Black Widow Director Discusses Taskmaster’s Surprise Reveal

After months of waiting, Black Widow has finally released in both theaters and on Disney Plus, and fans can finally experience one of the most highly anticipated films of the year. In a new interview with GamesRadar, Black Widow director Cate Shortland spoke about the film’s villain, Taskmaster, whose identity reveal is one of the bigger surprises of the film. 

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Before we dive in, it’s important to note that this interview has massive spoilers for the film, so here’s your spoiler warning if you haven’t seen it just yet. If you have seen the film, though, you’d know that in Black Widow, Taskmaster is revealed to be Dreykov’s daughter, Antonia, who was almost murdered by Natasha during her time in Budapest when the agent was trying to kill Dreykov. 

Speaking on the reveal, and using Antonia as a character who had been turned into a murder machine to seek out and hunt down Natasha, was something Shortland wanted to have in the film. 

“What’s great in the film is, you see that [Natasha] physically has to face what she’s done,” Shortland said. “It’s not a fragment [of that]. It’s real. And so she’s really facing her worst nightmare. I almost see Taskmaster as being her psyche, ‘This is what I’ve done, and it’s coming back to get me.’ The androgyny of the character is really interesting.

“Natasha is a perpetrator, and that’s what I love is this ambiguity. She’s not Superman. She’s done some terrible things. And this is the film where she has to face that. And, what it does is, it allows her to go to Endgame and the sacrifice she makes with resolve because she’s had to face all the parts that she’s tried to shut down inside her. All the little black boxes, she’s had to open them up or Yelena is kicking them open.”