Scarlett Johansson Makes Dark Joke About Black Widow In 'Avengers: Endgame'

The biggest controversy coming out of 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame ” was the untimely demise of Scarlett Johansson ’s Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow . In order to retrieve the Soul Stone from the planet Vormir, Black Widow sacrificed herself, disappointing countless fans as the first female Avenger was left out of the final battle against Thanos .

Now, a year after the movie’s release, Johansson has the last laugh.

The actor assembled on Tuesday with a number of her “Avengers” co-stars for a fundraiser for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.  During a trivia portion of the event, Paul Rudd asked which character T’Challa passed the gauntlet to in the final battle of “Endgame.” While many were initially stumped, Johansson came up with the best response.

“I wasn’t there, so ... sorry,” the actor quipped.

The death of Black Widow drew strong reactions , with some comparing it to the tired comic trope of “fridging ,” in which a woman is killed as a plot device to move a male character’s story forward.

In a 2019 interview , writer Christopher Markus explained to HuffPost why Black Widow was ultimately chosen. “We had to take two people up there who love each other, and we know that Clint [Jeremy Renner] and Natasha [Johansson] have had a very long relationship that they would qualify, and then once we brought them up there, it became a question of who is at the end of their story because we wanted — when we were ‘killing people’ or ending their run — we wanted to make sure that they had closure that there was an appropriateness to the death when it happened so that it would feel heroic and not tragic.” 

Of course, Johansson’s character will return in her own post-mortem movie, “Black Widow ,” which has been repeatedly rescheduled because of the coronavirus and is now set to come out in 2021. Until then, Black Widow is dead, and so are we after that joke.

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