Hello, Internet.

Welcome to film theory.

The show where two minutes of trailer footage becomes 15 minutes of theory.

Man talk about a great 2019 for Scarlett Johansson rights.

She was nominated for best actress in the super depressing marriage story to his nominated for best supporting actress for the old so super depressing Jo Jo Rabbit.

She had a key role in the highest grossing movie of all time with Endgame.

It also wasn't Captain Marvel in In one year. 00:00:58.730 --> 00:01:3.170 That's four massive films to award nominations and an equal number of on screen deaths. 00:01:3.180 --> 00:01:17.060 I mean, she is figuratively killing it in movies and turn are literally killing her and 2020 is just keeping her momentum going is Marvel rewinds back in time to tell a prequel story about the iconic Natasha Romanoff in their upcoming movie Black Widow.

Now can I just take a moment to say how much I love the name Black Widow for a deadly female spy.

I mean, everyone knows that a bite from a black widow spider is unlikely to be fatal, and most of the over 2000 bites each year don't even need medical attention.

What says everything I've ever been told about spiders Ally me.

Did they even eat their husbands?

Yes.

Okay.

But only in laboratories with unnatural conditions.

Even in Australia, they've only managed to rack up one death in 37 years.

Okay, something's telling me that black widow spiders just have themselves a really solid PR team.

So I guess in all fairness, the spider might not be all that deadly, but Natasha certainly is. 00:01:52.240 --> 00:02:2.580 And based on the trailers, this new movie is gonna expose to us a bit more about her mysterious backstory, the training program that made her into the widow she is today, as well as other members of their little bloody ballet squad. 00:02:2.590 --> 00:02:6.670 But there's one main question that the newest trailer is just begging for us to answer. 00:02:6.680 --> 00:02:8.520 And that's the clip that I played a top of the video. 00:02:9.030 --> 00:02:16.830 Who is our main villain, who is the face behind the mask based on outfit the Shield and past history, with black widow in the comics.

We know that it's gonna be a character named Taskmaster will get a bit more about him in a minute.

The bigger question is who is under that mask?

In fact, Marvel is so intent on keeping the true identity of taskmasters such a mystery that he doesn't even have a confirmed actor yet, which is very weird for a company that's traditionally used villain positions for stunt casting.

I mean, they've sent noted bad guys like Jake Gyllenhaal's Mysterio, where Josh Brolin Santos out on the talk show circuit to push their movies hard.

So why why would they be so tight lipped about black widows?

Main villain?

Well, with this being a spy movie, it means that the reveal of Who's Under That Mask is gonna be a big twist for the audience.

Except here's the thing.

I feel pretty darn confident.

I already know the answer.

Scratch that. 00:02:59.570 --> 00:03:1.310 I feel really confident. 00:03:1.320 --> 00:03:2.190 I know the answer. 00:03:2.200 --> 00:03:7.300 The trailers are very clearly trying to misdirect you about who is behind that mask. 00:03:7.310 --> 00:03:17.060 So today I'm gonna look at the potential candidates, bunkum all and then tell you the reveal of marvels Next massive superhero hit months before it hits the big screen.

What you have to say about that, Scarlett Johansson.

Are you one of those people that goes online?

And then you look at all the screen grabs you are.

You're one of those people.

I'm not judging you.

You are completely judging me right now.

Let's start by learning a bit more about who this guy is and what is traditional.

Power Set consists of taskmaster and Marvel.

Comics is usually a guy by the name of Tony Masters.

Masters has an ability called photographic reflexes, which is similar to having photographic memory.

Except that beyond just recalling things with incredible accuracy, masters can accurately reproduce the actions of anyone he sees.

It's an incredibly cool power that makes him a very difficult enemy, that feat, considering he could just always counter you with your own moves. 00:03:57.890 --> 00:04:0.080 He's like the ultimate, you know, reverse card. 00:04:0.090 --> 00:04:6.540 However, his memory could be overwhelmed by disability, so we'll often forget simple things, like the names of his loved ones or who he used to work for. 00:04:6.550 --> 00:04:14.750 Taskmaster is a mercenary, and I work for the highest bidder without a care for their ideologies, which means that sometimes taskmaster is as much a good guy as he's a bad guy.

He's worked for pretty much everyone from Shield to Thunderbolt Ross.

Who wouldn't you know?

It is also gonna be in this movie.

And that's far from all we know about this new Marvel movie, thanks to Natasha's untimely demise, an endgame.

We know for sure that this movie is gonna be a prequel.

The sentiments been echoed by everyone working on the movie.

Scarlett Johansson even gave us a more specific time frame for the majority of the vents of the plot.

It takes place after the Civil War on the stand before the infinity were there.

Those are the words.

Now.

You may have missed a couple of their World War, World War two.

Vietnam War, Korea War, War of the Roses or my personal favorite Spanish American little Cross cultural excitement going on. 00:04:55.420 --> 00:05:9.720 They're so in a reflection of the comics and knowing that Thunderbolt Ross is making an appearance here, it's likely that the story of this new black widow will at least in part, revolve around Ross hunting down Natasha in the wake of her betrayal of Tony Stark in the psycho via hordes. 00:05:9.750 --> 00:05:17.150 If you can manage to remember that far back in the series, you remember when the government was all like you superheroes are dangerous and need to be supervised.

Captain America was all like no man rebel, and Tony Stark was totally You're right, government.

You pay me a lot of government contracts, so I kind of have to agree.

Also, For some reason, I grew a conscience because the story demanded it.

And wouldn't you know it while we were all distracted by Spider Man showing up Black widow was there, apparently come back their fear.

If you squint, you can see kind of the black Blur just flashing across the screen.

Yeah, she's way back there fighting the other guy who doesn't have superpowers.

Well, anyway, she had to choose a side, right?

She chose one, But then she ended up flip flopping.

Anyway, she went against Tony and the government.

And so with this movie coming, Kanaan tickly after civil war. 00:05:53.590 --> 00:06:0.050 If it's perfectly in the timeline that they'd now be looking to track her down, Charlie told Ross, which is come. 00:06:0.650 --> 00:06:5.240 We also know that at least some of it's gonna take place even earlier in Natasha's career. 00:06:5.250 --> 00:06:12.670 Aside from flashbacks to our day's training in the program, we can expect to see at least part of the movie taking place before Natasha joined Shield in the first place.

We know this because the very opening shot of the trailer shows the Liberty statue in Budapest.

If that's not ringing any bells, let's take a brief trip even further back down memory lane to the original Avengers movie.

Just like over way.

Know that at least at some point in this movie, they're gonna be in Budapest place where Hawkeye and Natasha have a long history.

We also know from that same movie that they met because Hawkeye was ordered to kill Natasha.

But Clint ended up ignoring the order and recruiting her.

Instead, I got on Shell Traitor in a bad way.

Agent Barton was sent to kill me.

He made a different call.

So could taskmaster actually be Hawkeye?

It's a pretty loose connection.

But then fans spotted this scene in the trailer that seemed to make up for a real theory.

Oh, he's using a bow. 00:06:59.560 --> 00:07:1.440 He's associated with black widow. 00:07:1.440 --> 00:07:2.580 Is this potentially? 00:07:2.580 --> 00:07:4.200 How they met is hot guy. 00:07:4.200 --> 00:07:5.820 The one behind that mask? 00:07:5.830 --> 00:07:7.680 Absolutely not. 00:07:7.690 --> 00:07:11.010 Remember, taskmasters Whole shtick is copying other people's moves.

The fact that taskmaster is using a bow means that Hawkeye is probably in the movie craps just briefly in order to teach taskmaster usage of the weapon, which in turn gives us a trailer shot that gets us to all think that it might actually be him.

I mean, Disney has misdirected us plenty of times in recent history with their trailers.

Yeah, uh, uh huh.

King One last looks of But think about it.

If Scar Joe was at least being partially honest when she said that the movie takes place between civil war in Infinity War go.

There's no way that Hawkeye's the bad guy.

Hawkeye, as you might remember, was part of Captain America's team during the Civil War and as a result, ended up in house arrest, which is why, at the beginning of endgame, we see him in an ankle monitor. 00:07:56.380 --> 00:08:0.350 Now, as established Nam man to these monitors are easy enough to slip off. 00:08:0.360 --> 00:08:3.800 But pulling the same move twice seems pretty cheap for the emcee. 00:08:3.800 --> 00:08:15.730 You Besides, what mission could possibly be so important to Clint that he one escapes his confines to changes his entire appearance and three tries to kill one of his best friends all before calming down with his family and then doing it all over again.

An end game.

It's just a really muddled, unclear story are also This would be the first time Hawkeye was used as the bad guy on Marvel's been pretty up front about avoiding that pitfall again.

Done the whole mind control thing?

No.

After looking at the evidence, Taskmaster isn't just some new villain of the week, and he isn't Hawkeye.

But I do believe that he's an old friend who turned evil.

I also believe that this he is actually she.

My theory is that taskmaster, by the end of the movie will be revealed to be her.

This one sitting at the table.

Molina Bostick Aww, you got it?

Yep, the one with the killer comedy line from the trailer is gonna end up being our villain.

It's also why all the trailers are trying their darndest to misdirect you. 00:09:1.240 --> 00:09:2.880 Who the heck is that guy? 00:09:2.890 --> 00:09:7.700 That's not a guy, Natasha, but Disney is trying their darndest to get us to think that it is. 00:09:7.710 --> 00:09:15.960 Now let me back up a bit and give you some history on Malina Bostick off and why she's likely to be this film's big bad in the comics Lord Molina appears in the Marvel fanfare.

Siri's where she's shown growing up in the same training program is Natasha, and the movie seems to keep this continuity in place big together again, however, Molina is not quite a skilled is Natasha, and this, too, seems to be cannon.

In the emcee you breaks, um, only detectable ones.

You're later, Michael.

In fact, in the comics, having to live in the shadow of the black widow causes Molina to develop a deep hatred for Natasha.

Eventually, she leaves the surface of Russian, becomes a freelance assassin by the name Iron made in where one of our targets is, You guessed it black widow herself. 00:09:52.450 --> 00:10:0.140 Now clearly, Iron Maiden and taskmaster are two different characters in the comics, but if you look at their abilities, they're actually fairly similar. 00:10:0.150 --> 00:10:5.190 Molina is a master martial artist, master assassin, master spy and a weapons expert. 00:10:5.200 --> 00:10:14.170 Basically everything you need taskmaster to be, you would barely even need to change their costumes could check body suit checked, mask done.

Additionally, Tony Masters in the comics injects himself with a knockoff of the super serum that created Captain America and, in turn becomes taskmaster.

Molina, it seems, may be involved in a similar kind of experiment.

She's also involved in some quite complicated scientific research, which is at the heart of the film story, given the Super Soldier serum is Prevalence in the M.

C.

U.

So far, it's certainly not out of the question that Molina could simply gain all her powers from the serum after failing the black Widow program enough times, she's been cycled through the Red Room Black Widow program five times.

There's also the surprising bit of physical evidence.

In fact, the whole thing that got me started on this theory in the first place is this shot from the trailer here. 00:10:56.400 --> 00:11:0.060 David Harbors Red Guardian has taken on taskmaster and hand hand combat. 00:11:0.070 --> 00:11:7.690 Red Guardian goes in for the head butt, and you can see quite clearly that he has himself some height on taskmaster in Real lite. 00:11:7.700 --> 00:11:9.160 David Harbour is six foot three. 00:11:9.160 --> 00:11:14.370 Just haul well, Rachel Weiss, the one who plays Molina Bostick off is five foot six inches.

That would explain to us how Red Guardian could have himself nearly a full head of height over taskmaster Leslie, though let's talk about the family elements of this movie.

Red Guardian specifically calls Molina, Yelena and Natasha family in the trailer.

Big together, but by endgame, we know that this family no longer exists.

I have nothing.

And then I got this this job, his family man marvel, maybe need to start adding spoiler warnings to your trailers.

But this means that by the end of Black Widow, the other members of Natasha's quote unquote family here are either gonna wind up dead or no longer on friendly terms. 00:11:56.760 --> 00:12:7.950 We know Yelena is likely to take over the mantle of Black Widow for the Avengers in the mainline emcee You movies going forward because, well, you know Natasha's dead because Black Widow it's Car Joe's final required movie in her contract. 00:12:7.940 --> 00:12:11.450 Also, also, we know this because something very similar happened to her in the comics.

So this right here, my friends, is gonna be the face of our new black widow For the next generation of movies that's pretty solidly in place.

Red guardian, meanwhile, is likely gonna die because, well, we don't see him coming out of any doctor Strange portals at the end of endgame.

I mean, we did not show up for the party in Earth's biggest battle, you goon, which again leaves us alone with Molina, who you know, would have had a falling out of the family if she went around.

Trying to kill everyone.

Makes those Christmas get together is really awkward.

Now I know what I'm suggesting.

Here would be a big shift in Marvel.

More.

But then again, this wouldn't be the first time that marble swap the character's name or even their gender.

It's also something Disney and 2020 would totally do After years of people questioning the emcee you for a lack of female representation for them getting made fun of a leading wonder woman.

Get to it first to basically have black widow beef.

Females are strong.

The movie is totally Hon Brand for him right now, Natasha unmasking taskmaster to reveal that Whoa girls could be super cool villains to who are strong and independence.

That would just be a big twist.

It would also be a strong message moment that Disney won't pass.

So when you look at all the evidence, we get ourselves a pretty complete picture of what this movie is gonna wind up being.

An appearance by Hawkeye Visit to Budapest, chased by General Ross, a passing of the torch to you, Elena as the new black widow and the betrayal of a family member when it's revealed that under the Mass taskmaster was Molina the whole time.

Clearly I got that right.

That's why you're not answering my questions yet on that Internet.

Get on that.

But, hey, that's just a theory.

A film theory and subscribed.

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You know what?

Just subscribe so you could rub it in my face when the movie comes out. 00:13:56.760 --> 00:14:0.440 And I'm completely wrong about everything I predict in any way you slice it. 00:14:0.450 --> 00:14:2.240 You should just subscribe the buttons on screen. 00:14:2.240 --> 00:14:2.790 Right now.