Five Biggest Surprises In Avengers: Age Of Ultron

(Note: This article contains spoilers for Avengers: Age of Ultron. Like, pretty significant spoilers, since we’re talking about five things that surprised us. If you need a non-spoiler review, we’ve got one of those. Otherwise, read on and discuss the movie with us!)

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Avengers: Age of Ultron gave people a lot of looks at what was coming prior to its release. Between trailers, exclusive clips released through various outlets and the unparalleled Disney hype machine in general, plenty of aspects of the film were available to be seen before the movie hit theaters. Even the Vision, the character Marvel mostly kept under wraps, was exposed prior to May 1.

Did that mean that there weren’t any surprises? Of course not! Director Joss Whedon and company did manage to hold some of their cards close to the vest, resulting in multiple moments that were able to catch even seasoned Marvel fanatics off guard.

In several cases, knowledge of Marvel comic book history actually made plot developments more shocking, as the movie deviated from the source material in a significant way. Other times, it was simply a matter of story decisions that were startling in their own right.

Now that we’ve had more time to digest what we’ve seen, we came up with five surprises from Age of Ultron that stood out from all the rest and seemed worthy of further discussion.

5. Black Widow can’t have children

Of all the Avengers given the mental whammy by the Scarlet Witch, Black Widow may have suffered the most mental anguish. Natasha received a flashback to her formative spy days, and we got to see her struggling with the “graduation ceremony” from the Red Room.

The visuals at that point in the film made it clear that she was operated on in some way, but it wasn’t until a later conversation with Bruce Banner that Natasha actually spelled it out: it was a sterilization procedure, intended to ensure the assassins the program produced weren’t distracted by thoughts of having a family. It’s an interesting and logical (if horrible) extension of what we know about the Red Room from the comics, where the female agents were definitely modified and experimented on by Soviet scientists.

It’s not like Black Widow would have settled down and raised a family anyway — and in a strange way, it helps to draw her even closer to Bruce, who has just mentioned there’s no way he could justify having children — but it’s worth noting that Natasha tries to flunk out of the Red Room program on purpose. That ruse doesn’t work, but it suggests that she was willing to go to some serious lengths to avoid being rendered infertile.

Hard to imagine Natasha with kids, but you could say that about other Avengers as well. Trust me, we’ll be coming back to this particular line of thinking a little later.

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