RUMOR: ‘Black Widow’ May Involve the Y2K Bug as a Plot Point
It’s not been a secret that Marvel’s Black Widow movie was going to be a prequel, but now we have a time frame of when to expect the story (or at least part of it) will take place: in late 1999, when fears of the Y2K bug causing computers to malfunction to potentially apocalyptic results were at their peak.
MCU Cosmic is running a rumor that they’ve heard, stating that the Y2K panic plays into the plot even if it’s likely not the focus of the film’s entire story. Given that the MCU’s version of Black Widow was born in 1984 (per Captain America: The Winter Soldier), this would make her 15 at the time this plot point happens, though that’s barring the possible revelation that she has been injected with a serum that slows her aging (like in the comics) and that those birth records are falsified. With that in mind, it’s possible that the majority of the film takes place in the early or mid-2000s, which would put her in her late teens or early twenties.
Either way, she’s probably an agent of the Red Room at the beginning of the movie, and thus technically a supervillain at the start of the film, before presumably working for S.H.I.E.L.D. (possibly with Hawkeye, who has alluded to working with Black Widow in the past). There are whispers that the movie focuses on two time periods, and it’s sounding like the first will be pre-2000 and the second will be sometime between 2000 and the events of Iron Man 2. Provided that they’re not taking the anti-aging serum route, expect to see Marvel apply their de-aging CGI method to Scarlett Johansson’s face to make her appear as she did earlier on in her career as an actress. They’ve done the same with other characters in movies like Ant-Man, Captain America: Civil War, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and Ant-Man and the Wasp, and like what they will do with Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg in next year’s Captain Marvel.
Black Widow is in development at Marvel Studios for a presumed 2020 release date.
Grant Davis is a freelance writer who has covered entertainment news for more than seven years. His articles have frequently appeared in Star Wars News Net as well as as other entertainment-related websites. As someone who grew up on Star Wars and comic book movies, he’s completely thrilled with the current era of genre entertainment.
