Black Widow: Red Guardian & Melina’s Mission In America Explained

Warning: This article contains Black Widow spoilers

Black Widow gives a look at Natasha Romanoff’s brief childhood in America under the guise of her pseudo-parents The Red Guardian and Melina Vostokoff’s undercover mission. Black Widow has already smashed pandemic box office records in its first few days, bringing Marvel fans back to the movies for the seemingly final appearance of a beloved Avenger. Taking place during the events of Captain America: Civil War, Black Widow reveals Natasha’s pre-Avengers origin while explaining her whereabouts before Avengers: Infinity War.

The opening sequence in Black Widow takes place in 1995, following Natasha in a manufactured family consisting of pseudo-father Alexei “The Red Guardian” Shostakov, former Black Widow mother Melina Vostokoff, 11-year-old Natasha, and younger sister Yelena Belova. Each family member is connected to the Red Room led by Dreykov, with Yelena, Melina, and Natasha being abandoned or stripped from their families as young children while Alexei had worked for the KGB as Russia’s version of Captain America, The Red Guardian. The group lives together in Ohio for three years as a seemingly normal American family while Melina and Alexei secretly perform an undercover mission for Dreykov.

The mission that Red Guardian and Melina are tasked with is to work within the U.S. government under SHIELD for three years until they can extract key information about the mind. To avoid suspicion, the pair must bring Black Widow trainees Natasha and Yelena as their surrogate children to enhance the idea that they are a simple American family who has recently moved to Ohio. On their final day in America, Alexei has downloaded SHIELD’s intel on how to psychologically rewire the basal ganglia, allowing one the power to control minds. The basal ganglia is the part of the brain associated with control of emotion, cognition, habit learning, conditional learning, and procedural learning – all of which Dreykov manipulates to subdue the Black Widows.

Once Alexei has retrieved the intel, he burns all but one floppy disc containing the information and gathers the family where they flee Ohio with “American Pie” scoring Black Widow‘s tension. The family rendezvous with Dreykov in Cuba, where the United States can’t touch them due to the U.S.-Cuba embargo. The family immediately disbands, with Alexei going back to work under Dreykov, Melina serving as the architect of the basal ganglia testing project, and Natasha and Yelena being forced into training as Black Widows. Natasha was already 8 years old when the family began their task in Ohio, so she was aware of the fake structure, whereas Yelena was much younger and held onto the simulation as a real family.

Natasha was able to defect from the Red Room to SHIELD before being a subject of brain rewiring – but Yelena wasn’t, which is all the more tragic since her “mother” was the mastermind behind its architecture. Although the Red Room’s stolen SHIELD information was used for terribly inhumane purposes, Melina points out that SHIELD was secretly under the control of HYDRA at the time, so who knows what atrocities HYDRA would have committed with its use. Since the KGB had already disbanded in 1991, the project was formed under Dreykov and the Red Room, not necessarily Russia, so its manipulation was more contained.

Black Widow reveals that there is thankfully an antidote to the brain control’s effects in the form of vials full of a Red Dust. That same antidote is what is used to free Yelena of her submission before meeting up with Natasha, and further utilized to save Dreykov’s training Black Widows and Taskmaster. The process of undoing the mind control is relatively quick compared to the psychological torture and brainwashing super soldiers like Bucky Barnes must gradually unlearn. In setting up the future of the MCU, Black Widow implies Natasha and Yelena may have the key to saving the remaining Black Widows around the world.