*Some Yelena-related spoilers.*
It’s interesting, because I loved Natasha throughout her run in the MCU, but when her long-awaited after-the-fact solo film finally came around, Yelena emerged as the movie’s MVP. Black Widow’s annoying kid sister (who’s also a trained assassin) leaps off the screen with life, snark, and unresolved rage.
When Natasha and Yelena were young, they were part of the all-American-family set dressing for a pair of Russian agents under deep cover. Natasha, who’d already been through the Red Room by this point, knew that their “family” was fake. Yelena did not. When Alexei’s cover was blown at the completion of their mission, the quartet escaped capture by the Americans but were split up, with little Yelena taking her turn to be brainwashed and indoctrinated by the Red Room.
The next time we see Yelena, she’s a young woman who’s been under the control of the Red Room for most of her life. She’s only just been freed of her conditioning, and she has no intention of losing that newfound free will. As she quickly points out to Natasha when their paths cross again, Red Room programming in Natasha’s day was psychological, while Yelena’s was chemical, her brain altered by a drug to the point where she couldn’t disobey. Natasha was eventually able to break through her own conditioning, but Yelena needed someone else to break it for her, dosing her with an antidote to counteract the drug.
Given all that she’s been through and the agency that was stolen from her, Yelena is understandably angry. She’s still trying to figure out who she is now, what the Red Room made her into and what she might make of herself, and her grievances are many. And yet, while she very naturally reviles Dreykov, she saves her most personal anger for Alexei, who now makes a mockery of their fake family, and Natasha, who escaped the Red Room but never came back for her.
But Yelena is ultimately a pretty reasonable person, and so when Natasha proposes they team up to take down the Red Room once and for all, she comes around to the idea and puts her anger at Natasha aside enough for them to work together. Both of are highly-trained and lethal, but they’re dropping into a situation where they’re trying to get to a man who’s protected by layers of women with the exact same training, women who are still trapped in his thrall. If they have any hope of succeeding, it has to be together.
And more than that, despite her guardedness and her justified rage, there’s a part of Yelena that still longs for the people she once thought were her family. So, as she and Natasha plan their mission, she takes Natasha to task for the way she was seemingly able to shake the Red Room from her life and reputation in becoming an Avenger, but she also totally falls into the little-sister pattern of giving Natasha crap while simultaneously craving her approval. She has nothing but contempt for Alexei’s easygoing, joking attitude toward the past, but when he sings the song she used to love as a child, she finds something in her that still resonates with her not-father.
And honestly? She’s just entertaining. On top of all the general Widow badassery, Yelena is really funny, brimming with dark snark in a way that few female MCU characters have really gotten the chance to be. For all that I love so many of the MCU’s heroines, they’re frequently framed as no-nonsense and highly-competent, especially in comparison to the men around them (this applies to Natasha and the Avengers, but also Gamora and the Guardians, Hope and Scott, and others.) Often, the most they get to be is coolly wry. Yelena has a biting sarcasm that she deploys readily, along with other humorous qualities baked into her personality, like her annoyance at Natasha’s superhero poses or her over-the-top enthusiasm for her tactical vest. Whenever she’s onscreen, she’s definitely one to watch, and I can’t wait to see more of her in the franchise.
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