In a strange quirk of timing, Marvel Comics just put Black Widow through the WandaVision treatment. WandaVision has been a hit for Marvel Studios as the first official MCU TV series streaming exclusively on Disney+. The story is set three weeks after the climactic events of Avengers: Endgame, and it sees a grief-stricken Scarlet Witch attempt to bend reality to her will.
The core concept of WandaVision is actually quite a heartbreaking one; the idea that Wanda Maximoff has simply suffered too much, and her reality-warping powers have allowed her to construct a false world in which she gets to live a happy life. She has resurrected Vision, and even granted herself twin children as the result of an accelerated pregnancy. Naturally, it can't possibly last; the real world is not to be denied, she can't simply hold an entire town hostage to her own grief, and her own mind appears to be fracturing as a result of the continued trauma.
Oddly enough, however, Marvel Comics has just put Black Widow through pretty much the same experience. Kelly Thompson's current Black Widow run opened with Natasha's mysterious disappearance, kidnapped by enemies who had tried - and failed - to kill her time and time again. Having been unable to truly defeat Black Widow, Natasha's nemeses figured there was another way to take her out of commission; to give her a perfect life she would never want to leave. They brainwashed Black Widow, creating a false civilian identity in which she was happily engaged and even had a baby boy. The fiancée was an unknown man whose mind had likewise been tampered with, while the son was essentially a clone created from the genetic material of both Natasha and her partner.
Just as in WandaVision, this "Happily Ever After" life could not possibly last. In this case, Hawkeye and Winter Soldier spotted Natasha in the background during a news interview. They immediately knew something was wrong, because if Black Widow was undercover she would never allow herself to be captured on camera. They headed to San Francisco to check this out, and it wasn't long before Natasha's new reality came crashing down – with tragic consequences.
The thematic concepts behind Kelly Thompson's Black Widow run and WandaVision are strikingly similar. In both cases, the plots serve to underscore the sense of tragedy that often lies at the heart of heroism. Both Wanda and Natasha are given a brief taste of a dreamworld too good to be true, one that they are ultimately denied. There is a price to be paid for heroism, oftentimes a painful one. Comparing the two women, however, there's a disturbing sense that Black Widow has it the worst; she was sterilized by the Red Room, so until now she probably never stopped to imagine what it would be like to be a mother. She also looks set to be the one who will manage to emerge from this trauma, using it as an opportunity to reinvent herself. In contrast, Scarlet Witch is heading straight from WandaVision into the Multiverse of Madness.