Scarlett Johansson Has One Regret About Her Time As Marvel’s Black Widow

Scarlett Johansson had a run as Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that few actors will ever be able to touch. After making her debut in 2010’s “Iron Man 2,” Johansson would go on to play the Marvel Comics superhero for more than a decade, culminating in 2021’s long-awaited and long-overdue “Black Widow” solo film. Several years removed from ending her time as Nathasha Romanoff, does Johansson have any regrets?

Speaking recently with MTV UK, while promoting her latest movie “Transformers One,” she and the rest of the cast were asked if there’s anything they would change about a character they previously played. Johansson went right to Black Widow and suggested that she and the rest of the brass at Marvel Studios could have dug a little deeper into the character’s past:

“I probably would have gone further back in the Black Widow story. I would have loved to have seen the Hawkeye, Black Widow, some of that stuff. […] You see early parts of her life [not that origin].”

As fans may well recall, there’s a line in 2012’s “The Avengers” during the film’s climactic battle when Black Widow and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye are battling alongside one another. Natasha then says, “This is just like Budapest,” to which Clint replies, “You and I remember Budapest very differently.” The Budapest of it all was touched on indirectly in “Black Widow” but we never got to see the moment that was discussed between these two friends. It opens up a host of questions of what else we didn’t see from Natasha’s past on screen.

Part of this goes back to what it means to be in something as big as the MCU. The fact of the matter is that Kevin Feige and the brass at Marvel Studios have to think years ahead with these movies, broadly speaking, even though they change plans pretty frequently. As such, it can be tough for one character who only had one solo film at the very end of her run to have everything comprehensively explored. Similarly, Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner has had to have his story told inside of other movies as Marvel can’t (or won’t) make a “Hulk” solo film.

In hindsight, the glaring issue is that Marvel and Disney waited so long to make a “Black Widow” solo movie in the first place. If there had been such a thing in Phase 3, perhaps there could have been a “Black Widow 2” and we would have gone deeper with the character. That’s not how things worked out though and, at this point, Johansson has moved on. Natasha died in “Avengers: Endgame” and that truly was that.

The Oscar-nominated actor recently wrapped filming on next year’s “Jurassic World Rebirth,” which looks to reignite the “Jurassic” franchise. She’s also not totally done with the MCU, at least when it comes to her behind-the-scenes contributions. Indeed, Johansson is credited as an executive producer on next summer’s “Thunderbolts*,” which is set to serve as the conclusion of Phase 5 of the MCU. Alas, we’ll never know exactly what happened in Budapest.

“Thunderbolts*” hits theaters on May 2, 2025.