Black Widow Super Bowl Trailer: Taskmaster Does a Captain America Move

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Marvel Studios premieres another look at their upcoming Black Widow movie during Super Bowl LIV. Releasing later this year, the next film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe won't yet reveal to fans what's happening in the world following Avengers: Endgame, but will instead return to the time between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. Black Widow is directed by Cate Shortland - Marvel's first woman director to helm a film solo - and has a screenplay by Eric Pearson from a story developed by Ned Benson and Jac Schaeffer.

Black Widow catches up with Natasha Romanoff (Scarlet Johansson) while she's on the run from the U.S. government and sends her on a mission that will see Natasha confronting her past. This is where new characters like Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova and Rachel Weisz's Melina Vostokoff, fellow Black Widow agents and graduates of the Red Room, as well as David Harbour's Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian, Russia's answer to Captain America, come into the story. It remains to be seen how, if at all, the events of Black Widow will lead into the MCU's future, but it's possible that characters introduced here will return post-Endgame, even if Natasha herself cannot.

During the big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, a new teaser for Marvel's Black Widow debuted. You check it out in its entirety, below:

Some will argue that Black Widow will struggle to build any tension considering it's already known Natasha will survive the events of the film, but there's plenty to learn about Natasha's personal history and that of the Black Widow program, and it could all come to matter a great deal in the future of the MCU. It's also possible that some of what's seen in Black Widow will connect with Falcon and the Winter Soldier. There already exists a connection in the comics between Taskmaster, the mystery villain of Black Widow, and U.S. Agent, Captain America's government-sanctioned replacement who'll make his MCU debut in the Disney+ series. It is the plan for the MCU films and television series to intertwine as Phase 4 rolls out, and even though Black Widow is set in the past, there's still ample opportunity for it to haven an impact on the future.

In addition to potentially setting up future threads for the MCU to explore, Black Widow is going to give Natasha's story the closure that Endgame could not. The film is (most likely) Johansson's final appearance as the character, and as such, it's her last (not to mention first) chance to really explore Natasha outside of being an Avenger. Natasha was always a supporting character in someone else's story, but Black Widow finally shines the spotlight on her for one last mission.