Florence Pugh Reveals New Black Widow Suit

Diehard MCU fans will remember Florence Pugh’s first appearance in Black Widow. We had barely gotten over Natasha Romanov’s death, and here she was starring in her own movie! Yes, we thought we were saying goodbye to Scarlett Johansson forever when her character threw herself off the cliff in Vormir, sacrificing herself to save half the universe. 

But we had to get over her death and move on. As we know, few characters actually stay dead in the MCU. 

And here we had an origin story of sorts to enjoy in Black Widow. However, it seems as though Scarlett Johansson really reprised her role as Black Widow in order to introduce her sister, Yelena Belova, played by the darling Florence Pugh. So, while we get a bit of backstory on Romanov, the real star of Black Widow is Yelena, another Black Widow among many. 

We learn of their relationship as children, playing sisters in a family of Russian spies. And we find out just how attached Yelena was to the family, which included David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov and Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff. Though the family was only together for a few short years and Yelena was very young, it was the only family she ever knew, and she still considers Natasha her sister years later. 

Natasha and Yelena come to terms with each other in Black Widow before Natasha’s death, and during the end credits scene, we meet Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, played by Julia Louis Dreyfuss, who sets Yelena on a revenge course after Hawkeye for “killing” her sister. 

Happily, we get more of Florence Pugh as Yelena in the Hawkeye series on Disney+, where she attempts to enact said revenge throughout the show until she realizes she’s been played for a fool. Clint Barton is fortunately able to reason with her. 

That could have been it for Yelena, but Florence Pugh did such a good job that fans were hungering for more. And, of course, Valentina continues to spin her web, as we saw in Wakanda Forever. As the director of the CIA, she is in the market for super-powered individuals who will do her bidding. And who better to turn to than a group of misfits and anti-heroes? 

This then becomes the main plot of Thunderbolts. While Florence Pugh, presumably safe and sound after the attack at the Dune 2 event, only showed us her suit, some very generic shots of the set, and the director, Jake Schreier, she did show us the name of the movie on the back of the director’s chair — Thunderbolts. 

All we know so far about the film, aside from the fact that Pugh, in her awesome suit, will reprise her role as Yelena, is that Valentina gathers this crew of hardened-heroes-with-heart that will include Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, Hannah John-Kamen’s Ghost, from Ant-Man and Wasp, Wyatt Russell’s John Walker, whom we met in Falcon and Winter Soldier, Olga Kurylenko’s Taskmaster, the cybernetic daughter of Dreykov we met in Black Widow, and of course David Harbour’s Red Guardian. The team is ostensibly led by Pugh, and we’ll get to see Harrison Ford as Thaddeus Ross. 

Filming should continue into the summer of 2024, so we can hope for a release date in 2025. In the meantime, we can continue to follow Florence Pugh on Instagram, hoping desperately for more sneak peeks.