Florence Pugh in talks to play an evil spy/assassin in the Black Widow solo movie

THR says specific plot details “are being kept behind the Iron Curtain” (get it?), but we do know it’ll be an international espionage adventure and that Pugh’s character will be “a spy on the same level as Romanoff, likely her moral opposite.” In other words, it sounds like it’ll be Good Black Widow versus Evil Black Widow, which is a thing that has actually happened pretty often in the character’s long comic book history. The movies have only briefly teased our buddy Nat’s history with the Red Room, the mysterious KGB training facility that turned her into a weapon (before she took off to join S.H.I.E.L.D.), but there have been other characters who used the Black Widow name and wore the Black Widow jumpsuit in the comics.

If we had to guess, we’d say Pugh would most likely be playing a version of Yelena Belova, a different Black Widow who is pretty much exactly what the THR character bio described. In the comics, she was a more evil version of Romanoff who also joined S.H.I.E.L.D., but she stayed evil and later joined up with Hydra before flipping back and forth between good guy teams and bad guy teams. Given the fact that Pugh is only 23, introducing a character like this could give the MCU a different Black Widow to do the mighty kicks and electro-sticks in future movies once Johansson hangs up her red wig.