Yelena Belova (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

Early life

Yelena Belova was recruited by General Dreykov for an undercover KGB operation led by super soldier Alexei Shostakov and Melina Vostokoff. Due to Belova's young age, she was the only member of the group who was unaware of their assigned mission. Instead, she believed them to be a real family.

After Shostakov completed his mission in 1995, the family escaped by plane to Cuba, where they met Dreykov and gave him stolen research. With the mission complete, Belova and Romanoff were sent to train as Black Widow assassins in the Red Room. Belova's first test was to lure her close friend, Anya, out into the woods, only to be shot by their handler. Belova emerged from her training as one of the world's best child assassins. Following Romanoff's defection, Belova was chemically subjugated by the Red Room to prevent further desertions.

Destroying the Red Room

In 2016, Belova is freed from her chemical subjugation by a rogue Widow whom she was initially sent to kill. Following an encounter with a synthetic gas that neutralizes the chemical conditioning, Belova cuts a tracker out of her leg and goes into hiding. Hoping to free the other Widows, Belova sends the antidote to Romanoff from a safe house in Budapest, expecting that she and the other Avengers would receive the package and use it to take down the Red Room.^[1]

A few weeks later, Belova encounters the now-fugitive Romanoff, who is on the run after violating the Sokovia Accords.^[a] Romanoff, who has come to find her after finally finding the package of Red Dust, is under the belief that the Red Room is gone. Belova quickly disabuses her of this notion, just before Red Room agents sent to retrieve the Dust attack Yelena's safe house. After escaping, they agree to work together to destroy the Red Room.^[1]

Attemping to find its location, Belova and Romanoff break Shostakov out of prison. He subsequently directs them to Vostokoff, who is a member of Dreykov's inner circle. There, Romanoff convinces Vostokoff to help them. Belova, Romanoff, Shostakov, and Vostokoff officially reunite as a family and sneak into the Red Room together, which is now an airborne facility circling the globe. Once inside, Belova exposes the Widows to the Dust to free them from chemical subjugation while Romanoff downloads the worldwide locations of other Widows into a hard drive. To destroy the agency for good, Vostokoff sabotages the Red Room's airborne engines, sending the facility into free-fall. Seeing Dreykov attempt to escape on a plane, Belova blows it up, finally killing him.^[1]

After finally destroying the agency, Romanoff gives Belova the last vial of Dust they have and the hard drive with the locations of the remaining chemically subjugated Widows. Belova departs with Vostokoff and Shostakov after saying goodbye to Romanoff, setting off to synthesize more of the gas and free the remaining Widows.^[1]

Going after Clint Barton

In 2018, Belova and Widow agent Sonya subdue a woman named Anna in her house, wanting to "deprogram" her like other Black Widows but it turns out she did not need their help. Inside Anna's house, Belova becomes a victim of the Blip and is restored to life in 2023,^[b] hoping to talk with Romanoff, but eventually learns of her death. Belova goes on to get a dog named Fanny and work as a contract killer for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. In December 2024, Belova visits Romanoff's grave and is met by de Fontaine, who tasks Belova to kill Clint Barton, telling her that he is to blame for her sister's death.^[1]

Belova tracks Barton to New York City and ambushes him, getting into a fight with his protégé Kate Bishop and Maya Lopez as well. During the ensuing fight she is unmasked by Barton and escapes. She confronts Bishop at her apartment and reveals that she was hired to kill Barton. Belova attempts to convince Bishop that Barton is not the hero that Bishop worships, but Bishop rebuffs this. Belova follows Bishop's mother, Eleanor, and takes a video of her talking to Wilson Fisk before sending it to Bishop, stating Eleanor had hired her.

Belova attends the Bishop Christmas Party at the Rockefeller Center, where she is intercepted by Bishop, who tries to stop her from getting to Barton. Later on the ice rink, Belova confronts Barton and demands the truth of Romanoff's death. Barton complies, but the struggle leads to a fight in which Barton eventually convinces Belova to stand down and spare his life after whistling her and Romanoff's whistle, leading her to realize how close he was to Romanoff. Belova comes to terms with Barton and leaves.

Joining the New Avengers

By 2027, Belova is still working for de Fontaine. She is sent to Kuala Lumpur to destroy an O.X.E. lab for de Fontaine. Following this, Belova visits Shostakov and she tells him she feels lost and unfulfilled and has decided to stop working for de Fontaine. De Fontaine sends her on one last mission to covert facility in Utah to kill the rogue agent Ava Starr. While following Starr, Belova is surprised by the arrival of other contract killers: former Captain America John Walker and former Red Room assassin Antonia Dreykov. Following a fight between the four, Starr shooting Taskmaster in the head, the mysterious arrival of a man named Bob shocks the group out of fight mode in time for them to realize that their "mission" is a setup by de Fontaine to kill them all, as they are the last piece of evidence tying O.X.E. to anything illegal. With Bob's help, the group escapes, leaving him behind after he decides to sacrifice himself.

Shostakov finds Belova, Walker, and Starr walking in the desert. He dubs the group the "Thunderbolts", named after Belova's childhood soccer team. The team is attacked again by a convoy of de Fontaine's forces, but they are saved by Bucky Barnes, who apprehends them and intends to have them testify in de Fontaine's impeachment proceedings. Learning that Bob has survived and has been shipped to New York, the team infiltrate the former Avengers Tower in New York City, now renamed the "Watchtower," to find that Bob is an O.X.E. test subject who has miraculously survived the company's experiment—an experiment that has transformed Bob into an immensely powerful superhuman known as the Sentry.

De Fontaine manipulates the Sentry into attacking the team and he easily overpowers them, forcing them to escape. After he refuses to obey her order to kill them, de Fontaine hits the Sentry's kill switch which later turns Bob into his destructive alter ego, the Void, who starts turning everyone in his vicinity into shadows and engulfs the city in darkness. Realizing that Bob's consciousness is still there under the surface and that there might be a way to reach him, Belova enters the Void. After confronting her past life growing up in the Red Room, she reaches him and finds that Bob's consciousness has been consumed by his own traumas. The rest of the team follow in after Belova and help Bob confront the Void by reminding him that he is not alone. The show of support helps Bob overcome the Void, restoring the city to normal. With the threat neutralized, the team prepares to apprehend de Fontaine, only to be manipulated by her again into walking into a staged press conference. De Fontaine takes advantage of their surprise, using the moment to rebrand them as the New Avengers. Belova warns De Fontaine that she will regret it if she threatens them again.

By 2028, the New Avengers' Watchtower had completed construction and was now established as their primary base of operations, while Belova herself had repurposed a bathhouse into her personal office. Following an attack on the Department of Damage Control (DODC) detention center, Spider-Man seeks out Belova's assistance, believing the perpetrator's activities to fall under the Avengers' jurisdiction. Belova disagreed, feeling that the incident was too small in scope for her or the team to be of any assistance. Belova would later help Spider-Man uncover information about the perpetrator, a telepath named Jean Grey. Belova tells Spider-Man that Jean's sister, Sara, was also a telepath who died due to experiments conducted on her by the DODC, leading Spider-Man to realize its director Bill Metzger was lying about Jean's motives, until their conversation is interrupted by MJ and Ned Leeds, who are excited to meet her via video call. Belova is happy to see MJ and Leeds, knowing now that Spider-Man has people who care about him.

While on duty in the Watchtower, Belova and the New Avengers receive a distress signal from an extra-dimensional spacecraft.^[c]

Zombie outbreak

In an alternate universe where a zombie plague infected the world, Belova, Vostokoff and Shostakov have been using technology to control and protect various zombies until they encounter Kamala Khan and Blade Knight. They discover that the S.H.I.E.L.D. device must be taken into outer space to request help from the Nova Corps, until the base is attacked by a zombie Okoye, leading an army of zombies for the Queen of the Dead. In a tragic battle, Belova, Kamala, Blade, and Shostakov manage to escape and she learns that Vostokoff was left behind in sacrificing herself, and decide to go into outer space. They take refuge in Helmut Zemo's sanctuary, The Raft, upon encountering Shang-Chi's group. However, they fall into a trap set by Zemo to be sacrificed to the Talokanil zombie horde, led by a zombie Namor. After the remaining team escapes, Belova stays to manually override the escape pod, sacrificing herself and toasts her fallen allies before getting infected, and the Raft floods completely. Belova returns as a zombie, along with other fallen now zombies, part of the Queen of the Dead's army.

Appearances and depictions

Pugh first appeared as the character in Black Widow (2021), where director Cate Shortland said that Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow would be "handing [Belova] the baton" which would go on to "propel another female storyline".^[7] On her character, Pugh called Belova "a lethal weapon but also a bit of a kid", adding that she "has no clue how to live as a human being".^[8]: 4 Pugh characterized Belova's relationship with Romanoff as "a sister story that really homes in on grief, on pain, on abuse, on being a victim — and living with being a victim".^[9] Johansson revealed that an early version of the script had a much more adversarial relationship between the sisters, with Belova intending to "dethrone" Romanoff as a spy; Johansson rejected that direction for the characters.^[10] Wanting to avoid this dynamic, Johansson described the relationship between the two characters as "a knowingness and a sisterhood".^[11] She felt that Belova would best stand on her own in comparison to Romanoff, while Pugh added there was a "generational difference" and that Belova is "unapologetic, and confident in herself, curious […] and emotionally brave".^[12]

Pugh next appeared as the character in the Disney+ series Hawkeye (2021).^[13] On the character, Pugh noted that the show "sets up a whole different challenge" as she was now up against her sister's fighting partner, Clint Barton.^[14] She added that it was "really wonderful to kind of jump ahead and see [how the character] has been surviving".^[14]

For Thunderbolts*, the actors were given substantial input into the portrayal of their characters in the film.^[15] Pugh said that her character has been affected by the traumatic events of recent MCU projects, including the death of Romanoff.^[d] In the film, Belova jumps off the top of the Merdeka 118 without the use of stunt doubles in which Marvel Studios was initially reluctant to allow.^[17] Pugh noted that she had to push for the scenes to happen.^[17] Pugh also advocated for changes to the opening scene that resulted in the character performing the initial mission dressed in a sweatsuit rather than spy gear, reflective of her overall dour mood.^[15] Pugh also advocated for the script to include references to Romanoff's death, noting that "In the original script, there wasn't anything to do with Natasha".^[18] Throughout her MCU appearances, Pugh noted that Belova's actions have always shown that "she's always trying to help the person that maybe isn't as strong, or maybe needs a bit of love", citing her adoption of a dog in the post-credits scene of Black Widow, her treatment of Kate Bishop in Hawkeye, and her compassion towards Bob in Thunderbolts.^[18]

In 2025, Pugh voiced an alternate universe variant of Belova in the Disney+ animated series Marvel Zombies (2025) who sacrifices herself to help the remaining survivors escape a zombified version of Namor.^[19] In 2026, she appeared in the film Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) where she advises Spider-Man about an attack on the Department of Damage Control.^[20] Characters in the film identify Belova as the new Black Widow.^[21] Pugh is set to reprise her role in the film Avengers: Doomsday (2026) with the trailer showing Belova fighting the X-Men character Mystique.^[22]

Differences from the comics

The MCU version of Belova differs from her comic book counterpart in several respects, most notably in having been raised as Romanoff's sister, which is not an aspect of the comic book character, who was instead merely a fellow Red Room student.^[23] Physically, comic book Belova is relatively tall (5' 7") with blue eyes, while Florence Pugh, portraying Belova in the MCU, is 5' 3" with green eyes.^[23] An additional story element is that Belova in the MCU first meets Clint Barton while pursuing him in the belief that he killed Romanoff, while in the comics they first meet when Barton pursues Belova to stop her use of extreme methods to hunt down Hydra agents.^[23]

Accolades