The ‘Black Widow’ Writer Says That Disappointed Marvel Fans Slid Into His DMs Over The Taskmaster Reveal

(Warning: Black Widow spoilers will be found below….)

Black Widow looks to be on the road to financial success after endless pandemic-related delays. Although the film was Scarlett Johansson’s so-called “solo outing” in the MCU, Florence Pugh won over even more hearts than she’d already captured in various other projects. Yelena Belova should carry the torch well in future outings, perhaps starting with Disney+’s Hawkeye series. Sure, there were a few complaints about the movie here and there; one overriding remark concerns the reveal of the Taskmaster’s identity.

Part of the issue there is that the Taskmaster character felt heavily teased in early promotional materials, including the D23-revealed footage that previewed back in fall 2019. The mysterious, unidentified antagonist was able to mimic opponents’ fighting styles, and the fan theories ran amuck about this character’s Hawkeye moves and (in another trailer) apparent King T’Challa salute, which suggested that this person had fought other Avengers at some point (and yep, Masters did travel to Wakanda in the comics). Well, none of that really got discussed in the movie, and fan theories about the Taskmaster being Rachel Weisz’s character turned out to be wrong. Likewise, the comic version, Tony Masters, was not underneath that armor. Instead, Drekov had resurrected his daughter (who was killed by Natasha in Budapest) as Taskmaster, and the presentation felt a little bit jarring, which led to disappointed tweets like these.