Character Highlight: Melina Vostokoff (Black Widow)

*Black Widow spoilers.*

It’s been a while since I talked about Black Widow, but the final member of Natasha’s “family” is as deserving of a write-up as the rest of them. Melina, Red Room scientist and the mother of the sleeper-agent family, is a complex character who isn’t quite explored to her full potential within the film, but Rachel Weisz’s performance helps to flesh her out.

As with the rest of the family, we meet Melina in flashbacks of her and Alexei’s time working undercover in Ohio, posing as ordinary American citizens with Natasha and Yelena as their children. In that short sequence, we learn that Melina is absolutely dedicated to their mission, but the affection she has for Natasha and Yelena isn’t merely part of her cover. In her estimation, she truly cares for them, and when they’re made, getting the kids out safely is just as important to her as escaping with her stolen intel.

And yet, once they’re out of the country, the girls are sent away to the Red Room. Melina went through the Red Room herself when she was younger, conditioned and brainwashed to be one of Dreykov’s perfect assassins. She knows about the intense, dangerous training, the involuntary hysterectomies forced on the “graduates.” She knows that all the girls in the Red Room were trafficked, kidnapped from the families they once had. But she makes no move to help her “daughters” escape that life.

It's not until Natasha and Yelena are grown, having both broken out of the Red Room’s conditioning and escaped it at different times, that they reach out to her. They have a plan to destroy the Red Room once and for all, rescuing the women still trapped there. But to do that, they need Melina’s help.

See, Melina’s talents extend beyond that of a traditional Black Widow. As Alexei explains, “She was the scientist, the strategist. I was the muscle.” Melina designed the chemical compound the Red Room uses for brainwashing, having swapped out the psychological conditioning they used in Natasha’s day. That means Melina directly contributed to Yelena losing control over her own mind, which is horrific to think about.

But it also means Melina has unique intelligence that can be used to counteract the brainwashing. Her scientific work for the Red Room gives her intimate knowledge needed for infiltrating it, freeing the controlled women, and stopping Dreykov. She doesn’t really apologize for her hand in what happened to her daughters, but she does intend to rectify her sins by helping them save the remaining Widows.

It's easy to look at Melina in a simple way. Is she the victim who stayed in the only life she knew, so brainwashed herself that she eventually gave up on trying to break free until Natasha and Yelena asked for her help? Or is she the monster of a scientist who gave Dreykov the very tools he needed to assert absolute control over abused women until she made a last-minute pivot and decided to betray him?

Even though I think the film could’ve delved into Melina’s character more, I do think she ultimately defies this black-and-white categorization. The abuse and conditioning she suffered certainly inform her actions and help me understand why she didn’t push back earlier, but that doesn’t absolve her from the part she played in victimizing others. Like every member of the family, she has “red in her ledger” (to quote Natasha,) and when she joins her daughters in taking on the Red Room, she’s making a first attempt to balance the scales.