We’ve had a lot of Avengers: Age of Ultron news this week [keep up to date with it all here], and now IGN has managed to get some quotes from Scarlett Johansson about returning to the role of Black Widow for the hotly-anticipated sequel, and what we can expect from her character when the Avengers reassemble in May 2015.
“Avengers 2, it’s very much a continuation, a maturation, of this universe, of this reality. It’s not a sequel in the sense that it feels like a rehash. ‘Hey, remember this old thing you loved in the first one? There’s even more in the second!’ It’s nothing like that. Joss has lived with these characters now for a couple of years, and he is, as you can imagine, obsessed and tirelessly worked to help these characters evolve… At this stage, when you see the Widow, she’s — especially in Avengers, these characters all have a past, and hers is a very complex one, where she’s realizing — and it’s kind of a continuation of [Captain America: The Winter Soldier] — ‘I’ve never made an active choice. I’m a product of other people’s imposition.’ That’s going to catch up with her. That’s bound to have a huge effect. There’s got to be a result of that realization. I think that in Avengers 2 you’ll see that. You’ll see her actively making some choices in her life, for better or worse. You know, when she splashes, the wave is big — all these characters have that effect. So it’ll be interesting to see what the audience thinks of what kind of wave we’re sending their way.”
As for Black Widow’s lack of superpowers next to the rest of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes (bar Hawkeye), Johansson said: “She’s a super spy. Her ability to understand the complexity of the criminal mind, she uses that to her advantage. She’s often the one that’s going, ‘Right, you think it’s this way, but if you think about it from this person’s perspective, this might be the answer.’ She’s always using her experience in her sordid past to her advantage. I don’t think there’s any super suit that could supersede that for her. I think what she lends to the team — she let’s everyone else play with their big toys. And she gets some pretty good toys too, especially in Avengers 2 — I can’t complain.”
Avengers: Age of Ultron is set for release in the UK on April 24th 2015 and North America on May 1st 2015, with Joss Whedon directing a cast that includes Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Mark Ruffalo (The Incredible Hulk), Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Don Cheadle (War Machine), Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Paul Bettany (JARVIS / The Vision), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Quicksilver), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch), James Spader (Ultron), Thomas Kretschmann (Baron Strucker) and Josh Brolin (Thanos).
Originally published July 18, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
