The future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is hedging a lot of bets on the team-up movie and its various different iterations. Over the course of Phase Four we’re getting Eternals, The Marvels, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Fantastic Four, while Spider-Man: No Way Home is expected to partner up all three live-action Spideys, and the Guardians are dropping by Thor: Love and Thunder.
Black Widow sort of fit that mold by introducing us to Natasha Romanoff’s surrogate family, who reunited to take down the Red Room. Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova is already confirmed to return in Hawkeye, Rachel Weisz says she’d love to make further appearances as Melina Vostokoff, and David Harbour has hardly been shy in voicing his desire to show up as many times as possible in the future as Red Guardian.
A brief Easter Egg hinted at X-Men cult favorite Ursa Major, with actor Daniel Richters touting himself as the MCU’s first mutant for good measure, and the character has plenty of previous with Red Guardian as part of Russian super team the Winter Guard. A new rumor claims that the project is in active development at Marvel Studios, and in the broadest terms they’re basically the Avengers of the Eastern Bloc.
Fellow Winter Guard alumni Crimson Dynamo was also nodded towards in Black Widow, and could potentially be retconned to tie into Iron Man 2‘s Anton Vanko, but the news is nowhere near to being either confirmed or official, so it remains entirely speculative for now. Localized super teams is an interesting concept in theory, but we’ll just have to wait and see if there’s any merit to the story, even though Harbour’s Red Guardian return is virtually guaranteed.
