10 of Black Widow’s most memorable moments throughout the MCU

Finding her family

“I used to be alone, but then I found this family,” – Natasha Romanoff, 2019.

Avengers: Endgame officially confirms that the Avengers are Natasha’s family through her dialogue. However, forming her family bonds has been progress in the making for the last decade. She’s grown from a secluded S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to a part of the team, who would and actually did die for them.

Even amid the reeling grief after Infinity War, Nat became more and more comfortable with her unconventional family, and she embraces herself in the process. In one of her dialogue-heavy scenes with Steve in Endgame, you can see a pair of ballet pointe shoes on a chair next to her desk. It’s a brief clip, but it’s still there, and it illustrates a new sense of agency in her characterization.

Although vague, her memories from Age of Ultron indicate she has some much less than pleasant memories associated with dancing. Using it as a way to cope following the snap means she’s taking agency over her latent grief as well as her new grief following Thanos’ destruction. She’s processed a certain trigger from her former trauma and reframed it as a way to heal. That’s powerful in ways that her spy and combat training never taught her.

It’s a powerful point of character development on its own, even if the film doesn’t fully elaborate on it. We’d like to think her family’s presence helped her reclaim those parts of her trauma.

Well before finding her family in the Avengers, Nat found her family with Clint Barton and the entire Barton family. He’s always been like a brotherly figure to her, which makes her sacrifice in Endgame even more lamentable.