This review contains subtle spoilers for the film Avengers: Endgame.

For many reasons, I had been highly anticipating the release of Marvel’s newest movie, Black Widow. Besides my obvious love for Marvel movies, I was excited to return to a movie theater for the first time since they’d been shut down due to the pandemic. 

So on a Thursday night, my sister, a friend, and I piled into my mom’s car, ready for the movie. We gathered our tickets and extra buttery popcorn with all the seasonings, used the bathroom before entering the theater, then took our seats and glanced at one another in suspense. 

When the movie started, I recalled pre-COVID-19 memories of sitting with more people and not thinking about how weird it is to be without a mask. By the end of the movie, that was no longer at the forefront of my mind.

Black Widow provided the perfect closure for fans of Scarlet Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff. The movie takes place right after the end of Captain America: Civil War, and it reveals more of Natasha’s personality and backstory than we have ever seen before. 

Natasha has always been a rather mysterious character; I never felt that I knew much about her. But this movie changed that. We find out what happened in Budapest, an inside joke mentioned in multiple previous Marvel movies, and we see secrets revealed about the inscrutable Red Room and the Widows that Natasha used to be one of. 

However, the best part of the movie was Florence Pugh’s character, Yelena Belova, who played a significant role in Natasha’s past. Yelena is a skilled fighter who rarely loses. She is sarcastic and overall hilarious by nature, and she quickly became my new favorite character.

Black Widow was crammed with lots of information and introduced many new characters to portray a dysfunctional family dynamic, but it moved at a fast pace, and it was satisfying to see the heroes win in the ways that they did. 

I also loved the impressive stunts the characters pulled off, feats such as jumping out of a helicopter or falling and landing in Black Widow’s signature pose—a pose that became a running joke between Yelena and Natasha throughout the movie and emphasized their sisterly bond. Their connection forged by their complicated past was so realistic, and watching it with my sister made it more meaningful.

I found so much to love about Black Widow. The dialogue and acting was amazing, with every actor and actress nailing their role. I particularly applauded Ray Winston in his portrayal of the antagonist and leader of the Red Room, Dreykov, an evil, greedy monster. Performances like his were so good that I almost forgot it was just acting. 

Black Widow was an epic conclusion to Natasha Romanoff’s character arc. I would classify it as one of my favorite Marvel movies so far, as every aspect of it stood out in different and astounding ways.