Warning: Spoilers for Black Widow
Gunpowder Milkshake is the movie Black Widow may have been if it had been released 5 years ago. Natasha Romanoff has been one of the most popular characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe throughout Scarlett Johansson's tenure, and her story culminated in her heroic sacrifice in 2019's Avengers: Endgame. Black Widow has arrived (following over a year's worth of pandemic-related delays) to focus on Natasha's story as a fugitive between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, with the movie occupying a specific place in the MCU and Natasha's overall story.
Though the film has become one of the biggest theatrical releases since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the perception that Black Widow took longer to arrive than it should have hasn't subsided either. Natasha's popularity certainly suggests that her solo movie arriving after Avengers: Age of Ultron would've been the perfect window for it, the clunky romance between Natasha and Bruce Banner notwithstanding. Funnily enough, Netflix has given a surprisingly sharp look at what that version of Black Widow might've been with the platform's new action movie Gunpowder Milkshake.
The movie centers on Karen Gillan as Sam, a female assassin who finds herself protecting Chloe Coleman's Emily, an eight (and three-quarters) year old girl after her latest mission goes awry. Along the way, Sam reconnects with her estranged mother and fellow assassin, Lena Headey's Scarlet, and also receives aid from a trio of "librarians" with their own deadly skill set, one of whom is martial arts icon Michelle Yeoh. As often tends to happen with assassin-based action movies today, Gunpowder Milkshake has been likened to John Wick, but even more surprising than the film's coloring book visual palette contrasted with its bloody action scenes is how uncannily it comes off like the Black Widow movie Marvel fans were clamoring for after her Avengers appearances.
As a team-up movie involving assassins protecting a young girl and waging war on a shadowy crime boss, Gunpowder Milkshake's basic premise would've fit Black Widow like a glove. Sam's strained relationship with her mother Scarlet also isn't that far off from Natasha's estrangement from her own family in Black Widow. Additionally, the movie's mix of gunplay and martial arts in its action scenes is how Natasha has always done battle as an Avenger against aliens, robots, and other superhuman enemies, and how it's been taken down to a somewhat more grounded level in Black Widow.
Natasha's movie tells the story it does by being released at the point that it has been in the MCU, but with a few rewrites and tweaking, the movie's Red Room plot could've also worked in her pre-Civil War story. Gunpowder Milkshake embodies what that version of Black Widow could've been to a surprisingly vivid degree. Of course, with Natasha's death in Endgame and Florence Pugh's Yelena to succeed her as the MCU's new Black Widow (with a misinformed vendetta against Hawkeye), the world will never know exactly what kind of movie Black Widow would've been had it arrived during her days as an Avenger. Nonetheless, for viewers curious for a look at the movie Black Widow might've been, Gunpowder Milkshake does as good a job as any of answering that question.