Director: Cate Shortland
Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz
Have I Seen It Before: Heh. Never. There remains that hazy period of Marvel movies immediately post-Avengers: Endgame (2019) and at the height of COVID that I just missed on initial release and never came back to… Which grew into a lot of the post-Endgame stuff I missed, not because I’m sitting on my hands not wanting to see the movies, but because time is finite, and it already feels like the Marvel braintrust has moved on from some of these properties.
Sorry, Eternals (2021) and The Marvels (2023). I might yet get to you one day.
And yet this film feels like the one that might have some staying power, after Thunderbolts* (2025) turned out to be a stealth sequel, Florence Pugh had a puckish cameo in Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) and the parts of the gang who still live will be back for Avengers: Doomsday.
Did I Like It: One would be completely reasonable—or I think so, as it was my initial reaction—to come away from the film thinking that it might be a little slight. The scope of the story is small. The world is not in danger at any point. Given that Natasha (Johansson) dies in the aforementioned Endgame (this film takes place shortly after Captain America: Civil War (2016), in case you wanted to spend any span of the 2020s reliving parts of 2016), there’s even less dramatic tension or danger than there normally is in these films.
But the real crucial flaw in these films is when they are weighed down by the need to set up half a dozen upcoming films, and in the process forget to be a movie on their own terms. With all of those aforementioned supposed flaws, the film is free from having to look to the future at all. It might be its secret weapon.
*No real footnote here, just what happens whenever that movie is mentioned. The format of that title is going to curse these reviews for years to come