Black Widow Reveals Her Most Important Lessons – and They’re Not From the Red Room

Warning: Contains spoilers for Black Widow: Venemous #1!!

Natasha Romanova endured harsh, life-altering training during her time in the Red Room; those grueling years carved her into the Black Widow, a deadly assassin who eventually found a new path to walk as an Avenger, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and more. Now, as Nat finds herself dealing with a young Symbiote in need of training, she realizes that her most important lessons came from friends and allies, not the Red Room.

In Black Widow: Venemous #1, Natasha hits a rough patch with her newly bonded Symbiote after the creature abandons her during a mission to infiltrate Alchemax. Black Widow realizes that the Symbiote needs training to overcome its fear and be “an asset.”

She reaches for her own Red Room memories and begins to put the ‘Sliver’ Symbiote through some of the difficult drills and treatment she endured, before realizing she doesn’t have to be that person. Instead, she develops a whole new training protocol based on what some of her greatest allies and friends taught her.

Black Widow Takes Inspiration From Her Greatest Allies To Train Her New Symbiote

Black Widow: Venemous #1 – Written By Erica Schultz; Art By Luciano Vecchio, David Curiel, & Ariana Maher

The Red Room taught Natasha all the skills she needed to become an assassin, but that knowledge came at a great cost. As she says, the Black Widow program “broke more than it graduated” and even those who managed to survive did not do so without scars. Yet, when met with a fully untrained Symbiote who can’t make it through a fight, her first instinct is to reach for that protocol to get Sliver up to par. She knows the type of fighter it can create, but seeing her pain mirrored in the Symbiote is enough to cut through that conditioning.

Black Widow was born in the Red Room, but Natasha Romanova developed her own identity alongside allies like Bucky Barnes, Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, Jessica Drew, and Clint Barton. It’s those lessons she reaches for to help her Symbiote. Each “memory” version of her friends highlight what Natasha views as the most important – and the core of who they are. From Spider-Woman’s advice on flexibility in battle, to Nick Fury’s rightful paranoia, and Clint’s confidence, the Symbiote still receives all the training it will need, all from the people who helped Nat find herself, too.

Natasha Refuses To Pass On The Trauma Of The Red Room

Black Widow Leaves Cruelty In The Past

Natasha offers her Symbiote a glimpse into the most important people in her life and the greatest things they taught her, but it ends up being a lesson for both of them. It’s one of the assassin’s biggest opportunities to see that she is, essentially, greater than the sum of her parts. She’s fortunate enough to have people to trust and learn from and who let her be more than simply a weapon. The Red Room created Black Widow through cruelty and manipulation, but she’s scrapping its lessons for a path built with trust instead.