Great American Casino 12715 4th Ave W, Everett, WA 98204

Winter had sucked all the color out of the world.
The prairie in the glory of midsummer had been a surge of green, summer winds sending pulses through the tall grass, causing it to wave like an underwater kelp forest in a strong current. Now, however, it had relinquished its blooming majesty, its former radiance dulled to straw the color of a deerhide. The flowerheads were stripped of their colorful identities, appearing like sepia photographs of themselves; the ghosts of summer past. The sweetclover, which had extended from one horizon to the other back in June, covering the prairie in a blanket of gold, was now skeletonized, its broken-off stems rolling like tumbleweeds in the winter gales.
Trevor was over it. Another South Dakota winter, another four months until the snows would cease and the ice would melt in the creek. In March and April, the spring blizzards would bury the world and on the subsequent sunny days, the combination of blue sky and white land would be startling, like finding oneself living in the center of a bicolored flag.
But for now, a capricious midwinter thaw had left snowdrifts only in the prairie draws, on the north-facing ridges, in the shadows of the ponderosas that speckled the hills. And around the trailer, mud. In a few nights, a deep freeze would turn the sides of the tire ruts into knife edges, testing the suspension of any vehicle that took the approach too fast. Still, that was better than the loamy mud, which could imprison even a 4x4 until freezing cold or drying winds finally freed it.
The view from the front porch could be gorgeous. Back in July, when the church group from Virginia had constructed a wheelchair ramp for the trailer, the evening sun had set the prairie on fire, its light reflected by a thunderstorm hanging in the sky as if by a puppeteer’s strings. “God almighty,” the youth pastor had exclaimed. But now, grays and browns mingled in a decidedly drab palette. Over at the little bird feeder, the goldfinches were no longer yellow-and-black exclamation points, but had acquiesced to dullness, dressed for a time of year when vibrant color seemed to be outlawed by some unseen authority.
Trevor stared at the expanse of mud that spooled out from in front of the trailer and unwound into a ribbon that led over the hill toward the old sundance ground and, eventually, the paved road. He wondered if he would get out today. Always a calculation this time of year. Driving on the muddy channel that was his approach was out of the question; he would set a course across the grass, which would provide enough barrier to keep his tires from sinking in again. Two-tracks radiating out onto the prairie showed how many times he and his family had taken this course of action since the last snow.
It felt ironic that their approach took them by far the long way around – heading north to go south; harder than it needed to be, like so much of life around here. But the way south was blocked by Roanhorse Creek. This wasn’t all bad; the creek provided nice wading in the summer and water for the horses for most of the year. It also gave rise to the only trees on the property, although the cottonwoods whose leaves whispered in the summer breezes now stood dumb and impassive, and resembled skeletal wraiths at nighttime.
A horse would make it, of course. He could saddle up the buckskin, ride cross-country and be in town in twenty minutes. But that would be silly…he snorted at the ludicrousness of this thought. First of all, he had to go way beyond town today. And even if he were just going to his old job at the tribal building, was he supposed to just hitch it up outside for the day? Tie its reins to one of the smokers’ benches by the entrance? What was this, 1895? No, better not to risk TȟatéZi getting stolen or having some gang sign spraypainted on it or some shit. Besides, he needed to pull into his job interview looking halfway decent, not spattered with mud and smelling like horse sweat.
Trevor regarded his truck, sitting smack in the middle of the sloppy mess. Fuck, he thought.
Still, he didn’t really have a choice today. No job interview, no job. No job, no funds. Another calculation, but this one was straightforward. He went back into the trailer and made his way to his bedroom in the back, passing his brothers in the living room. One was sleeping on the couch and the other was crashed out in the recliner, oblivious to the flickering hearth of the muted TV. Let ‘em sleep today, Trevor thought.
In the bedroom, he stepped across piles of clothes – some clean, some dirty – and over the miscellany of his life; a pile of old DVDs, a defunct gaming console, a canister of Bugler and squares of broadcloth for the tobacco ties he was supposed to make for ceremony, a scattering of empty Mountain Dew cans, a 24-pack of ramen, a basketball.
He hunted around in his closet for the dressy clothes that he knew were there. He had worn them once, on the day of his high school graduation, three years before. And there they were; a purple button-down shirt, a solid black tie, and black chinos. Further rummaging found him a pair of brown loafers and a tan braided belt. He would look sharp for this interview – couldn’t hurt.
Trevor took a quick shower. The hot water always took forever to come and once it did, didn’t last long. He got dressed hurriedly, glad the tie that had come as a set with the shirt was a clip-on, and ran a comb through his hair. It wasn’t long enough to do much with other than backcomb it a little with some hair gel, but he figured that looked better than not. He considered putting in big stud earrings to look extra fly, but decided again it; might not be the right look for the occasion.
Now fully dressed and ready, Trevor took stock of his appearance. His summer tan was long gone and his skin was as pale as the white kids he had met during his one semester of college. The same change of season that had desaturated the prairie and garbed the birds in dull colors had undone all those days spent out in the badlands sun – working with the horses, swimming at the dam, helping keep fire at sundance. Too many French fur traders in his lineage. He recalled the book that his eighth grade teacher had assigned them – Part-time Indian or something – and thought, Yup, that’s me. Indian in the summer and wašiču in the winter, like changing plumage.
Trevor envied his brothers their melanin. He had learned that word in one of his college classes and now thought of it nearly every day. Travis was a rich brown complexion even in the dark days of midwinter. Trenton was in between the two but had jet-black Lakota hair and definitely looked “ethnic,” enough to be followed around stores in the border towns. Trevor knew it was his privilege to be exempt from such treatment, but it bugged him nonetheless. He hadn’t asked to be light-skinned. His brothers called him žiží – a reference to his tawny hair. They had gotten into scraps over this, and Trevor even bloodied Travis’ nose in one such altercation. Once one of them had even called Trevor a “half-breed” but Trevor retorted with “Fuck you, boy, you got the same blood as me. Fuckin’ dumbass.” This seemed to put the issue to rest.
Trevor’s brief stint at college had been at an out-of-state school, which now struck him as an ill-advised decision. At least South Dakotans had some experience with Natives. Even the East River kids had at least crossed paths with one at some point, and didn’t think of Indians as something from the pages of a dime novel. Trevor was the first Native in many years – maybe ever – to attend the small-town liberal arts college in a neighboring state. He thought the fact that the college was reasonably selective would mean that the students were smart enough not to ask dumb questions. He was wrong.
The queries were predictable enough, clichéd even; Are you really Indian? (Yes) Do you speak your language? (No) Did you get in because you’re Indian? (Who knows? I’m pretty smart and got good grades.) Does the college have admissions quotas for Indians? (If it did, you’d think more would go here.) What’s it like on the reservation? (I don’t know; different.) Do you prefer “Native American”? (I find the question annoying, to be honest.) Do you like Leslie Marmon Silko? (Who?) Have you seen Dances with Wolves? (Some of it.) Do you know a guy from Pine Ridge named Verdell? He used to work with my dad. (Maybe) His last name was something Horse. Running Horse? (No)
Fielding these questions was exhausting and added another layer of weariness and alienation to his college experience.
He found himself having to answer such inquiries from his roommate, classmates, professors, his R.A…Sometimes they were cloaked in well-meaning concern (I bet you get tired of all these questions, huh?) but they were always there. Most evenings, Trevor would retreat to his room and call his mom. His roommate, Skyler, a cross-country runner who was handsome in an unspectacular way and who monitored his water intake religiously, was hardly ever around. He seemed to have no trouble making friends in college and reveled in the social opportunities around him.
In his phone calls back home, Trevor found himself experiencing a homesickness that inhabited the pit of his stomach like a hunger pang. He had never been gone from home for that long. Really, his only trip away had been the summer before his senior year, to a weeklong STEM camp for Native kids that one of the state colleges had put on. But that had been with a half dozen other students from his high school. Here he was alone.
The subjects of their conversations would leave Trevor feeling a gravitational pull toward home: Trenton got into a fight at school and got suspended. Travis is drinking again. We had sweat for your auntie because they have to amputate her leg after all. Those dogs were back again. Everett hit $200 at the casino on Tuesday night but of course he put it all back in. They’re having a basketball tournament for that boy who got paralyzed in that wreck. Our hot water heater went out but uncle came and fixed it. They still haven’t found that Two Arrows girl that went missing. Travis wants to go up on the hill this spring – maybe that will get him to quit drinking.
Good news, bad news, mundane news…The latter tugged at him the most. Like many who grew up on Pine Ridge, he had a love-hate relationship with the reservation. It was the home of his people after all, and could be so beautiful (“God’s country,” as it was called by even those who had no time for the white man’s God). But the hardships, the tragedies, the death…it all wore away at your spirit, hardened you. Still, the news of day-to-day life going on in his absence; a school powwow, a bingo tournament, tribal council drama, rumors of a Dairy Queen opening. It made him miss home in an ineffable way.
The last vestige of his indecision evaporated after a particular conversation in the lounge of his dorm. He had been sitting on a beanbag chair, discussing random topics with two friends (at least, he considered them friends, in some ill-defined adolescent way). They had all left a dull party that hadn’t livened up even after a couple of drinks, but still felt heady and obligated to prolong the night a little longer. So, they were shooting the shit, in a garishly-lit common space that smelled of burnt popcorn, and Trevor was feeling rather collegiate. An off-campus party, late-night conversation; weren’t these the trappings of university life that he had seen in teen movies, if a much more prosaic version?
Kayleigh, tipsy off Jäger bombs, started the chain of events that would unravel his college experience with a simple, but pointed question: “How Indian are you, anyway?”
Colton snorted at this comment. “Kay, you can’t just ask that!” But he was clearly more amused than disapproving.
“You mean like my blood quantum or what?” Trevor asked.
“Is that what you guys call it?” said Kay, now playing the innocent party. “I just mean, like, you say you’re Indian, I mean like I know you are, like, I know you are on paper…” The alcohol was causing her to trip over her words but she plowed on. “I mean like, okay, if I were to like, run into you on the street…” Kay was now gesturing expansively, as if the meaning of what she was saying wasn’t explicit from words alone. “Like, I wouldn’t be like, ‘Damn, look at that Indian,’ right? I’d just assume you were a white guy. I mean you know what I mean? Ugh, I’m not making sense.”
She was making perfect sense. Colton looked embarrassed, and for a second, Trevor thought he might shut Kay down. But instead, his inhibition similarly worn down by a few shots of German 70-proof, he followed suit. “I think what Kay’s drunk ass is trying to say is, like, your ancestors are Indians, right, like in the history books. Like Geronimo or whatever. But do you consider yourself one of them? Or are you, like, their descendant?”
Trevor could feel the ball of rage growing within him, a sea urchin radiating spikes in his gut. Stop talking, he thought. Just stop talking.
Colton continued, heedlessly. “Okay, so like I’m Irish but I’m not like Irish Irish, like a leprechaun or some shit. Like my ancestors…”
Trevor stood up, his fists balled. He was now stone-cold sober but his anger was its own intoxicant. “It’s none of your fucking business. It’s none of your business what the fuck I am!” He was shouting; he couldn’t help it. He picked up a half-empty can of PBR and threw it at the wall, slamming the door to the lounge on his way out. The sudsy contents of the can leaked onto the ugly orange dorm carpet, as Kayleigh and Colton sat in stunned silence.
“Jesus,” said Colton finally. “Just trying to ask an honest question.”
After that, Trevor had holed up in his room for a few days, skipping classes and avoiding other students. When he told his mom he was dropping out, she hardly sounded surprised. He knew she would be glad to have him back home; the prodigal son returning. Trevor, the one who had his shit together, who had gone to a STEM camp and was almost salutatorian. He knew she thought that once he got back, he could do what she couldn’t; get Travis on a better path, bring another income to the household, fix what needed to be fixed around the trailer, shoot at the stray dogs when they came around. It would all fall to him. His failure was their blessing; they would lean on him as long as he could stand.
So here we fucking go, he now thought, patting his gel-stiffened hair and giving himself one last hazel-eyed glance in the mirror. Gotta get that bread. His brief stint at the tribal building hadn’t panned out. He was a good worker but wet weather made his road too sloppy to get out easily. Too many latenesses had translated into a pink slip. “Shit man we all got bad roads. Gotta leave earlier,” his boss had said.
So, lesson learned, he was giving himself extra time getting ready for this interview. Really, the lady had just told him to come by “around mid-morning,” so he’d probably be okay. The job was off-rez, down at the county livestock auction and sale barn in one of the closest border towns, “white towns,” as Ridgers called it. It was mostly going to be paperwork – inventory and itemizing and that kind of shit – but it was decent pay and Trevor hoped that he could transition over to working with the animals before long. On most days, he preferred their company to dumbass people.
Grabbing his bag, Trevor stuck the loafers inside with his other miscellany. He would need to wear his cowboy boots across the muddy expanse between the bottom step of the porch and the door to his Blazer so he jammed his feet into them. Outside, he walked gingerly so as not to stain his black slacks with muck. Once in the driver’s seat, he figured he would leave the boots on for the drive, since they were already smearing mud on the floor liner, and in case he got stuck and needed to get out. Trevor knew that the people who worked at the sale barn were as countrified as he was and wouldn’t judge muddy boots under most circumstances, but he also knew that being from Pine Ridge meant he had to put his best foot forward, literally in this case.
Trevor fired up the Blazer, put it in four low, and gunned it. His tires found grip and he jerked along, slimy divots of earth spattering his windows and roof like hail. His windshield wipers left a pasty smear that obscured much of his view, but he practically knew the way by feel. As soon as he could, he bumped up onto the grass, gopher holes and clumps of prairie bluestem jolting his ride, testing what was left of his suspension. When he finally hit the pavement, the smoothness was startling as it always was, like a TV being suddenly muted, like silence after a door slamming.
He cruised through town, passing the gas station, the other gas station, the commod building, the quonset hut, the old BIA headquarters…and turned south into Nebraska. He tried to ignore the persistent squeal under the hood that had gotten worse lately. The overcast sky reflected the dullness of the land – as below, so above – and Trevor alternated between zoning out and counting hawks on telephone poles. A handful of miles south of the border, the vehicle gave a jolt and Trevor felt a temporary loss of control. He hit the brakes and steered toward the shoulder, but the Blazer was suddenly steering like an army tank. Fuck, he whispered.
Once he wrestled Blazer off the road, Trevor got out and popped the hood. He already knew what he would find under the rising steam. “Fucking serpentine belt,” he hissed to the universe. Trevor was good with cars but he didn’t have the tools for this fix. Luckily, he thought, out here in the country, somebody who did would be by soon. Lots of Natives on this road, maybe even a cousin would happen by who could at least give him a ride to town. Trevor thought of calling his dad’s brother Everett on his cell, but figured he’d give it a bit. He hated the thought of owing Uncle Ev anything.
Sure enough, in a few minutes, a gunmetal gray truck passed by slowly, hit a u-turn, and pulled up behind him. Trevor felt a twinge of envy over this late-model Dodge Ram MegaCab with duallies. It had county plates on it, so the cowboy-hatted driver was a local guy, and as he got out, his Carhartt overalls and mud-caked boots identified him as a rancher.
“Trouble?” MegaCab asked, giving Trevor an easy smile.
“Serpentine belt busted,” said Trevor, unconsciously smoothing out his rez accent in favor of a more neutral affectation. Code-switching – another term he had learned at college (by the professor who asked him if he prefers “Native American”).
“No shit, huh?” MegaCab considered this information. “I got nothing for that but I could give you a ride somewhere. You call anyone? Someone coming after you?”
“No,” said Trevor. “I’m trying to get down to the sale barn for a job interview.”
MegaCab looked at Trevor as if for the first time. “Oh ok so that’s why you’re all fancied up. Well, hop in if you don’t mind leaving it here.”
Trevor considered this. He was off the rez so there was less of a chance that the Blazer would end up with busted windows or slashed tires. And he was eager to get his interview over and done with.
Before he could answer, MegaCab added “I have to stop in Whiteclay first but then I’ll take you down.”
This was only a few miles out of the way so Trevor assented and climbed into the rancher’s idling behemoth. It still retained some new-truck smell, mixed with a tinge of manure and rich earth. Really, it was almost luxurious.
MegaCab flipped a u-ey again and headed back north toward Whiteclay. Formerly notorious for copious alcohol sales to people from the dry reservation whose border it sat on, Whiteclay’s package stores had been shuttered after the state had revoked their liquor licenses following years of protests over their depredatory business model. Now, it was just a town of a couple small stores and fewer than a dozen permanent residents, its streets empty of vagrants, its ghosts banished.
“So, you from Hot Springs?”
Trevor momentarily wondered where this question had come from, and then remembered that he had 27-plates on the Blazer – Fall River County, a relic of when he bought the car from a white lady over there. He had kept the off-county registration because the plates were far less likely to get you pulled over off-rez than the infamous 65s of Oglala Lakota County.
MegaCab continued without waiting for an answer. “I used to go up to Hot Springs a lot when my dad was in the V.A. hospital up there. Nice town.”
“Yup, it’s pretty nice,” said Trevor, wondering if he would have to sustain this small talk the whole way.
Luckily, MegaCab took it from there, reminiscing about his high school football team dealing Hot Springs a particularly lopsided loss, and then they were at Whiteclay. Trevor played around on his phone while his driver of the moment went into the little grocery store. He looked up his old roommate Skyler on Facebook (why, he didn’t know; certainly not to friend him) and then Googled “Pine Ridge South Dakota Dairy Queen” just to see if there was any truth to that rumor.
MegaCab returned with some mail – Trevor had forgotten that there was a little post office in there – and they turned south toward Rushville.
Two miles and five hawks-on-telephone-poles into their trip, MegaCab got chatty again:
“I still can’t believe that the state revoked the liquor licenses. They had no legal right to do that of course, but just like everyone else these days, they bowed to the pressure from liberal special interest groups. Those store owners – my brother was one of them – followed the damn law to a T but still got their rights taken away. They’re the real victims in all of this.”
Trevor, whose father was found dead in Whiteclay when Trevor was ten years old, didn’t answer.
“You know it’s just going to push the problem down the road. These Indians are gonna get their liquor one way or another. You guys must see that all the time up in Hot Springs.”
These Indians. You guys. Trevor suddenly recognized MegaCab’s presumption, and wondered when if he should correct it.
“If they wanted to buy millions of cans of beer in Whiteclay every year and drink themselves to death, shit, I say let ‘em. It’s a free country, right? Those AIM types are always going on about Native rights and shit, y’know? Well shit, you have the right to drink and die if you want. Not saying that I want that for those people or anything, but the nanny state can’t be protecting everyone from problems of their own making.”
Trevor, whose brother had first gotten jailed for drunk and disorderly at age 14, two years after their father died, said nothing.
MegaCab continued to rhapsodize about “the Indians” and their problems, adopting the tone of an expert, one who knew all about them. Trevor felt the blood rise to his face. Some coloration at least, he thought darkly. In the pit of his stomach, the sea urchin had returned to stab at his insides. What must it be like, he wondered, to live a life in which people aren’t constantly telling you who you are, naming your characteristics like symptoms, trying to trap you like a spirit in a photograph?
The Blazer came in sight on the shoulder ahead. “Can you let me out at my ride?” Trevor asked, his voice hardly recognizable to his own ear, like hearing himself talk underwater.
“Sure, you need to grab something out of it?” said MegaCab, reluctantly pausing his diatribe.
“No it’s okay,” replied Trevor, “I’m gonna call someone to come help me fix this after all.” He fiddled with his phone as if to underscore this intention.
“Well, if you’re sure,” said MegaCab. “And hey,” he added as Trevor stepped down onto the running board. “You be careful around here. One of these rezzers might see you here all by yourself and try to mess you or your car up. And watch out for drunk drivers. You just never know with these Indians.” MegaCab gave a serious nod to accentuate this show of concern. Then he wished Trevor luck and drove off.
Trevor watched the truck recede into the distance until it was merely a gray speck between the monochrome earth and the steely sky. He sat down in the cold front seat of the Blazer and looked into the rearview mirror. Hazel eyes stared back at him under a pale forehead. Fuck it, he thought; people are dumbasses. Let ‘em believe what they want; that he was from Hot Springs, that could be was related to that Apache, Geronimo, that he was only Indian on paper. Trevor saw what they didn’t; the hidden depths beneath the surface, and in their faces, in the spaces between their words, their ignorance displayed like a tattoo.
In another minute or two, he would call Uncle Ev for a ride. In another hour or two, he would be offered a job at the sale barn that would bring another income into his household (and buy him a new serpentine belt). In another day or two, he would finally finish the tobacco ties for ceremony, at which he would pray for Travis’ sobriety and his auntie’s diabetes. In another month or two, the lengthening of the days would be unmistakable.
Spring would come as it always had, first heralded by a single meadowlark piercing the predawn silence with his song. This would be followed by a green sprig on the prairie, pushing up, perhaps, through snow. Then a cluster of pasqueflowers appearing suddenly on a hillside, a skein of geese overhead, sheet lightning on the horizon. Small miracles, one after another. Finally, color would surge back into the world like paint scintillating on a canvas, causing goldfinches to glow like stars and evening thunderheads to stand like towering fires.
The brilliant Dakota sunlight would stoke the melanin in Trevor’s skin, and nobody would mistake who he was. He would go up on the hill for two days and nights with Travis that spring, and Trenton would keep fire for them. He would pray for the coming year, for the survival of his people, for enough blessings to outweigh the hardships. And there, among a sea of undulating green, facing the crimson blaze of sunrise, he would again know himself and find the strength to carry on, in the face of all the peculiar indignities of this world.

This season deserves a special award for inspiring flat-line boredom, with each storyline offering at least one awful person dripping poison over anyone kind or thoughtful.
Natalie: Mike wants for me to be the bad one. What is this farce?
Mike: I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the I DON’T LOVE YOU.
When we last saw Mike, Natalie was spring cleaning his self-esteem the Marie Kondo way, except she torched everything that sparked joy to make room for more misery. Now he’s outside wondering why science hasn’t granted him the ability to beam onto an airplane to spare him the insult of standing in a Ukraine alleyway, waiting for his maybe-fiancée to flounce down the stairs and demand an apology for…something. Natalie, Our Lady of 1,000 Bluffs, somehow finds the strength and courage to amble down the stairs and sit in the backseat of an Uber for a melancholy airport adventure.
Natalie: Mike, everything is good. You must calm down and stop being so dramatic. This is gaslight like in movies. Now I must cure you of hysteria with vibrators and Valium.
Mike: I mean, do we have to keep filming? What if I jump out while the car is moving? Can that be your final scene?
Natalie thinks that in a perfect world Mike would apologize just for sport and then sweep her off her feet, which should be easy since they’re never on the ground. After several awkward airport moments Mike tells Natalie that he’ll call her later, but he needs time for detox and an exorcism. Natalie remains confused that Mike thought she loved him, based on the 30,000 times she said “I love you,” when he should have been able to read her rapidly changing narrative and anticipate ongoing rewrites. She approaches Mike to pretend she doesn’t know what’s going on, but Mike isn’t falling for that shit. He asks for a goodbye hug, she says no, and Mike bounces. Natalie sulks off to find her people in the Land of Bad Decisions, where Tania is waiting for her upon a throne of skulls.
Back home and no longer engaged, Mike is making pancakes for himself and Uncle Beau. Beau comes rushing in the door to ask Mike how the trip was, and to announce that he lost $25 at the casino last night and needs to borrow from the bank of Mike. So um…Mike’s entire life is apparently like this. Can Mike and Syngin get a beer together please?
Blake: I have friends.
Jasmin: I don’t care if Blake’s friends like me. I also don’t care if Blake likes me.
Blake is getting ready for his friend Everett’s birthday party, while Jasmin warms up her excuses for dodging it. Jasmin knows this party was the plan from the start, but decides against being a good introvert who tells him to go without her and to just enjoy himself. Instead, she attempts to smash Blake’s social butterfly in favor of a sober conversation about yoga and tea. She asks Blake if they can skip the pre-party dinner and just eat together, which Blake agrees to with the caveat that he will continue to express his dismay. Blake orders a drink, and Jasmin reminds him that you can’t talk to Jesus when you’re drunk.
Jasmin latches on to Blake drinking as her excuse for avoiding phase 2 of the evening’s pseudo-social interaction. She says she’s going to call her sister instead and pretend to be mad at him while being secretly relieved to enjoy blissful time away from his flock. What remains of Blake’s sense of humor about this situation gets lost trying to escape his hair. Jasmin tells the cameras that it’s selfish to ask her to go to a party, and totally forgets the part where it’s selfish to derail his plans because that plan is something she doesn’t want to do. Blake says that he’s tired of explaining her behavior to his friends. Neither one of these two is capable of having an adult argument, and are likely on a relationship subreddit as I type, posting a totally balanced report of their latest immature interaction.
Jasmin arrives at Janette’s clinical apartment, and declares that Blake refuses to do anything that interests her, because “everything is always about Blake.” She says that Finnish folks are calmer, while Janette tells her that she needs to keep trying to adapt, and by “keep trying” she means try at all.
Tania: Okay guys, I get it, I’m like, the villain here. Did anyone else just feel a weird rush of glee? That must be Mercury in douchebag and Mars going direct into asshole.
Totally grounded and focused financial wizard Fucking Tania has put her trusty pink shirt in time-out, for a responsible and goal-oriented phone call to an astrologer with a predictable funny name. But not before Syngin fetches precise room temperature water for her to swallow with her lizard tongue to maintain the skin suit that presents some approximation of humanity.
Syngin calls his mother to gather the data necessary for someone to cold-read Tania over Skype, and his mom clarifies that he was born at “twenty to three.” Resident expert Tania mansplains that this means 2:40, and this is apparently how she will feel superior today.
“We are energy beings,” Tania tanias. “And I was born at a certain time for a certain reason, and that reason is to vampire every shred of joy from Syngin’s twinkling soul.”
“Marie Kondo,” Natalia pipes in. “Clean out all of the joy.”
Astrologist Daizy October picked that name on purpose, and tells Tania something about “blueprints of the soul” which makes the first shelf of the New Age section of the bookstore start vibrating. She declares that Sagittarius is the archetype of travel, which is what one would say to someone who can afford Costa Rica but not a shed of one’s own.
Daizy: Now Mars in Scorpio, and Tania is in existence, which means there’s going to be some fighting, and sex is important. Syngin, blink if you need help.
Syngin: Oh yes.
Fucking Tania: Is that blood in the water? No wonder I’m hungry.
Syngin: By “oh yes” I meant yes, I need help.
Ms. October says that their souls bring them together, which would make sense if Tania had one, and asks if they’re soulmates. Syngin says their connection is so vivid he feels like he’s met her before, and then he died to escape her. Tania looks drunk on hurting Syngin, and pushes it further by insisting her first love was her soulmate, and he still is, even though she hasn’t been with that dude for like 8 years or so, and the restraining order keeps getting renewed over and over again. Syngin points out that they met in a star-crossed way, foolishly failing to note that hurting him is Tania’s entire objective.
“I feel like I don’t know what to say, because anything I say will hurt you, which is why I can’t stop laughing. I’m fine,” Tania reports. Then Syngin tells the cameras he needs a break to restore his essence, and Tania hovers in the doorway, eagerly anticipating the chance to harvest from him all over again.
So to recap: Tania, who trusts in the universe, does not trust that the universe gifted her Syngin, but instead believes that eventually she’ll be regifted the tattered remains of her original bottom, who has likely moved on to other astral alignments, and a thousand mile away zip code. Yep, this is pretty on brand for Tania.
Angela: I’m not the bad guy, I’m a tax payer!
Michael: I have a shopping list.
Angela’s chest is newly covered in an ancient pirate treasure map, guiding strangers to the booty in her bra. Her plan is to storm the American embassy and assert her tax payer status as a means of pushing this K-1 process forward. After ambling through the gates and harassing multiple members of security, she emerges and bellows to Michael. She says they wouldn’t let her into the embassy since she doesn’t have an appointment, and strangely, they don’t consider a white lady demanding a K-1 an emergency. Maybe she needed to explain that she’s working with the alternative reality where she can carry a child, and they wouldn’t give her Botox in her uterus.
The next day they go to Michael’s uncle’s house for dinner, but first they have to stop and pick up a microwave for Michael’s mother. Angela is worried that the material expectations increase with every dinner, and says that the gifts can’t keep growing in value.
“Please Angela. We need to present a love and respect microwave,” Michael persuades.
The man working at the store states a price far more than the microwave is worth, and then Michael says he should price it less because they’re going to get something else, too. This is his way of surprising Angela with a required gift for his uncle. She tells the shopkeeper that she’s got 15,000 stored under her best titty, and he should take it and call it good now that she’s his African sister. Okay then. The guy takes it, and she walks away with a microwave and kettle.
Angela is happy to visit his family, especially Michael’s mother, whom she loves so much. As the most junior, or newest, wife, Angela is expected to help cook and serve as a sign of humility. She awkwardly works on plantains while Michael insists he’s not expecting much in terms of domesticity once they are stateside, but he will expect her to cook, in addition to being the only breadwinner and caretaker for a bushel basket of people. Even the producer laughs, because the only thing Angela will be cooking in Georgia is Michael if he maintains that ridiculous idea.
Michael’s family starts asking about their wedding plans, and Angela explains that the K-1 is her family’s only opportunity to see her get hitched. They are eager for Michael to have a child with Angela’s ashy uterus, and his whole family starts weighing in on the matter, which nudges Angela right to the edge. She somehow keeps her mouth shut and remains respectful, even after Uncle says that if it doesn’t work Michael should move on to the next baby basket, which is a regional woman unlikely to arrive with household appliances. Are they trying to get on Maury? If you listen closely you can hear Angela’s internal kettle whistling away, and her microwave chiming ding-ding-ding.
Emily: You don’t have to be a Debbie Downer!
Betsy: I will be one ASAP!
Emily has freed Sasha from the clutches of Indiana in favor of her fake hometown Portland, where she takes him to Washington Park’s Rose Garden to show him how shitty west coast cities are, amirite Trump? Emily says that it’s going to be expensive to go from two-for-one Indiana to Portland’s most expensive suburb, confirming my suspicion that she’s from Lake Oswego, where Real Housewives ferment until their first divorce and rehab stint. This is good news for Sasha, who is very likely to find a wealth of personal training clients and his fourth wife there. Emily says they should get married ASAP, and Sasha agrees without knowing what ASAP means.
“After two weddings, third not so much,” Sasha shrugs. “Fourth will be court house. Fifth, maybe commitment ceremony.”
Emily heads back to scenic South Bend to save hundreds of dollars on a wedding dress. She says she’s leaning towards the Oregon coast as a wedding location, which makes sense if you don’t know that every venue from Brookings to Astoria is booked ages in advance, but she wouldn’t be the first or last person to turn that AirBnB into Plan A and Plan B. Emily’s sister is there to remind her that every idea she has about her impending nuptials is wrong, which is not fair to Emily, who knows every lace dress is better with piercing wind and sand. The salesperson hides in the dressing room from their endless passive-aggressive sparring, before coming out to place a veil and headpiece on Emily and make Betsy cry.
Robert: I’m terrible. Why are you always complaining?
Anny: I would like to go out with Robin or Mike now please.
Hey guys, you know how 90DF always has one trashy, delusional family that believes the fiancé is there to steal their no-money? Well, this round it’s fucking Robert, father of five who appears to be largely free from the burdens of child support...or who perhaps opts for tax-free employment for those very reasons. He’s dragging Anny and the other person who is nice to her (his sister Robin) to a restaurant to meet up with his equally-awful brother Kenny. Robin says that Bryson loves Anny and that she really likes her too, while Kenny gets busy disrespecting and humiliating her before she can work a “hello” out of her mouth.
Kenny wants to know how she’ll be in the future, and Anny suspects he doesn’t know what year it is, so she reminds him that they live in the present, and what matters is how they treat each other now. In response, Kenny says he’s not sure if he’s going to their wedding at all, carrying on the 9DF tradition of families that fail to notice it isn’t all about them.
Now fully defensive and uneasy, Anny asks if Kenny is cheap too, and Robin assures Anny that she wouldn’t be a fan of a thrift store shopping spree, either. This gets in the way of Robert and Kenny’s plan to disrespect women in public places, so Kenny asks if she always complains a lot. Anny corrects him that her issue is that Robert lies, and told her he had three kids instead of five, in addition to making endless empty promises of clothing, an apartment, and any expression of affection whatsoever. Kenny says that he has seven kids, which isn’t normally something you play as clap-back, but okay Kenny. Yes, seven is greater than five.
Anny has had it with them and their apparent plan to overpopulate the planet, and leaves and says that she feels alone. “That’s not the way you talk when you love somebody,” she says, speaking truth.
“Well, my fiancé only loves me on Thursdays. Do you want to get a beer with me and Syngin?” Mike is there for her.
Juliana: In this story, my family appears to be the villains, and this makes me sad.
Michael: I’m rich but my tux doesn’t fit.
On the day of the wedding, Max and CeCe are in conference about the gravity of the forthcoming nuptials, in between mugs of stiff black coffee and plates of almond biscotti.
CeCe: I’m feeling moderately uneasy, due to rigid societal expectations of appropriate age disparity. Surely if this were the era of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” this wouldn’t even muddy my mind, but given the unfortunate modern conviction that a second spouse serves as an accessory and not a person, we have some educating to do.
Max: This seems a prudent way to address the offensive tongue of your friend Dakota, who has lived a sheltered life free from parental relationship development and sexual exploration. For now, I’ll simply relish the opportunity to wax poetic on their enduring love once mother has concluded her oratory.
CeCe: I have some concerns about you being assigned this important role, while I am relegated to the background. Is this sibling rivalry? Not very becoming of me, I’m sure.
Max: I validate your feelings of envy, but as the elder sibling I am allotted a generous portion of gloating which will carry all the way into the late stages of my adulthood.
CeCe: Is that when you argue with your wife about 401K distribution while I go to Burning Man in a modified school bus?
Max: Do you bite your thumb at me?
CeCe: I do bite my thumb at you, sir!
Meanwhile, Juliana’s friend Pao is there (no, not that Pao, who is only friends with Juan) along with her friend Cousy, who Juliana describes as like a second mom. Cousy lives in Milan, where Juliana met her during a modeling gig, and she sprung for the ticket to ease Juliana’s loneliness on her special day. In Michael’s wedding prep, we learn that he bought two tuxedos, and decides to wear the one that fits. Juliana wishes her mother could see her in her wedding dress, or was capable of acknowledging her existence when she’s not buying a car for her sister.
A gorgeous clear tent is set up to welcome wedding guests, all but two of which are friends or family of Michael. CeCe is on deck to tell Juliana she looks so pretty, while Max gives Michael a pep talk about toxic masculinity and exploring romantic relationships with an open heart. Cousy then hands her phone to Juliana to share a video she made of messages from Juliana’s friends who want to wish her well. Juliana keeps waiting for a relative to appear in this video, but it doesn’t happen, because apparently Juliana’s family has plenty of narcissists. Or maybe they’re hiding in the wings until the next episode? Either way, the family doesn’t so much as text her, and in the face of this intentional cruelty Juliana starts crying and struggles to stop, thawing the thickest layer of our cold black hearts.
Next time, Jasmin says she doesn’t want to work or smile or breathe, Sasha promises to love his third wife until he doesn’t, Juliana braces to be married by her future husband’s ex-wife, while Syngin finds a friend to mouth “help me” to when Tania is sleeping safely in her coffin.
Thank you Patreon supporters! Follow the link in my bio to bathe in my toxic pool!

I have been living in the Seattle area since 1979. Having said that, your first rule of thumb when living in Seattle is to lie about how long you have lived here.
There you are - you're established. Now you need some obscure lingo to drive the point home that you are a native. Here's some buzz words and names: Duwamish, The Wheedle on the Needle, Wayne Cody, Downtown Freddie Brown, etc. You can find a plethora of lost Seattle names, terms, etc. at any Lynnwood Garage Sale.
Terms to avoid: Dick's, Beth's, Olympia or Rainier beer, and any espresso company. These are dead give aways that you are trying too hard. Stick with the old lumber - like Jafco, Payless, and Wigwam.
Example: I moved here in 1982. I can remember seeing Wayne Cody in Payless buying adult diapers and a case of beer.
Once you craft a good story you can avoid the abuse of "native" Seattlites. There's like five.
Moving right along, you'll want to familiarize yourself with the Puget Sound area. Looks like it's Olympia to Everettish and Bremertonish to Redmondish. That's a big area. We don't really have the time to go town to town, but we'll hit the bigger areas.
Olympia: this is a great place to stop and get breakfast on your way home from Ocean Shores or Oregon. This is the only reason to go to Olympia. Oh, and a liberal arts college. Those are the two things Olympia is good for. Oh, and being in a girl band. Apparently there's some governmental apparatus down there, but I didn't finish the brochure in the Denny's.
Between Olympia and Tacoma: This is the area where there is nothing. Back in the 1800s, people built Olympia and then said "the hell with building any more liberal arts colleges" and moved North skipping most of the swamps and the bogs on the way until they got bored and built one of the biggest military bases in the country. So, you can just shut your eyes from Olympia to Tacoma. You won't miss anything.
Tacoma: BUZZ WORD ALERT: Tacoma aroma. This will get you mad street cred as well. A hub of (another buzz word) PULP AND PAPER, Tacoma boasts a smell somewhere between that patch of 405 near Renton and that weird hops and coffee smell near the old Rainier building. They also have a glass museum that one guy opened....has a patch, smells like Tacoma, beats kittens....that one guy.
Fife: Imagine Blade Runner with no technology - just dilapidated warehouses and smoke. Add meth users and casinos.
Federal Way: Home of the Green River Killer. Federal Way boasts a mall, the ruins of Weyerhaeuser, and a ton of small lakes. BUZZ WORD: PJ Pockets: a pool hall you could really get shot in.
Auburn: Auburn is Seattle's answer to Mama's Family. Let's say you love the rural south, but pine for Native American culture: look no further than Auburn. INSIDER TIP: Cheap entertainment can be had by going to the burn pit at the firework stand on the reservation. It's like a new installment of Jackass.
Kent: Kent has been the whipping boy for South Seattle for many years. Sure there's more AA meetings than people and sure even the Mormons in Kent are on meth, but make no mistake...I forgot what I was going to say. BUZZWORD: Caveman BBQ.
Renton: Imagine a Vape store. Now imagine people living in that Vape store. Then put a small shopping center in there and a pro sports team's training facility. Now imagine everyone is shoplifting. That's Renton.
Sea Tac: The only reason to go to Sea Tac is 13 Coins. The food has gone down hill a bit, but the ambiance is still there. Oh, wait. The airport is in Sea Tac. TIP: They have rejuvenation rooms in the C terminal to get the smell of Sea Tac off of you before you leave. Also, Sea Tac boasts 20 hand job parlors for every man in Auburn.
Algona: Only exists on maps. Right under the dragon and the legend.
Pacific: The closest body of water to "Pacific" is the 32 ounce coke you can buy at the Arco.
Sumner: My buddy's dad had a Chinese restaurant out here. That's all I know about Sumner.
Des Moines: Close your eyes, hold your nose and run as fast as you can to Redondo.
Covington: Once you go Covington you never go back: Covington boasts the epicenter of casual dining (Red Robin, etc.) and complications from diabetes and heart disease will leave you stationary.
Maple Valley: This is a swell place to raise a family...with the other 23 million people raising families in this area. Honestly, this town would make a chicken farm blush. I had a friend who lived here and his porch was his neighbor's bedroom.
Kennydale: You know that place where you can stand in four or five states at the same time? Well, you can stand in 20 tax brackets in Kennydale.
Factoria: Goldberg's is good. There's a DMV. You can also see hookers in their natural environment at Nordstrom Rack.
Issaquah: Issaquah is Seattle's playground. You get the same pretentiousness coupled with an REI, a trail network, a lake, and GASTROPUBS! GASTROPUBS! GASTROPUBS! TRIVIA: Ted Bundy killed a bunch of people here.
Newcastle: For one reason or another I know that New Castle has the largest population of South Africans. Hey, remember that Lethal Weapon with the bad guy South Africans? Um...oh, I know! One of the best views is at Newcastle golf course. You can see all the way to Seattle. First best? Top of Issaquah Highlands. I should have mentioned that in the Issaquah part. Anyway, that was an awesome Lethal Weapon.
Redmond: Home of Microsoft and three months of The Steve Miller Band playing at Marymoor. There's also a Wholefoods.
Woodinville: One big D.U.I.
Bellevue: There's a mall.
Mercer Island: Rich people and (BUZZWORD) ROANOKE INN. I think Steve Jobs lived here. Oh, wait. No, it's Paul Allen. Or is it?
Seattle: There's a space needle.
Kirkland: Um...
Everett: Exactly like Fife if everyone in Fife thought it was 1982 and had never left the city to find out otherwise.
Bothel: also goes by the name Burien.
Those are some of Puget Sound's hot spots. But how can you live in this area?
First! Have money. The average studio apartment in Seattle runs one coca a month. That's the net worth of one cocaine plantation. As you move South and North the price goes down, but East and West you'll be dealing with much the same market.
Bring a tent! It's no secret that you can live for free in Seattle with the use of a tent. Just pitch your tent wherever and BUILD BUILD BUILD! That's one thing Amazon and the homeless have in common!
Know the language: I've supplied you with a few buzz words to get you by, but only you can sell it. I recommend watching Alice in Chains or Nirvana Unplugged and edit out the music. That nasal drip voice speaks volumes when you use it to order tea or heroin at your favorite coffee shop.
The Locks. I don't remember what The Locks are, I don't know what they do, and I don't want to know. However, once you tell out of towners to visit them and hear about how boring they are, you are officially a Seattlite.
The Space Needle: 20 dollars for THIS?
Five Point: Trendy? Probably. Worth it? Most definitely.
The Monorail: How long does it take to get from the Space Needle to WE'RE HERE Westlake on the monorail?
EMP: Oompa Loompa Ooompala Dee see Paul Allen's garage for a nominal fee!
The Flight Museum: This is the best museum ever. I can't tell you how amazing this...I've never been there.
Eddie Vedder: Lives in West Seattle. He's out playing drums in front of Duke's on Tuesdays.
Kurt Cobain: Check out his old house and exchange totally embarrassed looks with other 40 year olds that still live with their parents.
Jimmy Hendrix: You have to go to Renton. See RENTON.
Politics: if you can hold it in your hand it can be composted.
Well, that's a rough guide for the novice. Thanks and Keep Clam!
P.S. You can buy pot!

Originally posted in fixingmovies a year ago. Updated with a few changes. The basic gist is the same, but multiple plot details were added, insisted by u/Evilux.
Many people want Black Widow film to be a superhero version of James Bond. David Hayter's 2004 script was written that way, which I heard was uninspired, and the film Marvel is currently working on seems like it is going to be exactly. However, as the novelty of spy adventure films has died down with the recent saturation with Kingsman, Mission: Impossible, Atomic Blonde, Jack Ryan, Marvel needs to do something different from the genre norm and their previous MCU films. Doing another spy action blockbuster like James Bond is not interesting as it would be in the early 2010s.
Since MCU at this point has built up considerably expansive lore, doing a smaller scale in-depth character-piece would make Black Widow standout from other superheroes. I propose a noir thriller movie akin to Collateral centered around Black Widow's past hinted in Age of Ultron. A detective story about Black Widow finding clues, getting chased, and following traces to confront her past with some shades of revenge theme with plenty of actions to retain marketability of the franchise. This could be rated-R due to realistic violence, but it could pass off as PG-13 considering Casino Royale was PG-13.
This hypothetical story was inspired by The Man From Nowhere (2010), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), Lady Vengeance (2006), Skyfall (2011), The Villainess (2017), John Wick series (2014, 2017), No Tears For The Dead (2014).
The film starts with the familiar Marvel logo sequence. After the logo, we see the Zemo's arrest from Civil War where Everett Ross mocks Zemo restrained in the cell. Ross asks Zemo how it felt to see his plan fail so spectacularly after spending so much time and effort. Zemo says "Did it?"
Then the movie shows footages from Captain America: Civil War* such as the terrorist attack in Vienna, The Avengers fighting each other in the airport, The Raft Prison, Iron Man fighting Cap, and the text appears alongside summarizing the plot of Civil War and explaining the aftermath in the similar style as the opening scene of War For The Planet Of The Apes.
The Sokovia Accords are a registration devised by the collective governments of the world to regulate enhanced individuals. If not complied, they were declared illegal and forced to retire. This led to the Civil War among the Avengers.
After the Civil War, the Avengers were divided and disbanded. The anti-Accords heroes accepted retirement, but Captain America and his partners refused.
Captain America, Falcon, and Black Widow are still fighting off the last remnants of HYDRA―the massive terrorist organization founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom.
This opening text helps the audience to understand that the story is set right after Captain America: Civil War but before Avengers: Infinity War since Black Widow's death in Endgame might confuse the casual viewers about the chronology.
The film opens with the Christmas festival held at night in one of the European countries which can be the UK or France. We see bearded Captain America disguised with casual clothing, following a target, a female Hydra agent wearing a hood to hide her face, walking among the crowd. Reveal: The target clearly knows she's being chased and notify to other agents through a small radio. On the rooftop of the building, the sniper, watching these two above, receives the notification from the Hydra agent and readies his rifle to aim at Cap. Right before the sniper is about to take a shot, someone ambushes him. The HYDRA sniper and the ambusher tussle on the roof where nobody can see them fight, which plays like the fight in Skyfall. The ambusher easily beats him down and kills him with a neck snap. This happens in the one long take in the style of the openings of Touch of Evil and Spectre.
The target realizes her friend got taken down. The target goes through the tight alleyway, far away from the festival. Her walking becomes running, and the following becomes a chase, but the target understands the geography better. She utilizes parkour to escape. She loses Cap and enters into a secret manhole in the alleyway. In the underground network where other HYDRA agents are hiding, the target smashes the alarm button which alerts the entire place and runs. The same ambusher killed the sniper breaks through the manhole and faces the HYDRA agents who just heard the alert. We now recognize the ambusher to be Black Widow, now dyed her long hair in blond.
She uses a silenced pistol, still loud, killing anyone stopping her way, and proceeds to clear out the whole claustrophobic HYDRA underground to chase the target. Like how The Winter Soldier portrayed Captain's raw strength as a brawler, this sequence shows Black Widow's agility and speed as a superspy. After taking out multiple HYDRAs and rushing towards where the target has gone, Black Widow is ambushed by the target still wearing a hood she has been chasing. The target is a female assassin similar to Black Widow. During the intense close-quarter fight, her hood is taken off, revealing her face. This disturbs Black Widow like the moment when Steve recognized the identity of the Winter Soldier. The brief flashback to Black Widow's the Red Room days, immediate rough transition. The background is the Red Room Academy with the nice interior, and both Natasha and the target are back to de-aged teenagers. Black Widow says "Yelena?"
The dreamlike vision is broken by so-called Yelena's knife-attack who took advantage of Black Widow's pause. She lunges her knife at Natasha's chest, nearly stabbing her. At that moment, Cap arrives and joins the fight. Since Cap has no shield at this point, he uses anything he can grab as a shield like a steel door and a chair. The target backs down and escapes. Cap and Widow try to chase her, but more HYDRAs swarm their way. Black Widow can do nothing but watch her escape.
For people who are not familiar with the source material, she is Yelena Belova), the character debuted in 1999. In the comics, her character was meant to become the new Black Widow, as Black Widow was no longer loyal to Russia and later became the second Black Widow. While I am not using the exact comic book canon, her counterpart in this story shares some similarities regarding the Red Room plot. I repurposed her as the secondary villain in the story. Picture her played by someone like Emily Blunt.
After the fight, the James Bondesque title credit sequence. They can embrace full campiness and go for a theme about spiders.
The title screen ends then we see a flashback. When Nat was about 10-year-old. She is hiding under the bed. From her POV, we see her parents getting murdered like the O-Ren Ishii's origin story from Kill Bill. Although we do not know Nat's parents, we can guess they were powerful figures, maybe politicians. We see the two legs. We do not see the murderers' face, but we hear the unforgettable whistle, singing a certain tune. The murderer leaves and the other man enters the room, discovering Nat under the bed.
Black Widow is clearly devastated by what she has seen, meaning HYDRA is connected to Leviathan, the secret Soviet agency that planned the Red Room, the military project young Natasha was forced to be a part of it.
Black Widow decided to go to Russia alone. Steve and Sam insist to go with her, but Natasha rejects the help as she sees this as a personal problem she must deal with herself as a survivor of the Red Room.
Natasha goes to her homeland Russia during a heavy snowstorm and searches for the original Red Room facility. She finds a clue to locate the Red Room Academy, but she is chased by the Russian police, who is obviously trying to arrest her for the illegal activities under the UN's Sokovia Accords. Do a crazy chase scene like The Villainess' motorcycle action scene.
She escapes the police and eventually arrives at the devastated Red Room Academy built in the Soviet era. Walking inside, she reminisces about her training. Here, you can go for Oldboy style seamless Evergreen flashback sequence, recreating the protagonist's tracks in his mind. As she goes through each room of the facility, her traumatic memories consume her mind. Right after the murders of her parents, Nat is conscripted as a 'Little Widow' (the element carried from David Hayter's script) for the Red Room. In the first day, she tried to escape but failed, which the entire escape turns out to be a part of the test, oversaw by Madame B, the woman played by de-aged Julie Delpy briefly shown in the AOU flashbacks, who trained Black Widows. Several training footages where she slowly grew to be the assassin. Nat and the other colleague were tested to gun assembly test, where the only one can survive. Those who failed tests being used as a guinea pig for the trainees to kill. At last, she was forced to go through the sterilization process, again, Madame B watching in front of her.
From there, she found another clue indicating the Red Room project did not end. There is a new Red Room project.
Before she leaves, she finds the Hydra assault team has surrounded the building. This sequence is comprised of two styles: At first, we see Black Widow's skills as a killer. Like the Predator, she plays a cat and mouse game and stealthy kills them one by one. In the latter half, she gets detected and a John Wick style fight scene ensues. She ends up eliminating the whole Hydra team but is injured. When she tries to leave the place, Yelena ambushes Black Widow and knocks her out. Black Widow lies on the snow and loses consciousness.
We see a brief scene where Captain and Falcon trying to locate Nat.
Black Widow wakes up and notices she is tied to the chair or something. She is somewhere deep in the HYDRA hideout. Here, Madame B reveals herself. She is now old, visibly aged. Here, we learn Hydra took over Leviathan after the fall of the Soviet Union and revived the Red Room for the new generation to produce the Hydra agents.
Natasha blames B for ruining her life, but Madame B says she made Natasha and even gave her the name of Black Widow. Her brutal training is the only reason how Black Widow survived all this time. Even after Black Widow was recruited to SHIELD, Madame B was still obsessed with Black Widow and tried to replicate her all these time but failed. For decades Black Widow was her finest work. Madame B talks about how Natasha is the perfect weapon and can never truly belong. She is no Russian nor American. She has no identity other than a killing machine. She was manufactured for that purpose. That was why Nat never truly picked a side in Berlin during the Civil War. Madame B thoroughly breaks down the fundamentals of her character as Black Widow. Natasha pretends she is not listening, but in deep in her heart, she agrees with Madame B. Madame B comments no one would come for her because, in the end, Black Widow was made to be alone.
Considering the current situation of HYDRA, Madame B says the Red Room is no longer viable. Madame B tells Yelena to retire Little Widows. Yelena complies. Natasha screams and tries to break out, but it won't budge.
When Natasha abandoned all hope, just waiting for her to die, Captain and Falcon show up. A not so subtle rebuttal to Madame B's comment about Natasha's belonging.
They carry her to Captain's hideout. Next morning Natasha regains her consciousness, but still unable to move all right. She asks how did they pass the border. Steve jokes no one noticed him because of his beard and no one knows or cares about Sam.
Natasha, furious, chooses to kill the Red Room by herself once and for all so no one suffers the same fate she has gone through. There should not be another Black Widow. Steve and Sam calm her as she is not even recovered from the injury. They tell her they will take care of it, advising her to take a rest until she is fully rehabilitated.
Later that night, Nat is awakened by the nightmare of suffering children. She approaches the mirror while everyone is sleeping. She starts to cut her long hair with the razor blade, similar to the haircutting scene from The Man From Nowhere and Max Payne 3. Natasha's hair is now short, explaining why her hair in Infinity War was shorter than her hair in Civil War. She leaves the hideout silently, making sure to not to wake Steve and Sam.
She finally arrives at the current Red Room facility. She encounters a messy graveyard full of 'retired' Little Widows. They were only teenagers. This fuels her lust for anger and revenge.
Natasha storms the facility. Do something like the finale for Cowboy Bebop. A gigantic one-man-army action set-piece, maybe memorable song accompanying the fight. We see the gunfight, then we see the brutally long up-close personal melee fight against the guards similar to the fight scenes from Oldboy, The Man From Nowhere and Daredevil. We witness Black Widow getting beaten constantly and the rabid dog sense of exhaustion with no way out, but her rage is so huge she fights at all costs to achieve her revenge. She manages to barely beat down all of them.
After killing all guards, she faces Yelena, stopping her way. Nat asks her why she has to kill the Little Widows. She answers nothing. One-to-one melee fight ensues like the last knife fight in The Man From Nowhere. Nat manages to stab a knife in her chest. Yelena falls.
She then finds the Little Widows, coming into the room, revealing they were not dead. It turns out Yelena disobeyed Madame B's order and saved the Little Widows, making the fake graves to hide the truth. Nat asks why did she save them. Yelena does not answer, only telling her where Madame B is before she dies. Her motivation is deliberately ambiguous, open for interpretations for the audience. She perhaps could not forgive herself for living as a Black Widow and wanted to die. Perhaps terminating the Little Widows was the final straw.
Nat takes a car and chases after Madame B, who is on the shuttle bus. Nat catches up to the bus, jumps into the bus, and crashes the bus.
Nat, basically half-dead now, finally has an axe over Madame B's head. Madame B compliments Natasha's skill, saying she was not a human just a moment ago. Madame B is proud of her and demands Nat to finish her arc as Black Widow. Natasha is hesitant.
Madame B starts whistling an eerie tune, the tune that was very familiar to Nat.
She raises her axe, and right before she achieves her vengeance, Steve and Sam intervene. They persuade Nat that if she kills her, it only proves Madame B is right and she will suffer for the rest of her life, unable to break the cycle of Black Widow.
Now, Natasha felt pettiness, no longer feeling hatred. She makes a decision. She throws away the axe. By disproving Madame B's words, she abandons her title of Black Widow, the identity of a manufactured killer, and chooses a life of Natasha Romanoff, a superhero.
Natasha Romanoff runs away with Steve and Sam. The police cars come to the scene. Madame B stays in the crashed bus, feeling defeated not because she got captured, but because she was proved wrong.
I think this is a solid outline for the Black Widow movie. Relatively grounded plot with dark themes. It is still jampacked with actions. No magical supervillain fight. Less CGI and visual effects. Smaller-scale and lower stakes but a more character-driven personal story to flesh out Black Widow as a character, building up her arc in Endgame.

Originally posted in fixingmovies a year ago. Updated with a few changes. The basic gist is the same, but multiple plot details were added, insisted by u/Evilux through the comment.
Many people want Black Widow film to be a superhero version of James Bond. David Hayter's 2004 script was written that way, which I heard was uninspired, and the film Marvel is currently working on seems like it is going to be exactly. However, as the novelty of spy adventure films has died down with the recent saturation with Kingsman, Mission: Impossible, Atomic Blonde, Jack Ryan, Marvel needs to do something different from the genre norm and their previous MCU films. Doing another spy action blockbuster like James Bond is not interesting as it would be in the early 2010s.
Since MCU at this point has built up considerably expansive lore, doing a smaller scale in-depth character-piece would make Black Widow standout from other superheroes. I propose a noir thriller movie akin to Collateral centered around Black Widow's past hinted in Age of Ultron. A detective story about Black Widow finding clues, getting chased, and following traces to confront her past with some shades of revenge theme with plenty of actions to retain marketability of the franchise. This could be rated-R due to realistic violence, but it could pass off as PG-13 considering Casino Royale was PG-13.
This hypothetical story was inspired by The Man From Nowhere (2010), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), Lady Vengeance (2006), Skyfall (2011), The Villainess (2017), John Wick series (2014, 2017), No Tears For The Dead (2014).
The film starts with the familiar Marvel logo sequence. After the logo, we see the Zemo's arrest from Civil War where Everett Ross mocks Zemo restrained in the cell. Ross asks Zemo how it felt to see his plan fail so spectacularly after spending so much time and effort. Zemo says "Did it?"
Then the movie shows footages from Captain America: Civil War* such as the terrorist attack in Vienna, The Avengers fighting each other in the airport, The Raft Prison, Iron Man fighting Cap, and the text appears alongside summarizing the plot of Civil War and explaining the aftermath in the similar style as the opening scene of War For The Planet Of The Apes.
The Sokovia Accords are a registration devised by the collective governments of the world to regulate enhanced individuals. If not complied, they were declared illegal and forced to retire. This led to the Civil War among the Avengers.
After the Civil War, the Avengers were divided and disbanded. The anti-Accords heroes accepted retirement, but Captain America and his partners refused.
Captain America, Falcon, and Black Widow are still fighting off the last remnants of HYDRA―the massive terrorist organization founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom.
This opening text helps the audience to understand that the story is set right after Captain America: Civil War but before Avengers: Infinity War since Black Widow's death in Endgame might confuse the casual viewers about the chronology.
The film opens with the Christmas festival held at night in one of the European countries which can be the UK or France. We see bearded Captain America disguised with casual clothing, following a target, a female Hydra agent wearing a hood to hide her face, walking among the crowd. Reveal: The target clearly knows she's being chased and notify to other agents through a small radio. On the rooftop of the building, the sniper, watching these two above, receives the notification from the Hydra agent and readies his rifle to aim at Cap. Right before the sniper is about to take a shot, someone ambushes him. The HYDRA sniper and the ambusher tussle on the roof where nobody can see them fight, which plays like the fight in Skyfall. The ambusher easily beats him down and kills him with a neck snap. This happens in the one long take in the style of the openings of Touch of Evil and Spectre.
The target realizes her friend got taken down. The target goes through the tight alleyway, far away from the festival. Her walking becomes running, and the following becomes a chase, but the target understands the geography better. She utilizes parkour to escape. She loses Cap and enters into a secret manhole in the alleyway. In the underground network where other HYDRA agents are hiding, the target smashes the alarm button which alerts the entire place and runs. The same ambusher killed the sniper breaks through the manhole and faces the HYDRA agents who just heard the alert. We now recognize the ambusher to be Black Widow, now dyed her long hair in blond.
She uses a silenced pistol, still loud, killing anyone stopping her way, and proceeds to clear out the whole claustrophobic HYDRA underground to chase the target. Like how The Winter Soldier portrayed Captain's raw strength as a brawler, this sequence shows Black Widow's agility and speed as a superspy. After taking out multiple HYDRAs and rushing towards where the target has gone, Black Widow is ambushed by the target still wearing a hood she has been chasing. The target is a female assassin similar to Black Widow. During the intense close-quarter fight, her hood is taken off, revealing her face. This disturbs Black Widow like the moment when Steve recognized the identity of the Winter Soldier. The brief flashback to Black Widow's the Red Room days, immediate rough transition. The background is the Red Room Academy with the nice interior, and both Natasha and the target are back to de-aged teenagers. Black Widow says "Yelena?"
The dreamlike vision is broken by so-called Yelena's knife-attack who took advantage of Black Widow's pause. She lunges her knife at Natasha's chest, nearly stabbing her. At that moment, Cap arrives and joins the fight. Since Cap has no shield at this point, he uses anything he can grab as a shield like a steel door and a chair. The target backs down and escapes. Cap and Widow try to chase her, but more HYDRAs swarm their way. Black Widow can do nothing but watch her escape.
For people who are not familiar with the source material, she is Yelena Belova), the character debuted in 1999. In the comics, her character was meant to become the new Black Widow, as Black Widow was no longer loyal to Russia and later became the second Black Widow. While I am not using the exact comic book canon, her counterpart in this story shares some similarities regarding the Red Room plot. I repurposed her as the secondary villain in the story. Picture her played by someone like Emily Blunt.
After the fight, the James Bondesque title credit sequence. They can embrace full campiness and go for a theme about spiders.
The title screen ends then we see a flashback. When Nat was about 10-year-old. She is hiding under the bed. From her POV, we see her parents getting murdered like the O-Ren Ishii's origin story from Kill Bill. Although we do not know Nat's parents, we can guess they were powerful figures, maybe politicians. We see the two legs. We do not see the murderers' face, but we hear the unforgettable whistle, singing a certain tune. The murderer leaves and the other man enters the room, discovering Nat under the bed.
Black Widow is clearly devastated by what she has seen, meaning HYDRA is connected to Leviathan, the secret Soviet agency that planned the Red Room, the military project young Natasha was forced to be a part of it.
Black Widow decided to go to Russia alone. Steve and Sam insist to go with her, but Natasha rejects the help as she sees this as a personal problem she must deal with herself as a survivor of the Red Room.
Natasha goes to her homeland Russia during a heavy snowstorm and searches for the original Red Room facility. She finds a clue to locate the Red Room Academy, but she is chased by the Russian police, who is obviously trying to arrest her for the illegal activities under the UN's Sokovia Accords. Do a crazy chase scene like The Villainess' motorcycle action scene.
She escapes the police and eventually arrives at the devastated Red Room Academy built in the Soviet era. Walking inside, she reminisces about her training. Here, you can go for Oldboy style seamless Evergreen flashback sequence, recreating the protagonist's tracks in his mind. As she goes through each room of the facility, her traumatic memories consume her mind. Right after the murders of her parents, Nat is conscripted as a 'Little Widow' (the element carried from David Hayter's script) for the Red Room. In the first day, she tried to escape but failed, which the entire escape turns out to be a part of the test, oversaw by Madame B, the woman played by de-aged Julie Delpy briefly shown in the AOU flashbacks, who trained Black Widows. Several training footages where she slowly grew to be the assassin. Nat and the other colleague were tested to gun assembly test, where the only one can survive. Those who failed tests being used as a guinea pig for the trainees to kill. At last, she was forced to go through the sterilization process, again, Madame B watching in front of her.
From there, she found another clue indicating the Red Room project did not end. There is a new Red Room project.
Before she leaves, she finds the Hydra assault team has surrounded the building. This sequence is comprised of two styles: At first, we see Black Widow's skills as a killer. Like the Predator, she plays a cat and mouse game and stealthy kills them one by one. In the latter half, she gets detected and a John Wick style fight scene ensues. She ends up eliminating the whole Hydra team but is injured. When she tries to leave the place, Yelena ambushes Black Widow and knocks her out. Black Widow lies on the snow and loses consciousness.
We see a brief scene where Captain and Falcon trying to locate Nat.
Black Widow wakes up and notices she is tied to the chair or something. She is somewhere deep in the HYDRA hideout. Here, Madame B reveals herself. She is now old, visibly aged. Here, we learn Hydra took over Leviathan after the fall of the Soviet Union and revived the Red Room for the new generation to produce the Hydra agents.
Natasha blames B for ruining her life, but Madame B says she made Natasha and even gave her the name of Black Widow. Her brutal training is the only reason how Black Widow survived all this time. Even after Black Widow was recruited to SHIELD, Madame B was still obsessed with Black Widow and tried to replicate her all these time but failed. For decades Black Widow was her finest work. Madame B talks about how Natasha is the perfect weapon and can never truly belong. She is no Russian nor American. She has no identity other than a killing machine. She was manufactured for that purpose. That was why Nat never truly picked a side in Berlin during the Civil War. Madame B thoroughly breaks down the fundamentals of her character as Black Widow. Natasha pretends she is not listening, but in deep in her heart, she agrees with Madame B. Madame B comments no one would come for her because, in the end, Black Widow was made to be alone.
Considering the current situation of HYDRA, Madame B says the Red Room is no longer viable. Madame B tells Yelena to retire Little Widows. Yelena complies. Natasha screams and tries to break out, but it won't budge.
When Natasha abandoned all hope, just waiting for her to die, Captain and Falcon show up. A not so subtle rebuttal to Madame B's comment about Natasha's belonging.
They carry her to Captain's hideout. Next morning Natasha regains her consciousness, but still unable to move all right. She asks how did they pass the border. Steve jokes no one noticed him because of his beard and no one knows or cares about Sam.
Natasha, furious, chooses to kill the Red Room by herself once and for all so no one suffers the same fate she has gone through. There should not be another Black Widow. Steve and Sam calm her as she is not even recovered from the injury. They tell her they will take care of it, advising her to take a rest until she is fully rehabilitated.
Later that night, Nat is awakened by the nightmare of suffering children. She approaches the mirror while everyone is sleeping. She starts to cut her long hair with the razor blade, similar to the haircutting scene from The Man From Nowhere and Max Payne 3. Natasha's hair is now short, explaining why her hair in Infinity War was shorter than her hair in Civil War. She leaves the hideout silently, making sure to not to wake Steve and Sam.
She finally arrives at the current Red Room facility. She encounters a messy graveyard full of 'retired' Little Widows. They were only teenagers. This fuels her lust for anger and revenge.
Natasha storms the facility. Do something like the finale for Cowboy Bebop. A gigantic one-man-army action set-piece, maybe memorable song accompanying the fight. We see the gunfight, then we see the brutally long up-close personal melee fight against the guards similar to the fight scenes from Oldboy, The Man From Nowhere and Daredevil. We witness Black Widow getting beaten constantly and the rabid dog sense of exhaustion with no way out, but her rage is so huge she fights at all costs to achieve her revenge. She manages to barely beat down all of them.
After killing all guards, she faces Yelena, stopping her way. Nat asks her why she has to kill the Little Widows. She answers nothing. One-to-one melee fight ensues like the last knife fight in The Man From Nowhere. Nat manages to stab a knife in her chest. Yelena falls.
She then finds the Little Widows, coming into the room, revealing they were not dead. It turns out Yelena disobeyed Madame B's order and saved the Little Widows, making the fake graves to hide the truth. Nat asks why did she save them. Yelena does not answer, only telling her where Madame B is before she dies. Her motivation is deliberately ambiguous, open for interpretations for the audience. She perhaps could not forgive herself for living as a Black Widow and wanted to die. Perhaps terminating the Little Widows was the final straw.
Nat takes a car and chases after Madame B, who is on the shuttle bus. Nat catches up to the bus, jumps into the bus, and crashes the bus.
Nat, basically half-dead now, finally has an axe over Madame B's head. Madame B compliments Natasha's skill, saying she was not a human just a moment ago. Madame B is proud of her and demands Nat to finish her arc as Black Widow. Natasha is hesitant.
Madame B starts whistling an eerie tune, the tune that was very familiar to Nat.
She raises her axe, and right before she achieves her vengeance, Steve and Sam intervene. They persuade Nat that if she kills her, it only proves Madame B is right and she will suffer for the rest of her life, unable to break the cycle of Black Widow.
Now, Natasha felt pettiness, no longer feeling hatred. She makes a decision. She throws away the axe. By disproving Madame B's words, she abandons her title of Black Widow, the identity of a manufactured killer, and chooses a life of Natasha Romanoff, a superhero.
Natasha Romanoff runs away with Steve and Sam. The police cars come to the scene. Madame B stays in the crashed bus, feeling defeated not because she got captured, but because she was proved wrong.
I think this is a solid outline for the Black Widow movie. Relatively grounded plot with dark themes. It is still jampacked with actions. No magical supervillain fight. Less CGI and visual effects. Smaller-scale and lower stakes but a more character-driven personal story to flesh out Black Widow as a character, building up her arc in Endgame.

Originally posted in fixingmovies a year ago. Updated with a few changes. The basic gist is the same, but multiple plot details were added, insisted by u/Evilux through the comment.
Many people want Black Widow film to be a superhero version of James Bond. David Hayter's 2004 script was written that way, which I heard was uninspired, and the film Marvel is currently working on seems like it is going to be exactly. However, as the novelty of spy adventure films has died down with the recent saturation with Kingsman, Mission: Impossible, Atomic Blonde, Jack Ryan, Marvel needs to do something different from the genre norm and their previous MCU films. Doing another spy action blockbuster like James Bond is not interesting as it would be in the early 2010s.
Since MCU at this point has built up considerably expansive lore, doing a smaller scale in-depth character-piece would make Black Widow standout from other superheroes. I propose a noir thriller movie akin to Collateral centered around Black Widow's past hinted in Age of Ultron. A detective story about Black Widow finding clues, getting chased, and following traces to confront her past with some shades of revenge theme with plenty of actions to retain marketability of the franchise. This could be rated-R due to realistic violence, but it could pass off as PG-13 considering Casino Royale was PG-13.
This hypothetical story was inspired by The Man From Nowhere (2010), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), Lady Vengeance (2006), Skyfall (2011), The Villainess (2017), John Wick series (2014, 2017), No Tears For The Dead (2014).
The film starts with the familiar Marvel logo sequence. After the logo, we see the Zemo's arrest from Civil War where Everett Ross mocks Zemo restrained in the cell. Ross asks Zemo how it felt to see his plan fail so spectacularly after spending so much time and effort. Zemo says "Did it?"
Then the movie shows footages from Captain America: Civil War* such as the terrorist attack in Vienna, The Avengers fighting each other in the airport, The Raft Prison, Iron Man fighting Cap, and the text appears alongside summarizing the plot of Civil War and explaining the aftermath in the similar style as the opening scene of War For The Planet Of The Apes.
The Sokovia Accords are a registration devised by the collective governments of the world to regulate enhanced individuals. If not complied, they were declared illegal and forced to retire. This led to the Civil War among the Avengers.
After the Civil War, the Avengers were divided and disbanded. The anti-Accords heroes accepted retirement, but Captain America and his partners refused.
Captain America, Falcon, and Black Widow are still fighting off the last remnants of HYDRA―the massive terrorist organization founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom.
This opening text helps the audience to understand that the story is set right after Captain America: Civil War but before Avengers: Infinity War since Black Widow's death in Endgame might confuse the casual viewers about the chronology.
The film opens with the Christmas festival held at night in one of the European countries which can be the UK or France. We see bearded Captain America disguised with casual clothing, following a target, a female Hydra agent wearing a hood to hide her face, walking among the crowd. Reveal: The target clearly knows she's being chased and notify to other agents through a small radio. On the rooftop of the building, the sniper, watching these two above, receives the notification from the Hydra agent and readies his rifle to aim at Cap. Right before the sniper is about to take a shot, someone ambushes him. The HYDRA sniper and the ambusher tussle on the roof where nobody can see them fight, which plays like the fight in Skyfall. The ambusher easily beats him down and kills him with a neck snap. This happens in the one long take in the style of the openings of Touch of Evil and Spectre.
The target realizes her friend got taken down. The target goes through the tight alleyway, far away from the festival. Her walking becomes running, and the following becomes a chase, but the target understands the geography better. She utilizes parkour to escape. She loses Cap and enters into a secret manhole in the alleyway. In the underground network where other HYDRA agents are hiding, the target smashes the alarm button which alerts the entire place and runs. The same ambusher killed the sniper breaks through the manhole and faces the HYDRA agents who just heard the alert. We now recognize the ambusher to be Black Widow, now dyed her long hair in blond.
She uses a silenced pistol, still loud, killing anyone stopping her way, and proceeds to clear out the whole claustrophobic HYDRA underground to chase the target. Like how The Winter Soldier portrayed Captain's raw strength as a brawler, this sequence shows Black Widow's agility and speed as a superspy. After taking out multiple HYDRAs and rushing towards where the target has gone, Black Widow is ambushed by the target still wearing a hood she has been chasing. The target is a female assassin similar to Black Widow. During the intense close-quarter fight, her hood is taken off, revealing her face. This disturbs Black Widow like the moment when Steve recognized the identity of the Winter Soldier. The brief flashback to Black Widow's the Red Room days, immediate rough transition. The background is the Red Room Academy with the nice interior, and both Natasha and the target are back to de-aged teenagers. Black Widow says "Yelena?"
The dreamlike vision is broken by so-called Yelena's knife-attack who took advantage of Black Widow's pause. She lunges her knife at Natasha's chest, nearly stabbing her. At that moment, Cap arrives and joins the fight. Since Cap has no shield at this point, he uses anything he can grab as a shield like a steel door and a chair. The target backs down and escapes. Cap and Widow try to chase her, but more HYDRAs swarm their way. Black Widow can do nothing but watch her escape.
For people who are not familiar with the source material, she is Yelena Belova), the character debuted in 1999. In the comics, her character was meant to become the new Black Widow, as Black Widow was no longer loyal to Russia and later became the second Black Widow. While I am not using the exact comic book canon, her counterpart in this story shares some similarities regarding the Red Room plot. I repurposed her as the secondary villain in the story. Picture her played by someone like Emily Blunt.
After the fight, the James Bondesque title credit sequence. They can embrace full campiness and go for a theme about spiders.
The title screen ends then we see a flashback. When Nat was about 10-year-old. She is hiding under the bed. From her POV, we see her parents getting murdered like the O-Ren Ishii's origin story from Kill Bill. Although we do not know Nat's parents, we can guess they were powerful figures, maybe politicians. We see the two legs. We do not see the murderers' face, but we hear the unforgettable whistle, singing a certain tune. The murderer leaves and the other man enters the room, discovering Nat under the bed.
Black Widow is clearly devastated by what she has seen, meaning HYDRA is connected to Leviathan, the secret Soviet agency that planned the Red Room, the military project young Natasha was forced to be a part of it.
Black Widow decided to go to Russia alone. Steve and Sam insist to go with her, but Natasha rejects the help as she sees this as a personal problem she must deal with herself as a survivor of the Red Room.
Natasha goes to her homeland Russia during a heavy snowstorm and searches for the original Red Room facility. She finds a clue to locate the Red Room Academy, but she is chased by the Russian police, who is obviously trying to arrest her for the illegal activities under the UN's Sokovia Accords. Do a crazy chase scene like The Villainess' motorcycle action scene.
She escapes the police and eventually arrives at the devastated Red Room Academy built in the Soviet era. Walking inside, she reminisces about her training. Here, you can go for Oldboy style seamless Evergreen flashback sequence, recreating the protagonist's tracks in his mind. As she goes through each room of the facility, her traumatic memories consume her mind. Right after the murders of her parents, Nat is conscripted as a 'Little Widow' (the element carried from David Hayter's script) for the Red Room. In the first day, she tried to escape but failed, which the entire escape turns out to be a part of the test, oversaw by Madame B, the woman played by de-aged Julie Delpy briefly shown in the AOU flashbacks, who trained Black Widows. Several training footages where she slowly grew to be the assassin. Nat and the other colleague were tested to gun assembly test, where the only one can survive. Those who failed tests being used as a guinea pig for the trainees to kill. At last, she was forced to go through the sterilization process, again, Madame B watching in front of her.
From there, she found another clue indicating the Red Room project did not end. There is a new Red Room project.
Before she leaves, she finds the Hydra assault team has surrounded the building. This sequence is comprised of two styles: At first, we see Black Widow's skills as a killer. Like the Predator, she plays a cat and mouse game and stealthy kills them one by one. In the latter half, she gets detected and a John Wick style fight scene ensues. She ends up eliminating the whole Hydra team but is injured. When she tries to leave the place, Yelena ambushes Black Widow and knocks her out. Black Widow lies on the snow and loses consciousness.
We see a brief scene where Captain and Falcon trying to locate Nat.
Black Widow wakes up and notices she is tied to the chair or something. She is somewhere deep in the HYDRA hideout. Here, Madame B reveals herself. She is now old, visibly aged. Here, we learn Hydra took over Leviathan after the fall of the Soviet Union and revived the Red Room for the new generation to produce the Hydra agents.
Natasha blames B for ruining her life, but Madame B says she made Natasha and even gave her the name of Black Widow. Her brutal training is the only reason how Black Widow survived all this time. Even after Black Widow was recruited to SHIELD, Madame B was still obsessed with Black Widow and tried to replicate her all these time but failed. For decades Black Widow was her finest work. Madame B talks about how Natasha is the perfect weapon and can never truly belong. She is no Russian nor American. She has no identity other than a killing machine. She was manufactured for that purpose. That was why Nat never truly picked a side in Berlin during the Civil War. Madame B thoroughly breaks down the fundamentals of her character as Black Widow. Natasha pretends she is not listening, but in deep in her heart, she agrees with Madame B. Madame B comments no one would come for her because, in the end, Black Widow was made to be alone.
Considering the current situation of HYDRA, Madame B says the Red Room is no longer viable. Madame B tells Yelena to retire Little Widows. Yelena complies. Natasha screams and tries to break out, but it won't budge.
When Natasha abandoned all hope, just waiting for her to die, Captain and Falcon show up. A not so subtle rebuttal to Madame B's comment about Natasha's belonging.
They carry her to Captain's hideout. Next morning Natasha regains her consciousness, but still unable to move all right. She asks how did they pass the border. Steve jokes no one noticed him because of his beard and no one knows or cares about Sam.
Natasha, furious, chooses to kill the Red Room by herself once and for all so no one suffers the same fate she has gone through. There should not be another Black Widow. Steve and Sam calm her as she is not even recovered from the injury. They tell her they will take care of it, advising her to take a rest until she is fully rehabilitated.
Later that night, Nat is awakened by the nightmare of suffering children. She approaches the mirror while everyone is sleeping. She starts to cut her long hair with the razor blade, similar to the haircutting scene from The Man From Nowhere and Max Payne 3. Natasha's hair is now short, explaining why her hair in Infinity War was shorter than her hair in Civil War. She leaves the hideout silently, making sure to not to wake Steve and Sam.
She finally arrives at the current Red Room facility. She encounters a messy graveyard full of 'retired' Little Widows. They were only teenagers. This fuels her lust for anger and revenge.
Natasha storms the facility. Do something like the finale for Cowboy Bebop. A gigantic one-man-army action set-piece, maybe memorable song accompanying the fight. We see the gunfight, then we see the brutally long up-close personal melee fight against the guards similar to the fight scenes from Oldboy, The Man From Nowhere and Daredevil. We witness Black Widow getting beaten constantly and the rabid dog sense of exhaustion with no way out, but her rage is so huge she fights at all costs to achieve her revenge. She manages to barely beat down all of them.
After killing all guards, she faces Yelena, stopping her way. Nat asks her why she has to kill the Little Widows. She answers nothing. One-to-one melee fight ensues like the last knife fight in The Man From Nowhere. Nat manages to stab a knife in her chest. Yelena falls.
She then finds the Little Widows, coming into the room, revealing they were not dead. It turns out Yelena disobeyed Madame B's order and saved the Little Widows, making the fake graves to hide the truth. Nat asks why did she save them. Yelena does not answer, only telling her where Madame B is before she dies. Her motivation is deliberately ambiguous, open for interpretations for the audience. She perhaps could not forgive herself for living as a Black Widow and wanted to die. Perhaps terminating the Little Widows was the final straw.
Nat takes a car and chases after Madame B, who is on the shuttle bus. Nat catches up to the bus, jumps into the bus, and crashes the bus.
Nat, basically half-dead now, finally has an axe over Madame B's head. Madame B compliments Natasha's skill, saying she was not a human just a moment ago. Madame B is proud of her and demands Nat to finish her arc as Black Widow. Natasha is hesitant.
Madame B starts whistling an eerie tune, the tune that was very familiar to Nat.
She raises her axe, and right before she achieves her vengeance, Steve and Sam intervene. They persuade Nat that if she kills her, it only proves Madame B is right and she will suffer for the rest of her life, unable to break the cycle of Black Widow.
Now, Natasha felt pettiness, no longer feeling hatred. She makes a decision. She throws away the axe. By disproving Madame B's words, she abandons her title of Black Widow, the identity of a manufactured killer, and chooses a life of Natasha Romanoff, a superhero.
Natasha Romanoff runs away with Steve and Sam. The police cars come to the scene. Madame B stays in the crashed bus, feeling defeated not because she got captured, but because she was proved wrong.
I think this is a solid outline for the Black Widow movie. Relatively grounded plot with dark themes. It is still jampacked with actions. No magical supervillain fight. Less CGI and visual effects. Smaller-scale and lower stakes but a more character-driven personal story to flesh out Black Widow as a character, building up her arc in Endgame.

Note: all new characters in Parts 10, 11, 12 and 13 are in italics.
(Kyle MacLachlan) - Dale CoopeMr. C/Dougie
LAS VEGAS:
Duncan Todd (Patrick Fischler) - the businessman who gives his assistant two bundles of cash Roger (Joe Adler) - his assistant
Janey-E Jones (Naomi Watts) - Dougie's wife Sonny Jim Jones (Pierce Gagnon) - their son
Tommy (Ronnie Gene Blevins) - loan shark on left who meets Janey-E in park Jimmy (Jeremy Davis) - loan shark on right who meets Janey-E in park
Jade (Nafessa Williams) - Dougie's prostitute Detailer (Sean Bulger) - cleans Jade's car
Jake (Bill Tangradi) - hitman with rifle who almost shoots Cooper Gene (Greg Vrotsos) - hitman who puts a bomb under Dougie's car Lorraine (Tammie Baird) - woman with BlackBerry who is the boss of the hitmen
Ike "The Spike" Stadtler (Christophe Zajac-Denek) - the little hitman
Drugged-out Mother (Hailey Gates) - she keeps saying "119" Little Boy (Sawyer Shipman) - her son Punk Leader (Blake Zingale) - throws rock at little boy - gets blown up Patrol Officer (Jay Jee) - cop on roof who finds the number plate
Security Guard (Brian Finney) - directs Cooper to the casino change counter Cashier (Meg Foster) - gives change to Cooper Slot Machine Man (John Ennis) - Cooper watches him play the slots - he says "Helllooo!" Wise Guy (Josh McDermitt) - guy at casino who says "You broke that one" Lady Slot-Addict (Linda Porter) - old lady at casino Floor Attendant Jackie (Sabrina S. Sutherland) - helps Cooper when he starts winning
Bill Shaker (Ethan Suplee) - friend of Dougie's at the casino Candy Shaker (Sara Paxton) - Bill Shaker's wife
Supervisor Burns (Brett Gelman) - bearded manager at the casino - later he is sacked Pit Boss Warrick (David Dastmalchian) - becomes the new manager
Rodney Mitchum (Robert Knepper) - beats up Supervisor Burns Bradley Mitchum (Jim Belushi) - tells supervisor to get out of town - presumably the brother of Rodney Mandie (Andrea Leal) - pink showgirl on the left Candie (Amie Shiels) - pink showgirl in the middle Sandie (Giselle DaMier) - pink showgirl on the right
Paul (Greg Mills) - news anchor on TV in the Mitchums' house Sheena (Sarah Sohn) - news anchor on TV in the Mitchums' house
Limo Driver (Jay Larson) - drives Cooper home from the casino
Bushnell Mullins (Don Murray) - the boss at Lucky 7 Insurance, Dougie's workplace Phil Bisby (Josh Fadem) - nerdy guy with glasses Anthony Sinclair (Tom Sizemore) - Cooper accuses him of lying Rhonda (Elena Satine) - takes Cooper into the female bathroom Darren (Wes Brown) - trying to cheat on his wife with Rhonda Frank (Bob Stephenson) - Cooper drinks his coffee
Officer Reynaldo (Juan Carlos Cantu) - tells Cooper to stop loitering at the statue
Syzmon Waitress (Virginia Kull) - brings Cooper some cherry pie Man in Urinal (Malone) - "That bad, huh?"
Detective D. Fusco (David Koechner) - visits Dougie's office (on the left) Detective "Smiley" Fusco (Eric Edelstein) - visits Dougie's office (in the middle) Detective T. Fusco (Larry Clarke) - visits Dougie's office (on the right) Desk Sergeant (Jelani Quinn) - the Fuscos give the evidence bag to him
Detective Clarke (John Savage) - Anthony Sinclair gets poison from him Crooked Partner (Johnny Chavez) - his partner standing in the alley
Another Mom (Rebecca Field) - older mom interviewed by reporters 5-Year-Old Girl (Ivy George) - her daughter Soccer Mom (Stephanie Allynne) - younger mom interviewed by reporters
Doctor Ben (John Billingsly) - Cooper's doctor
Head Mover (Alon Aboutboul) - delivers Sonny Jim's gym set
MONTANA:
Renzo (Derek Mears) - bald guy who arm-wrestles Evil Cooper Muddy (Frank Collison) - recites the arm-wrestling rules The Farm Accountant (Christopher Durbin) - "Do you need any money?"
NEW MEXICO:
Woodsman (Robert Broski) - "Gotta light?" Girl (1956) (Tikaeni Faircrest) - the young girl who swallows the frog-bug Boy (1956) (Xolo Mariduena) - the young boy walking her home New Mexico Husband (Tad Griffith) - man in car accosted by the Woodsman New Mexico Wife (Leslie Berger) - woman in car accosted by the Woodsman Receptionist (Tracy Phillips) - killed in the radio station by the Woodsman Disc Jockey (Cullen Douglas) - also killed in the radio station by the Woodsman
NEW YORK:
Sam Colby (Ben Rosenfield) - he monitors the glass box Tracey (Madeline Zima) - brings Sam coffee Guard (Michael Bisping) - the security guard outside Experiment Model / Experiment (Erica Enyon) - the creature in the glass box
PENTAGON:
Colonel Davis (Ernie Hudson) - sends Cynthia Knox to South Dakota Lieutenant Cynthia Knox (Adele René) - sent by Colonel Davis to South Dakota
PHILADELPHIA (FBI):
FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole (David Lynch) Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer) FBI Agent Tammy Preston (Chrysta Bell) - new female agent
Denise Bryson (David Duchovny) Bill Kennedy (Richard Chamberlain) - greets Gordon at Denise's office
FBI Driver (Stephen Kearin) - drives Gordon and Albert to South Dakota
Diane Evans (Laura Derns) - Cooper's former secretary Younger Man (Jesse Johnson) - the guy in Diane's apartment
RED ROOM ETC:
??????? (Carel Struycken) - the Giant Senorita Dido (Joy Nash) - she lives with the Giant
Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) Bob (Frank Silva) Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) Phillip Gerard (Al Strobel) - the One-Armed Man
Naido (Nae Yuuki) - the first woman in the "Mauve Room" with no eyes American Girl (Phoebe Augustine) - the second woman in the "Mauve Room" Major Garland Briggs (Don S. Davis) - the head floating through the stars
SOUTH DAKOTA:
Robby (James Croak) - the guy with the rifle guarding the door of the shack Otis (Redford Westwood) - the old man with the moustache who Mr C. talks to Buella (Kathleen Deeming) - the old lady in the shack Darya (Nicole LaLiberte) - the young woman who leaves with Mr. C Ray Monroe (George Griffith) - the young man who leaves with Mr. C
Jack (Steve Barker) - the mechanic who gets his face massaged
Chantal Hutchens (Jennifer Jason Leigh) - Darya's next-door neighbour Gary "Hutch" Hutchens (Tim Roth) - Chantal's phone-shooting husband
Marjorie Green (Melissa Bailey) - the lady with the dog Ruth Davenport (Mary Stofle) - the dead woman Hank (Max Perlich) - the bald guy outside - "Am I free to go?"
Officer Olson (Christopher Murray) - the taller of the two cops who arrive at Ruth's apartment Officer Douglas (James Giordano) - the shorter of the two cops who arrive at Ruth's apartment
Detective Dave Macklay (Brent Briscoe) - the main detective - the one who interrogates Hastings Constance Talbot (Jane Adams) - the CSI woman Police Chief Mike Boyd (Dep Kirkland) - the bald police chief outside Hastings' interrogation Detective Don Harrison (Bailey Chase) - the State Police Detective who arrives William Hastings (Matthew Lillard) - the school principal in jail Phyllis Hastings (Cornelia Guest) - his wife George Bautzer (Neil Dickson) - his lawyer
First Trooper (Travis Hammer) - the first cop who arrives at Mr C's car accident and throws up Second Trooper (Stephen Heath) - the second cop who arrives at Mr C's car accident
Warden Dwight Murphy (James Morrison) - the warden at the prison where Mr. C is held Inspector Randy Hollister (Karl Makinen) - the younger man accompanying the warden Prison Tech (Hank Harris) - works the security cameras at the prison Prison Guard (Mark Mahoney) - Mr C asks him for a meeting with the warden
Warden Murphy's Son (Luke Judy) - finds his father's body
French Woman (Berenice Marlohe) - the woman in Gordon's hotel room
TWIN PEAKS:
Dr. Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn) Delivery Driver (Joseph M. Auger) - delivers the shovels
Nadine Hurley (Wendie Robie) Big Ed Hurley (Everett McGill)
Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) Check-out Girl (Zoe McLane) - serves Sarah Palmer at the store Bag-boy (Johnny Ochsner) - serves Sarah Palmer at the store
Margaret Lanterman (The Log Lady) (Catherine E. Coulson)
Doc Will Hayward (Warren Frost)
Benjamin Horne (Richard Beymer) Jerry Horne (David Patrick Kelly) Richard Horne (Eamon Farren) - psychopath smoking in the Roadhouse Johnny Horne (Eric Rondell) - he runs into a wall Sylvia Horne (Jan D'Arcy) - she helps Johnny when he is hurt Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) Charlie (Clark Middleton) - the man talking to Audrey
Beverly Paige (Ashley Judd) - Ben Horne's new secretary Tom Paige (Hugh Dillon) - Beverly's sick husband Nurse (Judith Drake) - the nurse who cares for Tom
Carl Rodd (Harry Dean Stanton) - owner of the New Fat Trout Trailer Park Mickey (Jeremy Lindholm) - talks to Carl in the car Kriscol (Bill O'Dell) - man at the trailer park who sells his blood
Hit and Run Mom (Lisa Coronado) - her boy is run over by Richard Horne Hit and Run Boy (Hunter Sanchez) - run over by Richard Horne
Sheriff Frank Truman (Robert Forster) - Harry Truman's brother Doris Truman (Candy Clark) - Frank's wife
Deputy Chief Tommy "Hawk" Hill (Michael Horse)
Deputy Jesse Holcomb (James Grixoni) - announces that Wally has arrived Deputy Chad Broxford (John Pirruccello) - the grumpy cop with the beard Maggie (Jodi Thelen) - switchboard operator in the back room
Deputy Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) Betty Briggs (Charlotte Stewart)
Carrie (Charity Parenzini) - mother of boy who shoots gun outside RR Diner Russ (Linas Phillips) - father of boy who shoots gun outside RR Diner Ralph (Elias Parenzini) - boy who shoots gun outside RR Diner Woman in Car (Laura Kenny) - large woman honking the horn outside the RR Diner Sick Girl (Priya Diane Niehaus) - the vomiting girl in the car with her
Man in Suit (Allen Galli) - the insurance man who leaves his card for Sheriff Truman
Andy Brennan (Harry Goaz) Lucy Brennan (Kimmy Robertson) Wally Brando (Michael Cera) - their son
Farmer (Edward 'Ted' Dowling) - Andy sets up a 4:30 meeting with him
Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) Toad (Marv Rosand) - cook at the Double R Heidi (Andrea Hays) - German waitress at the Double R RR Diner Waitress (Kate Alden) - serves Bobby in Part 13 Walter Lawford (Grant Goodeve) - runs RR Diner franchises for Norma
Bing (Riley Lynch) - shouts "Has anybody seen Billy?" in the RR Diner Miriam Sullivan (Sarah Jean Long) - talking to Heidi in the RR Diner
Boy Playing Catch (Travis Frost) - boy who discovers the injured Miriam
Shelly (Mädchen Amick) Renee (Jessica Szohr) - woman sitting next to Shelly who James is looking at. She later cries when James sings. Hannah (Gia Carides) - Shelly's brunette friend who says "There's something wrong with that guy"
Rebecca (Becky) Burnett (Amanda Seyfried) - Shelly's daughter Steven Burnett (Caleb Landry Jones) - Becky's husband
Neighbour (Cynthia Lauren Tewes) - lives next door to Gersten Hayward's apartment Gersten Hayward (Alicia Witt) - hiding on stairs with Steven Burnett
Mike Nelson (Gary Hershberger) - he doesn't like Steven Burnett's resumé
James Hurley (James Marshall) Freddie Sykes (Jake Wardle) - the young guy who enters the Roadhouse with James Red (Balthazar Getty) - he points his fingers at Shelly like a gun Jean-Michel Renault (Walter Olkewicz) - bartender who is presumably a relative of Jacques Renault
Frederico (Vincent Castellanos) - tells Richard Horne to stop smoking Charlotte (Grace Victoria Cox) - assaulted by Richard in the Roadhouse Elizabeth (Jane Levy) - Charlotte's friend who says "Leave her alone"
Ella (Sky Ferreira) - the girl in the Roadhouse scratching herself Chloe (Karolina Wydra) - her brunette friend
Abbie (Elizabeth Anweis) - woman on left in Roadhouse in Part 12 Natalie (Ana de la Reguera) - woman on right in Roadhouse in Part 12 Trick (Scott Coffey) - their friend who gets his car run off the road
The Chromatics (Ruth Radelet, Adam Miller, Johnny Jewel, Nat Walker) - band playing in Parts 2 & 12 The Cactus Blossoms (Jack Torrey, Page Burkum, Joel Paterson, Beau Sample, Alex Hall) - band playing in Part 3 Au Revoir Simone (Heather D'Angelo, Erika Forster, Annie Hart) - band playing in Parts 4 & 9 Trouble (Riley Lynch, Sam Smith, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Dean Hurley) - band playing in Part 5 Sharon Van Etten (Sharon Van Etten, Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, John Phillip Iron III, Zeke Hutchins) - band playing in Part 6 MC (J.R. Starr) - he introduces "The" Nine Inch Nails and James Hurley "The" Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Mariqueen Maandig Reznor, Robin Finck, Alessandro Cortini, Joey Castillo) - band playing in Part 8 Hudson Mohawke (Himself) - the musician playing in Part 9 Rebekah Del Rio (Rebekah Del Rio, Moby) - band playing in Part 10 James Hurley (James Marshall, Kelsey Bohlen, Rachael Bower) - band playing in Part 13

Originally posted in fixingmovies a year ago. Updated with a few changes. The basic gist is the same, but multiple plot details were added, insisted by u/Evilux through the comment.
Many people want Black Widow film to be a superhero version of James Bond. David Hayter's 2004 script was written that way, which I heard was uninspired, and the film Marvel is currently working on seems like it is going to be exactly. However, as the novelty of spy adventure films has died down with the recent saturation with Kingsman, Mission: Impossible, Atomic Blonde, Jack Ryan, Marvel needs to do something different from the genre norm and their previous MCU films. Doing another spy action blockbuster like James Bond is not interesting as it would be in the early 2010s.
Since MCU at this point has built up considerably expansive lore, doing a smaller scale in-depth character-piece would make Black Widow standout from other superheroes. I propose a noir thriller movie akin to Collateral centered around Black Widow's past hinted in Age of Ultron. A detective story about Black Widow finding clues, getting chased, and following traces to confront her past with some shades of revenge theme with plenty of actions to retain marketability of the franchise. This could be rated-R due to realistic violence, but it could pass off as PG-13 considering Casino Royale was PG-13.
This hypothetical story was inspired by The Man From Nowhere (2010), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), Lady Vengeance (2006), Skyfall (2011), The Villainess (2017), John Wick series (2014, 2017), No Tears For The Dead (2014).
The film starts with the familiar Marvel logo sequence. After the logo, we see the Zemo's arrest from Civil War where Everett Ross mocks Zemo restrained in the cell. Ross asks Zemo how it felt to see his plan fail so spectacularly after spending so much time and effort. Zemo says "Did it?"
Then the movie shows footages from Captain America: Civil War* such as the terrorist attack in Vienna, The Avengers fighting each other in the airport, The Raft Prison, Iron Man fighting Cap, and the text appears alongside summarizing the plot of Civil War and explaining the aftermath in the similar style as the opening scene of War For The Planet Of The Apes.
The Sokovia Accords are a registration devised by the collective governments of the world to regulate enhanced individuals. If not complied, they were declared illegal and forced to retire. This led to the Civil War among the Avengers.
After the Civil War, the Avengers were divided and disbanded. The anti-Accords heroes accepted retirement, but Captain America and his partners refused.
Captain America, Falcon, and Black Widow are still fighting off the last remnants of HYDRA―the massive terrorist organization founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom.
This opening text helps the audience to understand that the story is set right after Captain America: Civil War but before Avengers: Infinity War since Black Widow's death in Endgame might confuse the casual viewers about the chronology.
The film opens with the Christmas festival held at night in one of the European countries which can be the UK or France. We see bearded Captain America disguised with casual clothing, following a target, a female Hydra agent wearing a hood to hide her face, walking among the crowd. Reveal: The target clearly knows she's being chased and notify to other agents through a small radio. On the rooftop of the building, the sniper, watching these two above, receives the notification from the Hydra agent and readies his rifle to aim at Cap. Right before the sniper is about to take a shot, someone ambushes him. The HYDRA sniper and the ambusher tussle on the roof where nobody can see them fight, which plays like the fight in Skyfall. The ambusher easily beats him down and kills him with a neck snap. This happens in the one long take in the style of the openings of Touch of Evil and Spectre.
The target realizes her friend got taken down. The target goes through the tight alleyway, far away from the festival. Her walking becomes running, and the following becomes a chase, but the target understands the geography better. She utilizes parkour to escape. She loses Cap and enters into a secret manhole in the alleyway. In the underground network where other HYDRA agents are hiding, the target smashes the alarm button which alerts the entire place and runs. The same ambusher killed the sniper breaks through the manhole and faces the HYDRA agents who just heard the alert. We now recognize the ambusher to be Black Widow, now dyed her long hair in blond.
She uses a silenced pistol, still loud, killing anyone stopping her way, and proceeds to clear out the whole claustrophobic HYDRA underground to chase the target. Like how The Winter Soldier portrayed Captain's raw strength as a brawler, this sequence shows Black Widow's agility and speed as a superspy. After taking out multiple HYDRAs and rushing towards where the target has gone, Black Widow is ambushed by the target still wearing a hood she has been chasing. The target is a female assassin similar to Black Widow. During the intense close-quarter fight, her hood is taken off, revealing her face. This disturbs Black Widow like the moment when Steve recognized the identity of the Winter Soldier. The brief flashback to Black Widow's the Red Room days, immediate rough transition. The background is the Red Room Academy with the nice interior, and both Natasha and the target are back to de-aged teenagers. Black Widow says "Yelena?"
The dreamlike vision is broken by so-called Yelena's knife-attack who took advantage of Black Widow's pause. She lunges her knife at Natasha's chest, nearly stabbing her. At that moment, Cap arrives and joins the fight. Since Cap has no shield at this point, he uses anything he can grab as a shield like a steel door and a chair. The target backs down and escapes. Cap and Widow try to chase her, but more HYDRAs swarm their way. Black Widow can do nothing but watch her escape.
For people who are not familiar with the source material, she is Yelena Belova), the character debuted in 1999. In the comics, her character was meant to become the new Black Widow, as Black Widow was no longer loyal to Russia and later became the second Black Widow. While I am not using the exact comic book canon, her counterpart in this story shares some similarities regarding the Red Room plot. I repurposed her as the secondary villain in the story. Picture her played by someone like Emily Blunt.
After the fight, the James Bondesque title credit sequence. They can embrace full campiness and go for a theme about spiders.
The title screen ends then we see a flashback. When Nat was about 10-year-old. She is hiding under the bed. From her POV, we see her parents getting murdered like the O-Ren Ishii's origin story from Kill Bill. Although we do not know Nat's parents, we can guess they were powerful figures, maybe politicians. We see the two legs. We do not see the murderers' face, but we hear the unforgettable whistle, singing a certain tune. The murderer leaves and the other man enters the room, discovering Nat under the bed.
Black Widow is clearly devastated by what she has seen, meaning HYDRA is connected to Leviathan, the secret Soviet agency that planned the Red Room, the military project young Natasha was forced to be a part of it.
Black Widow decided to go to Russia alone. Steve and Sam insist to go with her, but Natasha rejects the help as she sees this as a personal problem she must deal with herself as a survivor of the Red Room.
Natasha goes to her homeland Russia during a heavy snowstorm and searches for the original Red Room facility. She finds a clue to locate the Red Room Academy, but she is chased by the Russian police, who is obviously trying to arrest her for the illegal activities under the UN's Sokovia Accords. Do a crazy chase scene like The Villainess' motorcycle action scene.
She escapes the police and eventually arrives at the devastated Red Room Academy built in the Soviet era. Walking inside, she reminisces about her training. Here, you can go for Oldboy style seamless Evergreen flashback sequence, recreating the protagonist's tracks in his mind. As she goes through each room of the facility, her traumatic memories consume her mind. Right after the murders of her parents, Nat is conscripted as a 'Little Widow' (the element carried from David Hayter's script) for the Red Room. In the first day, she tried to escape but failed, which the entire escape turns out to be a part of the test, oversaw by Madame B, the woman played by de-aged Julie Delpy briefly shown in the AOU flashbacks, who trained Black Widows. Several training footages where she slowly grew to be the assassin. Nat and the other colleague were tested to gun assembly test, where the only one can survive. Those who failed tests being used as a guinea pig for the trainees to kill. At last, she was forced to go through the sterilization process, again, Madame B watching in front of her.
From there, she found another clue indicating the Red Room project did not end. There is a new Red Room project.
Before she leaves, she finds the Hydra assault team has surrounded the building. This sequence is comprised of two styles: At first, we see Black Widow's skills as a killer. Like the Predator, she plays a cat and mouse game and stealthy kills them one by one. In the latter half, she gets detected and a John Wick style fight scene ensues. She ends up eliminating the whole Hydra team but is injured. When she tries to leave the place, Yelena ambushes Black Widow and knocks her out. Black Widow lies on the snow and loses consciousness.
We see a brief scene where Captain and Falcon trying to locate Nat.
Black Widow wakes up and notices she is tied to the chair or something. She is somewhere deep in the HYDRA hideout. Here, Madame B reveals herself. She is now old, visibly aged. Here, we learn Hydra took over Leviathan after the fall of the Soviet Union and revived the Red Room for the new generation to produce the Hydra agents.
Natasha blames B for ruining her life, but Madame B says she made Natasha and even gave her the name of Black Widow. Her brutal training is the only reason how Black Widow survived all this time. Even after Black Widow was recruited to SHIELD, Madame B was still obsessed with Black Widow and tried to replicate her all these time but failed. For decades Black Widow was her finest work. Madame B talks about how Natasha is the perfect weapon and can never truly belong. She is no Russian nor American. She has no identity other than a killing machine. She was manufactured for that purpose. That was why Nat never truly picked a side in Berlin during the Civil War. Madame B thoroughly breaks down the fundamentals of her character as Black Widow. Natasha pretends she is not listening, but in deep in her heart, she agrees with Madame B. Madame B comments no one would come for her because, in the end, Black Widow was made to be alone.
Considering the current situation of HYDRA, Madame B says the Red Room is no longer viable. Madame B tells Yelena to retire Little Widows. Yelena complies. Natasha screams and tries to break out, but it won't budge.
When Natasha abandoned all hope, just waiting for her to die, Captain and Falcon show up. A not so subtle rebuttal to Madame B's comment about Natasha's belonging.
They carry her to Captain's hideout. Next morning Natasha regains her consciousness, but still unable to move all right. She asks how did they pass the border. Steve jokes no one noticed him because of his beard and no one knows or cares about Sam.
Natasha, furious, chooses to kill the Red Room by herself once and for all so no one suffers the same fate she has gone through. There should not be another Black Widow. Steve and Sam calm her as she is not even recovered from the injury. They tell her they will take care of it, advising her to take a rest until she is fully rehabilitated.
Later that night, Nat is awakened by the nightmare of suffering children. She approaches the mirror while everyone is sleeping. She starts to cut her long hair with the razor blade, similar to the haircutting scene from The Man From Nowhere and Max Payne 3. Natasha's hair is now short, explaining why her hair in Infinity War was shorter than her hair in Civil War. She leaves the hideout silently, making sure to not to wake Steve and Sam.
She finally arrives at the current Red Room facility. She encounters a messy graveyard full of 'retired' Little Widows. They were only teenagers. This fuels her lust for anger and revenge.
Natasha storms the facility. Do something like the finale for Cowboy Bebop. A gigantic one-man-army action set-piece, maybe memorable song accompanying the fight. We see the gunfight, then we see the brutally long up-close personal melee fight against the guards similar to the fight scenes from Oldboy, The Man From Nowhere and Daredevil. We witness Black Widow getting beaten constantly and the rabid dog sense of exhaustion with no way out, but her rage is so huge she fights at all costs to achieve her revenge. She manages to barely beat down all of them.
After killing all guards, she faces Yelena, stopping her way. Nat asks her why she has to kill the Little Widows. She answers nothing. One-to-one melee fight ensues like the last knife fight in The Man From Nowhere. Nat manages to stab a knife in her chest. Yelena falls.
She then finds the Little Widows, coming into the room, revealing they were not dead. It turns out Yelena disobeyed Madame B's order and saved the Little Widows, making the fake graves to hide the truth. Nat asks why did she save them. Yelena does not answer, only telling her where Madame B is before she dies. Her motivation is deliberately ambiguous, open for interpretations for the audience. She perhaps could not forgive herself for living as a Black Widow and wanted to die. Perhaps terminating the Little Widows was the final straw.
Nat takes a car and chases after Madame B, who is on the shuttle bus. Nat catches up to the bus, jumps into the bus, and crashes the bus.
Nat, basically half-dead now, finally has an axe over Madame B's head. Madame B compliments Natasha's skill, saying she was not a human just a moment ago. Madame B is proud of her and demands Nat to finish her arc as Black Widow. Natasha is hesitant.
Madame B starts whistling an eerie tune, the tune that was very familiar to Nat.
She raises her axe, and right before she achieves her vengeance, Steve and Sam intervene. They persuade Nat that if she kills her, it only proves Madame B is right and she will suffer for the rest of her life, unable to break the cycle of Black Widow.
Now, Natasha felt pettiness, no longer feeling hatred. She makes a decision. She throws away the axe. By disproving Madame B's words, she abandons her title of Black Widow, the identity of a manufactured killer, and chooses a life of Natasha Romanoff, a superhero.
Natasha Romanoff runs away with Steve and Sam. The police cars come to the scene. Madame B stays in the crashed bus, feeling defeated not because she got captured, but because she was proved wrong.
I think this is a solid outline for the Black Widow movie. Relatively grounded plot with dark themes. It is still jampacked with actions. No magical supervillain fight. Less CGI and visual effects. Smaller-scale and lower stakes but a more character-driven personal story to flesh out Black Widow as a character, building up her arc in Endgame.

More Interesting Times (Part 2)
by Jayge 8^J
In 2017, Jeff Bezos of Amazon is said to have made $107 million a day on average, adding $40 billion to his fortune, now estimated at $150 billion. Every year war, disease, poverty, illiteracy, and famine remain unresolved, while our billionaire blight grows. Are these mere coincidences or something far more serious? Tim predicted that for each of the next 10 years that same pattern will continue, making matters ever worse than they are today. Billionaires create poverty & misery in society, not wealth. Speaking of worthless billionaires brings us to covfefe, psycho liar Trump and his 3,001 'alt-truths' since his fat ass landed in the Oval Office. “We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” ― Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a Zionist before Zionism turned ugly. Trump's now angling for a Nobel Peace Prize, yet we know it's really about his ego and profiteering. Supporters say he's a real estate branding genius playing 4D chess, but we see shameless chutzpah & 1D checkers. What about his Trump U. swindle? Lady Liberty and Mother Earth better beware of Trump, like demon Kissinger, cuz the republic has never been in worse hands. His new top Jewish economic adviser is Larry Kudlow, who allegedly was ousted from Bear Stearns senior management in the mid-90s with a monthly $100K cocaine habit. Trump is surely an enigma worth investigating. His Wikipedia page provides some facts of his life, while skewing or omitting others. Curiously, his net worth is said to be $3.1B, while he claims over $10B and others maintain that his bankruptcies made him a debt slave to Russian, Jewish, Arab, and/or Italian mobs. Let's ban billionaires. If $999,999,999.99 isn't enough for you, then we don't want you & your U.S. assets will be used to solve society's problems, a reminder of this century-old ragtime classic, "The rich get rich and the poor get poor / In the meantime, in between time / Ain't We Got Fun".
'Dark Journalist' Daniel Liszt shows startling revelations in his livestream YouTube presentations, including that Trump's 'nuclear' uncle, electrical engineer John George Trump, had private access to Nikola Tesla's papers after his death & in 1987 President Nixon sent Trump a letter, urging him to run for president, cuz he would win. Trump keeps it on display. Also, he found a series of X steganography, from Egyptian & Mayan hieroglyphs, Mystery Schools, to planet X, to secret Eisenhower X-program, to fresh JFK assassination info, to LBJ library's 'X' document, to Nixon insider Robert Merritt & White House 'extraterrestrial time capsule', to journalist-author Frank Scully, source of The X-Files character Dana Scully, & much more. Zachary K. Hubbard exposes info about elite-coded news headlines, sports fraud, deaths of celebrity, political, & sports figures, CNN is CIA, & much more, all Kabbalah numerology Gematria based & their divide & conquer ritual methods in his book Letters & Numbers, free to find truth blog, The Gematria Effect weekly radio show, & YouTube channel Gematria Effect News, after his other channels were deleted by Google's YouTube. He & Thom Hartmann are rare sane radio voices amid a sea of rabid, fear & war mongering, far right extremist stochastic terrorists, evolution, globe, or climate change deniers. George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, & Barack Obama aren't the root of evil. It's the fascist GOP, stupid.
Back in 2018, after unwinding each phi vector taken, Travers was visited by Men in Black who had probing inquiries about his recent whereabouts, activities, & encounters, as well as stern directives & threats not to speak to anyone about them. He now felt that all of his noble intentions & efforts had failed, but unknown to him things were about to get interesting. Amid clouds of corruption uncovered by Robert Mueller's investigation, Trump suddenly resigned along with Mike Pence, the former to serve prison time abroad for tax evasion, the latter to try televangelism. Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House of Representatives was next in line, but declined so President pro tempore of the Senate Orrin Hatch was sworn in as 46th U.S. president. Something quite unprecedented was occurring.
"Donald John Trump is the 45th and current President of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality. Trump was born and raised in the New York City borough of Queens, and received an economics degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He took charge of his family's real estate business in 1971, renamed it The Trump Organization, and expanded it from Queens and Brooklyn into Manhattan. The company built or renovated skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. Trump later started various side ventures, including licensing his name for real estate and consumer products. He managed the company until his 2017 inauguration. He co-authored several books, including The Art of the Deal. He owned the Miss Universe and Miss USA beauty pageants from 1996 to 2015, and he produced and hosted the reality television show The Apprentice from 2003 to 2015. Forbes estimates his net worth to be $3.1 billion." -- Wikipedia
Apparently, Time Lord Jefferson took matters into his own hands & carefully set them aright. He had a stenographer secretly record his Monticello meeting. While Travers slept tight in a feather bed, Jefferson borrowed his Cronosoar. With Benjamin Franklin, he devised a solution to Travers' conundrum & spied on the White House to ascertain the situation, using a special Franklin-made drone. A plebiscite outlawed lobbying & dissolved the legislative branch of government along with corporate boards to reform with all new faces, while those ousted faced corruption charges. He made America fair again. We the People got new systems for our Founders' broken model. Several ambitious parties sprang up, including Native Law, Gaia Greens, Latin Power, Black Rights, & Young Turks, replacing the splintered Democrats. Out of a rebranded GOOP, which now stood for Geezer Obsolete Obstructionist Party, a more apt appellation, rose Libertarians, Constitutionalists, & a mega MAGA Mad Hatter's Tea Party. To be an American was honorable once more.
Franklin said or wrote, "Time is money." "An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." "Well done is better than well said." "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail." "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." "Half a truth is often a great lie." "Genius without education is like silver in the mine." "Where liberty is, there is my country." "When you're finished changing, you're finished." "There was never a good war or a bad peace." "Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." "He that lives upon hope will die fasting." "Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75." "Energy and persistence conquer all things." "The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself." "The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance." "Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn." "The doors of wisdom are never shut." "Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late." "There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self." "It is easier to prevent bad habits than it is to break them." "When in doubt, don't." "Never confuse motion with action." "Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste." "If time be of all things the most precious, then wasting time must be the greatest prodigality." "The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands." "He that can have patience can have what he will." "Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure." "Lost time is never found again." "One today is worth two tomorrows."
"Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSE was an American polymath and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department and the University of Pennsylvania." -- Wikipedia
NATO forces on joint military training operations with the IDF sprung a surprise trap netting top Zionist brass & placed the tiny nation under strict martial law, while UN peacekeepers & NGOs moved in to secure nuclear weaponry to prevent their insane Samson Option & conduct mass migrations. Palestinians were freed to inhabit West Bank settlements, while boycott denial non-Semitic militant white Zionists were herded into work camps in Gaza & the West Bank under miserable apartheid conditions they had made, ultimately for themselves. Israel roared empty claims of anti-Semitism at UN headquarters & in their global media Kabbalah cabal, but got no response. "Revenge is a dish best served cold." -- Klingon proverb (from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan) Similar roundups by the FBI in the U.S. netted KKK, CIA, NSA, neo-Nazis, Saudi royals, white nationalists, racist skinheads, Dark Money fat cats, & Proud Boys, who soon found themselves in Gaza, where ex-President Trump was torn apart by some who felt betrayed by him in a vicious civil war between far right militant Zionists & farther right militant Zionists. A great weight was lifted off humanity's back, the International Red Cross finally released its meticulous WWII camp statistics, & seemingly miraculous drops occurred in nosy spies, Spam emails, & most surprisingly 99% of the Pentagon budget, followed by reciprocal defense moves worldwide. The elite's 3,000-year-old Abrahamic religions experiment was banned as dangerously counter-productive. Our planet entered the Aquarian Age, brimming with green energy opportunity, exploration of the Cosmos, resources on other worlds, & extraterrestrial communication.
"The Samson Option is the name that some military analysts and authors have given to Israel's deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a "last resort" against the specific country whose military destroys Israel. Commentators also have employed the term to refer to situations where non-nuclear, non-Israeli actors, have threatened conventional weapons retaliation." -- Wikipedia
Silly coincidence theories of 19 'Muslim hijacker' clowns led by a CIA clone in a cave, 'magic bullet', 'lone assassin', Nazi Reichstag fire, 'surprise attacks' of Havana Harbor, Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, Gulf of Tonkin, & 9/11, didn't stand the test of time. Travers laughed when he read that Ari Quotient, Max Ernst, & Elbert Dreistein were in line for the quadrennial 2022 Fields Medal, so-called 'Nobel Prize' in mathematics, for their elaborate so-called proof that time travel is impossible.
Chillin' later at the beach with network maven yogi bud CEJ, while simultaneously wondering whether eigenvector matrices were quasicrystalline spin networks, they saw Garrett Lisi parasailing & approached the easy-going theorist-adventurer. After Tim's talk with Newton, he tried once more to grok gravity by asking Lisi for insight, who said, "All fields of the standard model and gravity are unified as an E8 principal bundle connection. A non-compact real form of the E8 Lie algebra has G2 and F4 subalgebras which break down to strong su(3), electroweak su(2) x u(1), gravitational so(3,1), the frame-Higgs, and three generations of fermions related by triality. The interactions and dynamics of these 1-form and Grassmann valued parts of an E8 superconnection are described by the curvature and action over a four dimensional base manifold." "The mathematics of quantum mechanics very accurately describes how our universe operates." "I think the universe is pure geometry - basically, a beautiful shape twisting around nd dancing over space-time." "I always found it satisfying that gravity was described by Einstein's geometric theory of general relativity." "There are a lot of good things about string theory, and it's great that some people want to work on it." "I'm afraid the workings of J.J. Abrams' mind fall outside the predictive capacity of any coherent theory." "Surfing is simply the most fun I know how to have on this planet." "Ninety-five per cent of my time is virtually wasted." "You cannot think when you're ecstatic." "Science is our last and greatest frontier." "The only thing that makes sense is if the universe is beautiful and simple and elegant."
"Antony Garrett Lisi, known as Garrett Lisi, is an American theoretical physicist and adventure sports enthusiast. Lisi works as an independent researcher without an academic position. He is a strong proponent of balance in life, in his case between scientific research and enjoyment of the outdoors." -- Wikipedia
"In quantum mechanics, the Planck time (tP) is the unit of time in the system of natural units known as Planck units. A Planck unit is the time required for light to travel in a vacuum a distance of 1 Planck length, which is approximately 5.39 × 10 −44 s. The unit is named after Max Planck, who was the first to propose it." -- Wikipedia
"An attosecond is...one quintillionth of a second. For context, an attosecond is to a second what a second is to about 31.71 billion years." -- Wikipedia
"The Wheeler–DeWitt equation is...part of a theory that attempts to combine mathematically the ideas of quantum mechanics and general relativity, a step towards a theory of quantum gravity...time plays a role different from what it does in non-relativistic quantum mechanics, leading to the so-called 'problem of time'. -- Wikipedia
Hugh Everett III, colleague of John Wheeler & Bryce DeWitt, wrote Universal Wave Function Theory that proposed a many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
"Just for scale, one unit of Planck time is less than a trillionth of a trillionth of the attosecond described above!...for things that happen below the Planck scale, time disappears." -- Gregg Braden, Fractal Time, page 102, doing his best impression of Paul Charles William Davies
"Einstein’s 1905 paper came out and suddenly changed people’s thinking about space-time. We’re again in the middle of something like that. When the dust settles, time—whatever it may be—could turn out to be even stranger and more illusory than even Einstein could imagine." -- Carlo Rovelli
"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." -- Albert Einstein
"Terence McKenna...Timewave Zero...fractal modeling of time" -- Wikipedia
Today Travers' weltanschauung took a serious hit when he was informed that Wikipedia, which he had contributed occasional editing, was another tool of the ruling elite. There was no doubt Tim needed some math tutoring, but now he had all the time in the world. CEJ, born in the year of the Wheeler–DeWitt equation, took Tim's Cronosoar for a proper shakedown cruise so both of them might study Lisi's ideas without sacrificing vacation time. They crossed paths once with John Titor, towing him out of a 'temporal causality loop', like that experienced by USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D crew & USS Bozeman under Captain Morgan Bateson (Kelsey Grammer) in "Cause and Effect" season 5 episode 18 of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In appreciation, he shared some 2036 trove coordinates & his ""stationary mass, temporal displacement unit powered by two top-spin, dual positive singularities", producing a "standard off-set Tipler sinusoid"...Two magnetic housing units for the dual micro singularities... An electron injection manifold to alter mass and gravity of the micro singularities...A cooling and X-ray venting system...Gravity sensors, or a variable gravity lock...Four main cesium clocks...Three main computer units" -- Wikipedia However, they steered clear of Doc Brown's device & the McFly family, due to many time anomalies they were well-known for. Besides, that flux capacitor DeLorean was a fire hazard.
"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising each time we fall." -- Confucius
"Observe good faith and justice with all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all." -- George Washington
"We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let's face it, is mostly the history of stupidity." -- Stephen Hawking
"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say." -- Will Durant
"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history." -- Aldous Huxley
"The value of history is, indeed, not scientific but moral: by liberalizing the mind, by deepening the sympathies, by fortifying the will, it enables us to control, not society, but ourselves -- a much more important thing; it prepares us to live more humanely in the present and to meet rather than to foretell the future." -- Carl Becker
"History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
"History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce." -- Karl Marx
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." -- Mark Twain
"History proves that the white man is a devil." -- Malcolm X Little
Travers' work playlist was predictable: Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show, Time Has Come Today by the Chambers Brothers, Back in Time by Huey Lewis & the News, Time by Pink Floyd, Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce, Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper, Does Anybody Know What Time It Is by Chicago, Times Like These by the Foo Fighters, Feels Like the First Time by Foreigner, Clocks by Coldplay, Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley & the Comets, Time Is on My Side by the Rolling Stones, Love Me Two Times by the Doors, Old Time Rock & Roll by Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, The Longest Time by Billy Joel, Good Times Roll by the Cars, Too Much Time on My Hands by Styx, Big Time by Peter Gabriel, Where Have All the Good Times Gone by the Kinks, Time for Me to Fly by REO Speedwagon, If I Could Turn Back Time by Cher, Wasted Time by the Eagles, Your Time Is Gonna Come by Led Zeppelin, Foreplay / Long Time by Boston, The Last Time by the Rolling Stones, Time to Move On by Tom Petty, Time Waits for No One by the Rolling Stones, Out of Time by the Rolling Stones, Three Times a Lady by the Commodores, Time by the Alan Parsons Project, Every time You Go Away by Paul Young, Ain't Wastin' Time No More by the Allman Brothers, Tulsa Time by Eric Clapton, Sign o' the Times by Prince, By the Time I Get to Phoenix by Glen Campbell, Long Time Gone by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, How Many More Times by Led Zeppelin, Nothin' But a Good Time by Poison, Knock Three Times by Tony Orlando & Dawn, Time (Clock of the Heart) by Culture Club, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack, This Time by Bryan Adams, Time Stand Still by Rush, Anytime at All by the Beatles, Killin' Time by Clint Black, No Time This Time by the Police, Party All the Time by Eddie Murphy, Remember the Time by Michael Jackson, Isn't It Time by the Babys, Bad Time by Grand Funk Railroad, Child in Time by Deep Purple, Only Time Will Tell by Asia, Time Is Running Out by Muse, This Time Tomorrow by the Kinks, Man Out of Time by Elvis Costello, King of the Night Time World by Kiss, Sour Times by Portishead, Comes a Time by Neil Young, Do That to Me One More Time by Captain & Tennille, Another Place Another Time by Jerry Lee Lewis, Where Have All the Good Times Gone by Elton John, Sea of Time by George Martin Orchestra, Get It Right the First Time by Billy Joel, I've Had the Time of My Life by Jennifer Warnes, The Times They Are A-Changin' by Bob Dylan, No Time by Guess Who, Time Won't Let Me by the Outsiders, Time of the Season by the Zombies, Time Machine by Grand Funk Railroad, Give Me Just a Little More Time by Chairmen of the Board, Time to Fly by Spirit, & Kashmir by Led Zeppelin.