Warning! Spoilers ahead for Black Widow #4 from Kelly Thompson and Elena Casagrande
The Marvel Universe has not been kind to enemies' making to keep her out of their plans, Natasha Romanoff has just woken up and ed who she truly is. Unfortunately, the life that her foes fashioned for her was too good and just real enough to create just as real feelings and love towards the family they had given her, even after she ed her past life. Sadly, this results in arguably one of the worst moments of Black Widow's entire life (and that's saying something).
At the start of this series, Hawkeye, Winter Soldier, and Yelena Belova find Natasha living a civilian life in San Francisco after having been missing for close to three months. Remarkably, they discover she's working as a successful architect, engaged to a fiancé, and has a baby that's nearly a year old (which Yelena confirms is actually Natasha's child). While the collection of villains who orchestrated this brainwashing and false happy ending seem content with their results as a means to keep her off the board, the Weeping Lion would rather see her dead, sending his agents to take her out without his allies' consent. The agents' attack on Natasha's home and family kicks her combat instincts into overdrive, causing her to who she is and what happened to her.
According to Natasha, both she and her fiancé James were brainwashed, and their son (though artificially created) is indeed the genetic combination of the two of them. Despite the knowledge that most of her memories with her "family" are implanted, she still loves and cares for them, especially her son Steve who's genuinely hers. After fighting off the first wave of agents, Nat knows that more will be on the way, so she takes James and Steve to a safe house and her allies arrive to help her make plans to keep them safe. Unfortunately, Natasha makes the hard decision that she'll never be able to see either of them again if she wants them to ever be truly safe. She simply has too many enemies. Tragically and horrifically, this point couldn't be more true when an RPG is fired into the safe house, seemingly killing James and Steve right in front of her.
To say that these first four issues of Black Widow are insanely cruel and unfair for Natasha, someone who has already gone through immense trauma and darkness in Marvel's timeline is an understatement. While it's likely several readers are hoping that James and Steve are somehow still alive by some unforeseen miracle to be revealed in issues, it seems doubtful. The scene on the last page of the issue appears pretty definitive, sadly.
All in all, Thompson has crafted a magnificent narrative thus far, one that is constantly blowing minds and taking Natasha to new levels of complexities and dynamics as the series has gone on. Furthermore, regardless of the fates of James and Steve, one can imagine that Black Widow's vengeance is going to be extreme, and she'll be going after the ones responsible hard. Here's hoping she's successful in taking them all down.
