After two long years away from the big screen, Marvel Studios is officially back with its 24th theatrical release in Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow. This movie is set as a prequel directly after the events of Captain America: Civil War and took the opportunity to hide an expectedly high number of fun MCU Easter eggs through the plot.
The most obvious example came with Yelena Belova's vest that she gave to Natasha, which was confirmed to be the vest Nat was wearing in Avengers: Infinity War. Black Widow may have even included the first character from the X-Men lore as another Easter egg, although this hasn't been confirmed to be fact yet.
Even for the fun nods to the comics and other movies that did make it into the movie, there's never quite enough room for all of them. One of them was just revealed in a new interview with a Black Widow producer, one that wouldn't have been the first of its kind.
ANOTHER DOCTOR DOOM TEASE
Black Widow producer Eric Pearson spoke with IGN about a scrapped Easter egg from the MCU's 24th theatrical release.
Pearson couldn't help but laugh while revealing that he "might've had a reference to Latveria" in the movie, which is known as the home country for Victor Von Doom. He admitted that he's "always trying" to bring the country into play as an Easter egg, comparing it to being "the first one" to pick it out on social media:
“I might've had a reference to [Doctor Doom’s home country] Latveria in there -- I might have, but I don't think so. I don't think that lasted very long. I'm always trying to throw Latveria into stuff. … It's like one of those things where you want to be the first one to say it on an Instagram post or something!”
LATVERIA ALWAYS LURKING
While it's fun on a core level to hear Pearson's passion for the classic Marvel Comics country of Latveria, it's exciting to know that this almost-teased will still lead to big things.
The MCU has already teased Latveria once before, ever so slightly thanks to an Easter egg in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+ after introducing Wolverine's home country of Madripoor in the same entry. Episode 3 featured Helmut Zemo mentioning that Sokovia had been "cannibalized by its neighbors," potentially hinting at Latveria being the cause of that destruction.
Jon Watts' Fantastic Four is confirmed to be in the early stages of development for Marvel Studios, although it won't be coming to theaters until 2023 or later. With so much time before this movie debuts, Marvel Studios has plenty of legwork to do in terms of setting the stage for the team's long-awaited arrival.
While the Latveria Easter egg didn't end up in the final cut of Black Widow, it's clearly a priority for the team behind the MCU to keep hype going for the Fantastic Four coming home to Marvel Studios. With more than two dozen projects in the works before then, there are more than enough opportunities to bring teases like this.
Black Widow is now playing in theaters and streaming on Disney+.
