Marvel dropped the final trailer for Black Widow at the beginning of the week, and it gave us our best look yet at Natasha Romanoff’s new nemesis – the enigmatic Taskmaster. Fans of the comics will know that the villain’s USP is his ability to copy his opponent’s combat style, which makes him near-unbeatable in a fight. And this new trailer revealed that one of those he’s copied is Iron Man.
As pointed out by fans on Twitter, one clip sees Taskmaster taking out David Harbour’s Red Guardian with a drop-kick. The move is near-identical to how Tony Stark temporarily brought down Thanos during the battle on Titan in Avengers: Infinity War. While this is a cool nod to the much-missed Armored Avenger, it’s definitely a little confusing that Taskmaster is copying this move, seeing as Black Widow is set prior to IW.
has nobody noticed this yet? i hate marvel. fuck marvel pic.twitter.com/kGlYurBRZq
— alex ? (@widowsquinn) March 9, 2020
If you put all the Taskmaster material from the trailers together, we can see that he’s mastered the fighting styles of various Avengers – including Hawkeye, Captain America, Black Panther and, obviously, Black Widow herself. So, clearly, Taskmaster has studied footage of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in action. The solution to this Iron Man discrepancy, then, must be that he pulled this move on previous Earthbound occasions that Taskmaster has witnessed.
Remember, Robert Downey Jr. is believed to be returning for a cameo in Black Widow, as the studio is making use of the prequel nature of the film to bring back both major casualties from Avengers: Endgame one last time. Maybe there’s even a massive twist here and it’s actually Tony under Taskmaster’s mask and we’ll find out he temporarily went evil prior to Infinity War? We’d never see it coming.
Of course, the real identity of Taskmaster may have just been revealed by the actor themselves, but we’ll get to find out all about the MCU’s latest supervillain when Black Widow arrives on May 1st.
