While Black Widow has been a massive success for Marvel, and is currently sitting with a 92% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, there was one big issue that some had with the movie; the reveal of Taskmaster’s identity. While many had expected Tony Masters from the comic books, Marvel provided one of their usual twists in making the character the gifted daughter of villain Dreykov.
Once the revelation had been made, and based on the very themes of the movie, it made perfect sense that they wouldn’t want the strongest character – with the ability to mimic and take on the ability of any adversary – to turn out to be anything but unexpected. Actress Olga Kurylenko, who played the character whose agenda and priorities had been reset by the end of Black Widow, spoke to ComicBook.com recently, and had a little to say about her MCU future.
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“That’s what’s so exciting about her. There are so many directions she could go,” Kurylenko said. “She could go so many different ways. And because there’s a battle in her between the good and the evil, and she has both and she is both, obviously she has the skills, but in the end, as you say, that spell is off her and she’s not under control anymore. So there is this potential freedom and it could go that way. Who knows? The thing is, it’s exciting. It could be anything. There’s a lot to explore. But the skills are indeed incredible and, yeah, the character could, I mean, do a lot.”
Asked about who she thought would be a great character for Taskmaster to either team up with or fight against, Kurylenko went on, “Everyone asks me that question. And it’s hard to pick one because they’re all different and they’re all great, and I always say since Taskmaster can mirror the others, wouldn’t it be cool if he’s just facing all of them and maybe at the same time? That would be such a cool fight because it’s like fighting yourself, right, when you fight Taskmaster because I’ll be replicating all their moves. So anyone could be great.”
Black Widow writer Eric Pearson spoke to the site recently to discuss the character and the decisions that went into making Taskmaster Dreykov’s daughter, and why there was a lot of reasoning behind making the reveal mean something in the movie. “Taskmaster was going to be involved and there was versions before I came that was Tony Masters,” Pearson explained. “I kept thinking, I was like, ‘Can this guy somehow not just be a goon?’ Because Dreykov in the Red Room is the thing that’s tied into Natasha personally in her past of giant, nefarious, that as we learned, the spy station, that is circling the globe in the atmosphere. Why is there this guy? Why would this guy be an arm of them? That’s what I kept trying to be… Trust me, I looked very, very far for how do we get this Tony Masters guy to believably be an agent of the Red Room? And then just leaned more towards other things were making sense, other parts of the puzzle were adding up.”
He concluded, “Oh, they stole from Ohio the cellular blueprint of the basal ganglia, the way to deconstruct freewill. Okay. They’ve got the ability to rebuild the mind. Oh, Dreykov’s daughter, Natasha used her as bait, blew her up. Well, what if she didn’t survive and this guy who has a lot of brain science, was that a good way to find these photographic reflexes? It just seemed to make more sense. I mean, that’s the good thing, is they really, at Marvel, they treat you for your story. Is this working for your story? And everyone felt like it was so we went with it. It felt like it made it more personal and I mean, I hope that fans like it. I know that some won’t.” Black Widow is currently in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access.
https://comicbook.com/marvel/news/black-widows-taskmaster-actor-on-mcu-future-exclusive-interview-olga-kurylenko/
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