Black Widow Movie May Create A Big Problem For The MCU Timeline

We’ve known that the Black Widow solo movie was coming for a while now – it’s kind of hard not to when it’s already in production – but Marvel didn’t officially announce the film until their big panel at Comic-Con this past weekend. Due to the mystery surrounding the movie, though, we initially got the wrong idea about it. We’ve been operating under the belief that Black Widow is a prequel. Well, it is, but it turns out not by as much as we thought.

Word had it that the movie would explore Natasha Romanoff pre-S.H.I.E.L.D. days. However, it was confirmed at Comic-Con that Black Widow will actually be set in the gap between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, which is an interesting revelation as it throws our understanding of the MCU timeline for a loop.

For one, set photos (below) have shown that Scarlett Johansson will have Nat’s distinctive red hair in the film and not the blonde look that the heroine sported when she was operating as a fugitive among Cap’s Secret Avengers following the Sokovia Accords conflict. The point of her new ‘do was to keep a low profile but from the looks of things, she’ll be drawing a lot of attention to herself in Black Widow.

However, there may be a way to explain all this, and the key is in the fact that none of her fellow Secret Avengers are expected to make an appearance in BL. You’ll recall that Nat was never actually imprisoned in the Raft like Cap’s other allies and was not seen with him at the end of Civil War when he broke them all out. So, what if Nat stayed on her own longer than we’d previously thought, had this adventure and then joined up with Steve?

This theory suggested by ScreenRant makes a lot of sense, so we might as well take it as the explanation behind the discrepancy until Black Widow arrives and tells us otherwise on May 1st, 2020.