The unstoppable rise of social media has given millions of people around the world the ability to share their opinion, voice their thoughts or sent someone a tirade of abuse, all at the push of a button. Fans can now directly reach out to the people behind some of the industry’s biggest and most popular properties with either the best or worst of intentions, something Black Widow writer Eric Pearson can now relate to.
It would be fair to say that not a lot of people saw the movie’s big Taskmaster twist coming, especially when the Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster had managed to finish production and then find itself delayed by fourteen months, and still nobody managed to leak that Olga Kurylenko wasn’t only part of the cast, but the villain.
That’s a tough task to pull off in the modern era, and one that the entire Black Widow team deserves immense credit for. However, in a new interview Pearson was asked if he’d received any angry responses about the shocking reveal, and somewhat inevitably his answer was in the affirmative.
“I got one. I made the mistake of looking in direct message requests and someone said, ‘I don’t mean to be out of line, but Taskmaster was the biggest betrayal of my life’. I got mad for a second and then I was like, ‘Well, you’ve had a pretty good life then’. If that’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, then you should be psyched because someone in a movie wasn’t who you wanted them to be.”
At least people are passionate about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but a sense of betrayal might be taking things a little too far. Of course, the game was up from the second Kurylenko’s name appeared in the credits, because there had to be a very important reason why the studio had kept the former Bond girl’s name under lock and key for so long.
In fact, the actress is already teasing a return to the MCU as the reformed Antonia Dreykov, so Black Widow may even have added yet another potential recurring figure into the mix in addition to Natasha’s surrogate family.
