‘Avengers 2’: Black Widow Gets Major Role, Could Land Solo Movie

In Avengers 2, Black Widow will be playing a much bigger role according to Marvel President Kevin Feige. Almost rivaling the roles of Nick Fury and Agent Coulson, Scarlett Johansson’s character is getting a lot of attention this time around as Joss Whedon has begun filming in South Africa.

Throughout the Marvel cinematic universe, Phase One had three major recurring roles; Black Widow, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg). Thanks to the TV show Agents of SHIELD, Agent Coulson has seen more screen time than the rest of them, complimenting his role throughout the films. His role will be notably absent in future films due to events in The Avengers, so now the focus appears to be on Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow.

The focus on Black Widow appears to be a theme underlining the movies now, because she is returning in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and possibly in Iron Man 4 (if Marvel and Robert Downey, Jr. can work out a deal). Up to now, we haven’t seen much about Scarlett Johansson’s character, though her backstory was teased in Iron Man 2 and The Avengers.

Black Widow is “a very big part” of Age of Ultron. Role in upcoming Avengers sequel discussed: http://t.co/tqk9Zpq0Ck

— IGN UK (@IGNUK) February 13, 2014

Landing a more prominent role in Avengers 2, Black Widow will receive more explanation, focusing on where she comes from. According to the comics, she was once a Russian secret agent who defected to SHIELD and has a very shady past she occasionally glosses over. Her first appearance in Iron Man 2 revealed her as an undercover agent whose status above the law allows her to override Tony Stark after he attempted to fire her over false identity. Then in The Avengers, Black Widow and Hawkeye exchanged some lines indicating that they were once an item, and she even used her past to lure Loki into revealing his plans.

Kevin Feige told the press about Black Widow and how she helps set up Avengers 2:

“We learn more about her past and learn more about where she came from and how she became in that film. The notion of exploring that even further in her own film would be great, and we have some development work with that. … We wanted Cap and really the entire cinematic universe to be very different at the end of Winter Soldier than it is at the beginning. Therefore when we meet the Avengers at the top of Age Of Ultron, it’s a very different landscape than we left them at the end of the last film.”

Kevin Feige also explained that in Avengers 2, Black Widow’s story could be so expansive that the character may even get her own solo movie, “The notion of exploring that even further in her own film would be great, and we have some development work with that.”

Are you excited to see more of Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron?