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Red Room (comics)

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Red Room
Interior of the Red Room
Art by David López
First appearanceBlack Widow #2 (June 1999)
In-universe information
LocationsRussia
Character(s)
PublisherMarvel Comics

The Red Room is a fictional location appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The Soviet training facility was created to produce highly specialized spies, including Black Widows Natasha Romanova and Yelena Belova.

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the Red Room appears as a Russia-based program that trains young orphan girls to become elite assassins called Black Widows. The program, and its end, are portrayed in the film Black Widow (2021).

Fictional history

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In the Marvel Universe, The Red Room (Красная комната) is one of the K.G.B.'s espionage-training programs. During the Cold War, it trained female spies known as Black Widows. In some stories, it administers biochemical enhancements to its agents and implants them with false memories, similar to the Weapon Plus Program. It has trained mutants as agents.

The K.G.B. use the Red Room through the late 1970s. It trained their agent Yelena Belova, though she soon left the service.[1]

Natasha Romanova, weary of espionage and adventure, retires to Arizona but is targeted, as were the other Black Widow graduates of the Red Room, by the North Institute, on behalf of the Gynacon corporation. Romanova's investigation leads her back to Russia, where she is appalled to learn the extent of her past manipulation. She discovers the Black Widows are being hunted because Gynacon, having purchased Russian biotechnology from Red Room's successor agency 2R, wants all earlier users of the technology dead. After killing Gynacon CEO Ian McMasters, she clashes with operatives of multiple governments to help Sally Anne Carter, a girl Natasha befriended in her investigations, whom she rescued with help from Daredevil and Yelena Belova.[2]

The Red Room bought Omega Red's freedom with the hopes of using him to their own ends. They also captured Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler to interrogate about the events of M-Day that cost most of their mutant operatives their powers. When the three X-Men escaped, the Red Room commander unleashed Omega Red only to end up killed by him. Omega Red is mostly impervious to Wolverine's claws; the Red Room had been experimenting on him in an effort to enhance his healing factor. After Nightcrawler intervenes and knocks Omega Red unconscious, he is returned to S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.[3]

In the Widowmaker comic, the Red Room was the site of a mass slaughter of K.G.B recruits by the Dark Ocean Society and Ronin as part of a false flag operation to force a war between Russia and Japan, intended to restore Russia's former glory. However the operation was foiled by the combined efforts of Natasha Romanova, Hawkeye, Mockingbird, and Dominic Fortune.[4] The All-New, All-Different Marvel revealed that Hank Pym's daughter Nadia van Dyne through first wife Maria Trovaya was raised in the Red Room.[5]

Other notable programs

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  • In the work of Richard K. Morgan, the Red Room recruits 28 orphan girls to become undetectable deep-cover agents to infiltrate China and the West under the "Black Widow" ops program. Professor Grigor Chelintsov uses psychotechnics to imprint them with fabricated memories, making them believe they were trained in ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre. Furthermore, the girls received a special treatment designed by biochemist Lyudmila Kudrin that allows them, for decades, to remain young, healthy and resilient at superhuman levels.
  • Niko Constantin was the only male trainee of the Red Room's male equivalent of the Black Widow Ops program dubbed "Wolf Spider" (Паук-Волк) ops program. He proved an effective killer, but impossible to control, leading the program to be declared a failure. Years later, he was found imprisoned in a Russian gulag, leading a gang of convicts dubbed the Wolf Spiders, and holding a grudge against Bucky Barnes, one of the Wolf Spider trainers.[6]

In other media

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Marvel Cinematic Universe

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See also: Red Room (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the Red Room, also known as the Black Widow Program, is depicted as a top-secret Russian training program, led by Dreykov. The program takes young orphan girls and turns them into assassins named Black Widows.

  • The Red Room appears via vision in the film Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Graduate Natasha Romanoff recalls her training in a nightmarish vision induced by Wanda Maximoff.[7]
  • The ABC television series Agent Carter (2015) depicts a precursor to the program which began prior to World War II.[8][9]
  • The Red Room is featured heavily in the film Black Widow (2021).[10][11][12][13] Prior to the film, Romanoff believed the Red Room to be destroyed after seemingly having killed Dreykov. However, Dreykov emerges alive and continues the program. The film sees the Red Room's termination at the hands of Romanoff and her sister, another Red Room graduate, Yelena Belova.

References

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  1. ^ Black Widow #1
  2. ^ Black Widow (vol. 2) #1
  3. ^ The Uncanny X-Men 497–499
  4. ^ Widowmaker #1–4 (December 2010–January 2011)
  5. ^ All-New, All-Different Avengers #9
  6. ^ Captain America #616–619
  7. ^ Doty, Meriah; Errico, Marcus (May 1, 2015). "'Age of Ultron': We Decode Those Angst-Ridden Avengers Dreams (Spoilers!)". Yahoo! Movies. Retrieved May 4, 2015.
  8. ^ "Marvel's Agent Carter Explores the Origins of the Black Widow Program". Marvel.com. February 3, 2015.
  9. ^ "MARVEL'S AGENT CARTER EXCLUSIVE: SHOWRUNNERS REVEAL WHO DOTTIE WORKS FOR". IGN. January 28, 2015.
  10. ^ Evangelista, Chris (July 29, 2019). "'Black Widow' Will Have Multiple Black Widows". /Film. Archived from the original on July 30, 2019. Retrieved August 27, 2019.
  11. ^ Kile, Meredith (July 20, 2019). "Scarlett Johansson Ushers in the MCU's Female Future With 'Black Widow': 'It's Pretty Explosive' (Exclusive)". Entertainment Tonight. Archived from the original on July 21, 2019. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
  12. ^ Knox, Kelly (December 12, 2019). "Black Widow: Rachel Weisz's Character Explained – Who Is Melina Vostokoff?". IGN. Archived from the original on December 15, 2019. Retrieved January 12, 2020.
  13. ^ Weiss, Josh (March 9, 2020). "Black Widow: Natasha Fights To Free The Red Room From Taskmaster In Final Trailer". SyFy Wire. Archived from the original on March 9, 2020. Retrieved March 9, 2020.
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