In ‘Captain America: Civil War’, Black Widow may have unwittingly helped to bring down the Avengers. It’s one of those MCU links that is more interesting when you watch the movies in order.
Natasha Romanoff is right to expose SHIELD and HYDRA. However, the information she shared ultimately proved to be a boon for a grieving man who could ultimately split the Avengers.
Natasha Exposed HYDRA, But Zemo Found Bucky
Natasha makes a big decision at the end of ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’. She uncovers classified documents and exposes HYDRA’s infiltration and years of corruption, instead of letting the secrets of SHIELD remain buried. The move ruined SHIELD’s reputation, but it also left a lot of information out there.
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Two years later, in ‘Captain America: Civil War’, an unexpected consequence is revealed. Helmut Zemo is trying to figure out what went wrong for his family in the Battle of Sokovia. He’s not seeking to defeat the Avengers. He wants to bring them down from the inside.
Zemo eventually finds out about the Winter Soldier program, including the 1991 mission where Bucky Barnes was dispatched to intercept Howard and Maria Stark. What’s crucial is that Zemo informs Natasha and the others that the leaked SHIELD files were what led him to the trail. That alters the way we view Natasha’s choice.
One Act Of Justice Made A Chain Reaction
Natasha surely didn’t expect that HYDRA would be linked to someone like Zemo, and that it would lead to Bucky. She aimed to reveal an organisation that had been secretly controlling world events for decades. However, once the public found out the truth, the information was not just erased.
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When those files were up, someone figured they could find enough to dig through and link up seemingly unrelated bits. Zemo was that guy. He eventually gets the Winter Soldier’s trigger words, plays with Bucky, and uses the footage from 1991 to expose the truth about Tony Stark’s parents.
The outcome is one of the MCU’s most painful encounters. Tony discovers that under HYDRA’s control, Bucky murdered his parents, Steve attempts to save Bucky, and the friendship between the Avengers comes to an end. So it wasn’t Natasha’s fault that the Avengers broke up.
However, her decision to expose HYDRA unwittingly put another piece of the puzzle into the world. Black Widow helped expose the people responsible for countless crimes, only for that information to eventually help someone expose the secret that broke the Avengers.
