It shouldn’t really have taken 11 years for the Widow to get her own standalone adventure. But thanks to some zesty new character dynamics and smart twists, Marvel have finally done her right.

For fans of Black Widow and everyone else, this episode is great fun and Harbour could well ascend to spinoff greatness of his own.

Whether the narrative is in amped-up overdrive or idling, the director and her magnetic cast keep us fully invested in their cautious reconnection and their ability to survive a series of life-threatening encounters.

Marvel’s Black Widow is a strong solo superhero effort that feels both timely and also way too late.

Like Jason Bourne, Natasha and Yelena were trained killers who defected, and the movie follows a similar kind of rapid-fire approach to the espionage genre as they pick up the pieces of their broken past and squabble through awkward family dynamics. The first MCU superhero movie to return to the blockbuster arena since the pandemic put the whole endeavor in jeopardy gets the job done; it’s also, by MCU standards, downright quaint.