It isn’t because she hates Thunderbolts or Marvel. In fact, she still treads carefully talking about Harbour’s role in Avengers: Doomsday because of that old company policy on spoilers. “I haven’t lost my magic Marvel touch yet. I’m not even contracted to Marvel and I’m still fucking holding your secrets,” she says. Harbour jokes: “Oh, come on, Scarlett. We all know you’re the secret character. We all know the Black Widow comes back from the dead.”
That much Johansson can’t stand: “If I come back from the dead, then half the world’s population dies. Didn’t you see Endgame for Christ’s sake?”
Unlike, perhaps, Robert Downey Jr., Johansson seems invested in the continuity and stakes of her character’s exit from the MCU. She previously told Vanity Fair that “what works about the character is that her story is complete. I don’t want to mess with that. For fans, too—it’s important for them.” Not to mention, the big ensemble of Doomsday doesn’t sound like a project she’d enjoy much. “Some of the films that I did for Marvel engaged my character more than others. Like in [Captain America: The] Winter Soldier with Chris [Evans], we were really dynamic. In some of the other films, the cast was so enormous and there was so much plot to serve that you start to feel like you’re a device to move it along,” she told Harbour. “And if you’re committed to five and a half months of that, it’s like, ‘Okay. I can’t paint my nails, I can’t get a haircut.’ These sound like silly problems, but your identity is wrapped up in this job for a long time, and if you’re not doing engaging work as an actor, you feel a little cagey sometimes.” It appears congratulations are in order, not for her Marvel EP credit, but for moving on from the studio once and for all.
