Gotta love it when Marvel Legends decides to just ignore the "Legend" part of its name.
The silent and mysterious Red Widow is an assassin trained in the Red Room to serve in the super-powered Winter Guard.
Mysterious yes, silent no. She talks when she chooses to. But other than "went through Red Room training" and "answers to someone extremely high in the Russian government," nothing is known about her. Although she was created in 2018, she feels like one of those '90s characters that were all trying to recapture the success of Wolverine: they all had some generic, derivative supranym, no real name, and an unrevealed past that almost assuredly bumped up against the Weapon X Program at some point in the past. The only clue that she wasn't introduced in 1992 is that she's wearing pants. And a shirt. And that her name isn't spelt "Redde Wyddowe" or something.
One thing helping with her mysteriousness is her costume.
The various Black Widows - Natasha, Yelena, all the others that have gone through the training - have typically relied on not leaving any witnesses alive as the solution for not being identified, but Red Widow wears a ninja mask covering her lower face, and a hood covering the top of her head, leaving her only identifiable feature being blank white eyes visible inside deep shadow. [no, she's actually wearing a skintight black mask in there, that's literally what you'd see even in a strong light --ed.] So it's not just that we don't know who she is, we don't know anything about how she looks, even six years later.
Most of RW's costume can be achieved through paint, so the figure uses one of the standard bodies. Which one? The same as
fellow Russian superhero Darkstar, though with a smaller chest. (She doesn't suffer from Sersi's skinny legs, though.) The costume is mostly red, with black panels on her sides and all the way down to her boots, though leaving the knees red does add a little bit of visual interest. It's easy to overlook, but she has a Widow hourglass symbol painted on her stomach - the lines are so thin, you may not even realize they're there. The black ones on the back of her hands are much more blatant.
Things are broken up by the addition of a few extra pieces. There's her giant, multi-layered cape, of course, but also three belts
looped around her waist, and straps around both thighs. It's little touches like this that make a figure more than mediocre. The cape, which is actuall a combo of cape, shawl, and collar, does unfortunately block a bunch of the articulation, because it's such a stiff material. She should be as dynamic and active as Black Widow, right? But now the legs can't go back at all, her left arm is nearly useless above the wrist, and the right shoulder isn't great, either. Plus, the shape of her hood is designed to almost "lock in" to the collar of the cape, so the head doesn't do a lot, either. Honestly, they should have done this as softgoods, as ridiculous as that is to say. 2024 Hasbro? Spending money on something unique unusual? Ha!
The figure includes alternate hands: open right hand, balled left fist, and a pair designed to hold accessories. Or at least one accessory. She's armed with the same double-bladed staff King Daredevil had, which is absolutely the sort of thing she uses - her preference seems to be a lot of bladed weapons, knives and swords and such - but we honestly would have given this accessory up for a more flexible cape. It would have been a fair tradeoff.
She also includes the left front lego of Zabu, the Build-A-Figure for Series 12.
In addition to spying on the other members of the Winter Guard, Red Widow also helped Hyperion overcome his memories from the whole "reality warping" thing. Why would she do something so helpful? We haven't seen yet, but trust she had some ulterior motive. It's always cool to get a Marvel Legend of someone who hasn't had a toy before, even if they're not the most famous character in the world, but the fact Red Widow can't do much more than stand around is less fun.
-- 12/23/24
Do Widows come in other colors? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
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