assigned to them. Over the course of six years and two directors, their stories have unfolded amidst other action, establishing who they are as both superheroes and as people. Out here in the real world, women’s movements such as the Women’s March in 2016 and the MeToo movement, which became popular in 2017, have emphasized the voices of women in cultural and global conversation, creating dialogue that at the very least reached the ears of large and influential studios like Marvel. Recent pushes for diversity have correlated with the emergence of new heroes like Black Panther and Captain Marvel, who each have solo movies, and there are even talks of a Black Widow movie in the works. However, I wanted to explore how women like Black Widow and Scarlet Witch developed throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe before and after some of these conversations, and how they fit into other roles and expectations of women in film. To get the full stories of both these Avengers, I analyzed The Avengers, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, and Avengers: Infinity War. One or both women plays a significant role in all of these movies, though they serve as different functions in each.

These are the posters for the movies I looked at. 

While the Captain America movies may be focused on the title character, both women are heavily featured in at least one of each of his movies, making both titles a valuable source. 

Through an analysis of these films, I found that both characters widely function as facilitators: characters whose actions help other characters move the major plot points along. Additionally, I found that the vulnerability (both emotional and physical) of the two women, a trait often discussed in femininity in movies, is most prevalent in the characters when they are also associated with romance. As a result, the strongest link to femininity that these two characters have is through romance, sending the message that romance is a large part of femininity as a whole. A postfeminist lens allows them to embrace the risk that comes with romance as a signifier of femininity until they leave romance behind and appear more masculine. It also allows us to look for femininity in more subtle ways that do not involve explicit discussions of womanhood or feminism.

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Postfeminism

The Avengers are described as a group of “remarkable people” who fight the battles for those that can’t. The fact that there are women in the Avengers supports the idea that of these remarkable people, some of them are women, with no further discussion of gender equality in any of the movies, because gender has no effect on whether or not someone has the skills to save the world. This leaves the women on the team straddling an interesting line between masculinity and femininity: since most superhero traits are associated with masculinity, must they take on a masculine identity in order to be superheroes? Where does their femininity show up?

Here’s where the concept of postfeminism comes in. Postfeminism is the perception that the goals of feminism have been achieved, and women have reached equality. So, if a woman wants to do something that other feminists have typically defined as sexist or oppressive, she safely can, because the goal has already been reached and there is no harm to either her or anyone else in doing so. In the case of the Avengers, though there are significantly fewer women than men, their capability and respect from other teammates suggests this attitude of equality, which means we can assume that any action or frame that may appear sexist can be attributed to the unique situation or to the character’s “choice”. This perspective is most relevant in discussions of romance, due to the power dynamics brought into play in each. When it comes to fighting, both characters demonstrate a different aspect of femininity through their various fighting styles, but both end up taking on (typically masculine) protector roles, which pushes them away from the expectations and patterns of postfeminism.

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The Characters: Black Widow

Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanoff, is a former Russian spy/assassin for the KGB, who is recruited into SHIELD. Her fighting style is extremely physical, with an emphasis on martial arts and weapon mastery. She is also armed with Widow Bites, a bracelet-like weapon that electrocutes enemies. She first appears in Iron Man 2 as an undercover assistant who watches over Tony Stark as he deals with life as a superhero. In terms of background, we really start learning about her in The Avengers.

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The Characters: Scarlet Witch

Left orphaned after an attack using Stark weapons in Sokovia, Wanda Maximoff and her twin brother volunteered for a HYDRA experiment, where she was given powers of neuroelectrical interfacing, telepathy, and telekinesis to become the Scarlet Witch. She first appears in the end credit scene of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, when Hydra reveals their secret project, and later joins Ultron in his quest to end the Avengers in Avengers: Age of Ultron. However, she and her brother switch sides and join the Avengers when they find out Ultron is planning to eradicate all humans, and Wanda carries on with the team after her brother is killed. Her fighting style is not physical, as she tends to manipulate the energy around an enemy before they can get close to her or anyone else.

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Narrative Role

Both women serve as facilitators in the narrative: their actions allow other characters to further the plot, though they are typically not the main focus of the plot point. This happens the most often in the two Captain America movies, because while Cap himself needs to move the plot of his own movie forward, he receives a significant amount of both direct and indirect help from Black Widow and Scarlet Witch, depending on the movie. However, this pattern persists in the other Avengers movies as well, where plot points don’t necessarily need to focus all on one person. Due to the lack of solo movies for both these characters, this is their main role throughout the series.

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Narrative Role: Black Widow

Black Widow’s first appearance in The Avengers is of her being interrogated while tied to a chair, and we immediately think she’s in danger.

We later find out that she was completely in control and able to overpower the men who were questioning her, even while tied to a chair and held over a hole in the floor. This is a consistent pattern throughout The Avengers; we as audience members believe she’s in a dangerous situation, when in reality she has engineered the encounter to frame her as weak and helpless so that at the end of the scene she can reveal that she was fine all along.

In a scene like this, we think her to be at the mercy of Loki, who appears to make her cry and bargain for the life of Hawkeye. However, her main goal was to find out Loki’s plan, which she does, and she quickly snaps out of her tears as soon as she gets what she wants. She also acts as the facilitator to figuring out the plan, so the others can take more action to stop Loki.

In Winter Soldier, this facilitator role is especially emphasized. Though she begins the movie as morally ambiguous and hard to trust, she also turns into one of Cap’s closest friends. Through fights and discoveries of HYDRA, Black Widow sets up Cap to carry out the plan that allows him to save the world.

For example, she is the one to get the flash drive that contains the information Cap will need to expose HYDRA for the rest of the movie.

Here, at about 2:20, she shoots the Winter Soldier in the eye, forcing him to take off his goggles…

So at around 2:55 when the Winter Soldier loses his face mask, Cap sees his entire face and can go “BUCKY??!!??” which is a major turning point in the movie.

Another more blatant example is when she widow bites herself to distract Pierce, so that Fury can shoot him.

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Narrative Role: Black Widow (cont.)

She continues her facilitator role in a more passive way in Age of Ultron, where she serves predominantly as the perspective from which we hear major plot descriptions, such as Ultron’s evil plan.

Her kidnapping both reveals the plan to us, and allows her to send a signal to the other Avengers so they can find where she is and attack.

As she continues her arc in Civil War, she plays of the role of the mediator, where she often challenges authority in an attempt to minimize physical damage and fights. While she fails in trying to avoid physical fights, her challenge to authority continues to increase. Her role as the mediator pulls and pushes with her role as the facilitator, because this time she tries to stop plot points from happening, rather than causing them. Ultimately, however, her interference ends the fight.

This clip has dialogue edited out, but she shoots Black Panther so that Steve and Bucky can get away, switching sides in the process.

In Infinity War, where she joins Captain America in a protector role, she ends her arc in a prominent leadership role.

She is actually the voice of Team Cap here, and Cap himself serves as the facilitator/distraction while she sneaks up from behind to attack Corvus and Proxima Midnight. However, her fights both here and the rest of movie serve to facilitate the moves of others through strategic group attacks. These examples are much quicker (look for when she kicks one character to another attacker in a split second), but they still fall into her facilitator role, though less blatantly than they did in earlier movies.

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Narrative Role: Scarlet Witch

Wanda’s initial role as a villain sets her up for a story of redemption and learning, as she realizes that she and the Avengers want the same thing. Her function as a facilitator begins more destructively: she manipulates the minds of the Avengers so they struggle against Ultron and fight each other, and sets the Hulk on a violent rampage that the others have to stop.

Scarlet Witch causes this massive fight, as well as the fallout after, where the Avengers have to lie low and avoid public condemnation. She also implants visions in their minds, influencing the decisions they make after they confront their own inner fears.

Then, even as she joins the Avengers, and joins their mission in Civil War, her actions accidentally set off a string of disasters that act as the final straw for the United Nations to require the Avengers to have oversight.

While she also acts as the protector role towards Cap at about 2:40, she begins the conflict between Cap and Iron Man. In fact, the two nearly make up again, until Cap finds out that Wanda is also being held captive throughout the conflict.

At 2:40, Cap’s attitude completely changes towards Iron Man once he goes to bat for the Scarlet Witch. This in turn allows the buildup to the biggest fight in the movie: the airport fight between all the Avengers.

Throughout Infinity War, Wanda is a vital necessity to destroying the Mind Stone in Vision’s head, but the manipulation of time by Thanos renders her actions completely useless.

Here, she is the focal point of the scene, and the action that everything else revolves around, but it all gets reversed moments later.

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Romance and Vulnerability

Throughout all the movies, Black Widow and Scarlet Witch are associated with romance in different ways and at different points in their arc. This is one of their strongest links to femininity, because it tends to lead them to more vulnerable positions, and emphasizes the fact that they are women. Some of the romantic developments require hindsight and reflection on past interactions: for example, Scarlet Witch’s romance with Vision puts a new perspective on her “containment” in Civil War, and Black Widow’s romance with Bruce Banner draws attention to how much danger she was in when he hulked out in The Avengers. However, romance appears to link the characters to femininity because it brings them into a new status of vulnerability that often requires protection. In the MCU, every character is either straight or unspecified- there are no openly LGBT characters. So, Black Widow and Scarlet Witch are no exception, and are both in heterosexual relationships, although both of their love interests are not completely human.

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Romance and Vulnerability: Black Widow

Black Widow’s first few associations with romance are not focused on her own relationship- that doesn’t happen until Age of Ultron. The first time she’s questioned about any romance is by Loki, who asks “is this love?” when she begs him to not kill Hawkeye. This moment reflects an overall pattern she shows throughout The Avengers that positions her as a vulnerable figure before we realize she engineered the situation that way in order to get more information. However, just the question of romance opens Black Widow up for vulnerability where there was none, allowing Loki to push her further until he reveals his plan. While other aspects of her relationship with Hawkeye could easily suggest romance with not much effort: her casual approach to the mission until she finds how he’s been compromised, their established history and camaraderie, and their shared tale of redemption and recovery, Black Widow tells Loki that “love is for children” and that she owes him a debt, giving a reason other than love to make an effort in saving his life. Later, when she does enter a romance with Bruce Banner/Hulk, he will both save her life and put it in danger, resulting in both him and others protecting her instead. A romance with Hawkeye would make Black Widow the protector, thus, the “more masculine” member of the relationship.

In Winter Soldier, Black Widow again is not involved in her own relationship, but this time, cannot seem to stand the idea of Captain America being without one. One of the first things she wants to talk about with Cap is that he should ask out women she knows are interested, and she tells him to call the nurse he met at the end.

At about 00:35, Black Widow begins her ongoing pattern of mentioning women who might be interested in Cap, who appears less than interested in anyone.

Throughout the movie, Black Widow is constantly saved by Cap and his shield, often getting pushed out of the way or carried while unconscious, positioning one of her main roles in the movie as both a facilitating partner who helps Cap and also needs constant saving, as well as Cap’s matchmaker. Cap shielding (literally) Black Widow from the explosion on the ship is an example of this. This dynamic gets reversed when Black Widow successfully guides Cap through public displays of affection in order to get away from their pursuers, allowing her to be his protector.

This scene would not work with the goal of invisibility goal if Black Widow was not a woman, so her femininity stands out when she uses romance to evade capture. She also has the talent of being able to remain unnoticed, while Cap tends to stick out like a sore thumb. Rather than vulnerability, femininity uniquely functions as a method of invisibility here.

While Black Widow gets herself and Cap out of the situation in the mall, she ultimately does need saving as soon as they reach the final destination at Camp LeHigh and are hit with a missile.

In Age of Ultron, Black Widow enters a relationship of her own; one that immediately puts her in danger. By this point, we have already seen her face the Hulk and get saved by Thor, and while she’s flirting with Banner she emphasizes that she likes him because he tries to avoid the battle because he knows he’ll win.

This dialogue sounds like it’s straight out of the forties or earlier. It emphasizes that Black Widow is currently the dominant person in the relationship (given the fact that she’s initiating it), but she doesn’t want to be. Her language opens the door for Banner to be the person who can step in and save her from past issues.

The attraction between her and Banner also extends to the actual Hulk himself, as we see with Banner’s “lullabye” that Black Widow gives him to turn him human again, putting her more in danger than the others.

While she ends up in more danger by trying to help Banner this way later amidst an attack by Ultron, she is in danger even in this scene, where Hulk could snap and kill her at any moment.

Her romance with Banner is explicitly linked to vulnerability, both in the physical danger she finds herself in, and the emotional confession that she views herself as a monster, just like him. Her moments with Banner show more notable vulnerability than the moment she accepts death on the rising piece of earth they plan to explode before Nick Fury saves the team, proving that she is in the more danger during intimate moments with Banner/Hulk than she is fighting killer robots.

After Hulk flies out into space, Natasha is left with no additional love interest, and takes on a new role in the MCU. She becomes a developing leader of the team that gets herself out of tough situations, and seeks to protect as many people as she can through at first mediation in Civil War, and then with physical fighting in Infinity War. In the absence of romance, she becomes less vulnerable and, by some definitions, more masculine. In fact, her actions and attitude mirror Captain America’s, shown fully when she accompanies both him and Black Panther to speak with Proxima Midnight before the Battle of Wakanda. The absence of romance correlates exactly with Natasha’s new demeanor and role as protector, and as a result, the only mention of her past romance with Bruce is a comment from Falcon about the awkward reunion moment. Otherwise, she is completely detached from romance by the end.

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Romance and Vulnerability: Scarlet Witch

Wanda’s relationship to vulnerability is different from Natasha’s due to an extremely different fighting style, and Wanda’s tendency to stay out of the physical aspect of the fight, allowing her powers to help avoid any kind of physical assault, and protect others. However, her vulnerability centers around her emotional state more than any physical danger she’s in, and is much more constant than the vulnerability we see in Natasha. This is because she loses her brother early on in her arc, and then gets blamed for the overall danger the Avengers pose to the public after one of her first real missions. As her arc progresses, we see how she is connected with the android Vision, who ultimately becomes her love interest. Once she is with Vision and on the run, she automatically is more in danger because of her proximity to the Mind Stone in Vision’s head, leaving her open to an attack from the Black Order.

Their romance is extremely connected to the Mind Stone, which created Vision and gave Scarlet Witch her powers. Since the Mind Stone is the focus of the villains, her proximity to it endangers her.

She also ends up being a pivotal point of the final battle, because since she must destroy the Mind Stone to keep it away from Thanos, she stays close to Vision until she must both kill him herself, and then see him die again. Before she becomes romantically linked to Vision, the power dynamic between them favors Wanda; she easily overpowers him to escape her confinement to join Captain America during Civil War. This may explain their connection: Vision wants the one person more powerful than he is. However, the relationship consists of an ambiguous age gap, because Wanda was a teenager in Civil War often referred to as a kid by the rest of the team, while Vision is a three year old android in the body of a 46 year old man. Wanda is clearly not in danger from Vision himself, but the closer she gets to him, the closer she gets to danger.

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Conclusion and Moving Forward

Scholars have debated the effects of positioning a woman as vulnerable for a years, and ideas of postfeminism question if vulnerability should have any negative connotations, especially when it’s connected to romance; shouldn’t a character be willing to show a weaker side of themselves with someone they love and trust? Besides, we go to see these movies for the cool fights and the fun storyline, not the random romantic subplots that pop up out of nowhere. However, in the case of the Avengers, it’s worth paying attention to their romances, because the existence of women on the team allows Avengers to date each other (at least while I’m sticking with the heteronormativity point) rather than outsource. Despite the fact that the women are Avengers themselves, they are in significantly more danger as soon as they become romantically linked, and their femininity is emphasized. This continues the pattern of the woman as the one needing protection, though these women prove at other points that they can step into the protector role themselves. The romance suggested by Loki in The Avengers between Clint and Natasha would have positioned Black Widow as the protector of that relationship if it had happened, but she turns instead to the character that has put her in danger before, and continues to put her in danger again. The canonical romances suggest a somewhat demeaning weakness that appears with romance, giving women a choice between being a self sufficient woman who protects herself, and a woman in love, rather than both.

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Women as the facilitators both can draw attention to their importance to the story while also emphasizing other characters around them. We notice them, but we don’t realize that without them, the plot wouldn’t happen. However, recently Marvel added a new female Avenger for whom this is not the case due to the fact that she has her own movie: Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers. As she figures out who she is, Carol becomes a protector of both Earth and the rest of the universe, with her vulnerability coming from her damaged memory. Carol also has no romantic interest, and therefore cannot need more protection because of it. Instead of setting up even the major plot points for the events to come later, Carol’s presence inspires Nick Fury to create the Avengers, while her pet flerken acts as the facilitator that spurs the next movies. Carol is set up as the savior, rather than the protected.

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While trying to predict what could happen in Endgame is a losing battle, we can pay special attention to the role of the female Avengers, and when or how they are most vulnerable. As audiences start to push for women to take the lead in their stories, will these patterns in romance and vulnerability remain? How will their arcs continue? As fans and current culture in general respond more to new depictions of women in the Avengers that deviate from these previous patterns, they may explore new roles in the narrative.