The following article contains major spoilers for Black Widow.

After over a year of delays, Marvel Studios’ Black Widow finally released both in theaters and on Disney Plus with premier access. And as with every new film in the series, the MCU has just had quite a few exciting new characters added to its ever-expanding cast.

Black Widow introduces plenty of fresh new faces from Natasha Romanoff’s mysterious past, with the most prominent new addition being Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, another Black Widow from the Red Room program who has a close bond with Natasha. Rounding out the cast is David Harbour as Aleksei Shostakov, a washed-up Soviet super-soldier codenamed the Red Guardian, and Rachel Weisz as the clever and calculating scientist Melina Vostokoff. However, one of the most highly anticipated characters of the film is the MCU’s newest supervillain: the Taskmaster.

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Taskmaster is a name that will no doubt be familiar to die-hard Marvel fans. The villain was created in 1980 by writer David Micheline and artist George Pérez, first appearing in The Avengers #195. The original idea behind Taskmaster was that he was a fighter who could perfectly mimic any technique he saw, allowing him to copy the fighting styles of heroes like Captain America, Hawkeye, Spider-Man, and the Black Knight. In his debut, Taskmaster ran a training center for professional criminals, passing his techniques on to aspiring villains before the Avengers shut down his operation. But in more recent years, he’s most frequently operated as a solo mercenary.

black widow character taskmaster

Taskmaster’s popularity among fans has only grown over the years — he’s been the protagonist of his own solo comics, the first of which finally explored his backstory and revealed his real name to be Anthony “Tony” Masters. He’s even been prominently featured in video games like Marvel’s Spider-Man and Marvel vs. Capcom 3, as well as cartoons like Ultimate Spider-Man and Avengers Assemble, in which he was voiced by prolific character actor Clancy Brown. 

However, the MCU goes in a very different direction with Taskmaster, and it does so in a way that pushes the boundaries of what kind of villains are portrayed in superhero movies. In Black Widow, Taskmaster appears as the main physical threat of the film, repeatedly menacing Natasha and her family on behalf of the main antagonist General Dreykov. In keeping with the character’s comic roots as a deadly mercenary Taskmaster is depicted as a ruthless and unstoppable killing machine, comparable to Bucky Barnes as the Winter Soldier. But when Taskmaster’s backstory is finally revealed in the film’s third act, things begin to diverge from the comic books.

Dreykov unmasks Taskmaster before a captive Natasha, revealing the skull-masked menace to be his own daughter, viciously scarred by an assassination attempt from Natasha herself. That’s right, the MCU’s Taskmaster is a woman — instead of Anthony Masters, it's Antonia Dreykov, played by Quantum of Solace Bond girl Olga Kurlyenko. The character’s reinvention as a powerful female assassin with a tragic connection to Natasha makes her a perfect nemesis for the Black Widow, especially since Antonia’s plight as a brainwashed living weapon for her own father is a poignant parallel to Natasha’s own dark past.

Gender Swapped Taskmaster face in Black Widow

But arguably the most important thing about the MCU Taskmaster’s change in gender is the way that it challenges the norms of how female villains are portrayed, both in the movies and in the superhero genre as a whole. Specifically, Taskmaster is one of the few Marvel villainesses who serves as a major physical threat. Most female Marvel villains, while usually dangerous in a fight, are significantly less powerful than their male counterparts. Guardians of the Galaxy foe Nebula and Ant-Man and the Wasp antagonist Ghost are capable combatants, but their sympathetic characterization and later redemption makes their villain status less prominent. Even on DC’s side of things, these same trends are apparent with the likes of Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Talia Al Ghul.

The only female MCU villain who shares Taskmaster’s role as an intimidating physical fighter is Cate Blanchett’s Hela, the main villain of Thor: Ragnarok. Both Hela and Taskmaster are major physical powerhouses, who are able to outmatch the strongest heroes in their respective films. Taskmaster manages to defeat the super-soldier Red Guardian, while Hela is too powerful for even Thor at his best to overcome. In fact, neither villain is able to be beaten in a fair fight at any point in the film — Hela is only stopped when Surtur destroys all of Asgard, while Natasha only saves herself from Taskmaster by freeing her from Dreykov’s mind control. 

Thor-Ragnarok-Hela-Mjolnir

Taskmaster and Hela both have major thematic weight as well, with each having a critical role to play in their respective hero’s character arc. Hela represents Asgard’s violent imperialist past, which Thor himself had a part in before he learned humility. Meanwhile, Taskmaster is a victim of Natasha’s past as a killer, who has herself become another living weapon of the Red Room. Both antagonists are the living embodiment of their opponent’s past mistakes, which the hero must conquer to prove that they’ve changed for the better. Just as Thor destroys Hela so that Asgard’s people can have a peaceful future, Natasha chooses to save Taskmaster instead of killing her, proving that she’s become more than the assassin she was made to be.

Needless to say, Taskmaster follows in Hela’s footsteps as a villainess who’s much more dangerous than the average femme fatale. In fact, with her imposing armor and scarred face, Taskmaster is the rare female antagonist designed from the outset to be intimidating. Heroes like Captain Marvel, Scarlet Witch, Monica Rambeau, Okoye, and Nakia — and of course, Black Widow herself — have all contributed to giving the MCU a roster of powerful, compelling, and diverse female characters. But with villainesses like Hela and Taskmaster, Marvel is starting to prove that not all strong women need to be on the good guys’ team.

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