A Throwaway Gag In 'Black Widow' Foreshadowed The Big Ending

Sometimes even the tiniest movie detail can offer clues to later plot developments, lest we forget the time a glaring helicopter safety error foreshadowed the dino sex-filled ending of Jurassic Park. Similarly, a random joke at the beginning of Black Widow, Marvel’s newest big-screen motion picture/extended TV show you watched at home (who can even tell the difference anymore) anticipates a lot of what happens in the exciting climax.

In an early scene, Natasha is lying low in Norway. One of her emergency provisions, naturally, is a DVD box set of James Bond movies. And, in what might be the most hard-to-believe moment in a movie that features supersoldiers and brainwashing, she chooses to watch Moonraker. Of all the Bond films ever made, she goes with Moonraker, really? The one in which a 51-year-old Roger Moore travels to space to battle evil and trick kids who liked Star Wars into watching his crappy movie?

But in retrospect, including Moonraker makes total sense because it slyly hints at what’s to come in the story. For one thing, both movies’ villains (Moonraker’s Drax and Black Widow’s Dreykov) are hiding out, not on the Earth, but in elaborate space (or near-space) stations. 

And the cold open of Moonraker finds Bond being pushed out of a plane and fighting a guy without a parachute -- which is especially similar to the end of Black Widow, as Natasha battles Taskmaster while in freefall and somehow doesn’t die.

Not to mention how Taskmaster being de-brainwashed is not totally dissimilar from Jaws, the metal-mouthed Bond henchman, turning on his boss by the end of Moonraker. According to screenwriter Eric Pearson, the reason why the filmmakers chose Moonraker and not, say, Goldfinger or On Her Majesty’s Secret Service or, hell, even just an episode of James Bond Jr. was specifically because the parachute scene mirrored their finale. So seemingly, those other similarities were likely just coincidental. But let’s all be thankful that Black Widow didn’t strengthen the connection by introducing a new MCU character named “Dr. Goodhead.”

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Top Image: Marvel Studios