#anaylsis.

We start off in the Avengers Secure Holding Facility in an undisclosed location in the Pacific Northwest. Yelena Belova is being interrogated by Carol Danvers under suspicion that she worked with the Winter Guard involving Walters’ arrest.

The Wolf Spider Spec Ops group attempts to break her out in order to capture or kill her for her assumed admission to the Avengers regarding Walters and she escapes in the process. Before a Spider can kill her Black Widow gets her out on the back of her motorcycle (this is sapphic culture we stan) and takes Yelena to her San Francisco Base of Operations where Natalya informs her that the Winter Guard is at war with the Avengers and that her reluctance to join sides means she will continue to be a Person of Interest to the Avengers.

(She’s referred to as the White Widow multiple times??? I’m not sure what the basis for this is, I haven’t read enough comics with Yelena to know if this is a new thing, but it does put her in direct thematic contrast to the main baddie of the comic: Red Widow. However the whole Black Widow, White Widow, Red Widow thing is giving very much Suess energy.)

Yelena discloses to Natalya that she’s working alongside Alexei because they have similar interests in the motherland and that their mission did not involve anyone else, including the Guard, or at least it wasn’t supposed to. She doesn’t want any of the Guard dead. Her relationship with the Guard here I believe is supposed to be a reference to the broader theme of Yelena’s (& many Russian people’s) complicated and nuanced relationship to her homeland as well as a storyline that hasn’t been revealed yet.

Mikhail, Ursa Major, is revealed to have been killed, although not by an Avenger, but at the hands of “Red Widow,” a mysterious Red Room graduate that Natalya describes as possibly inhuman. The main story of the comic begins as Yelena agrees to tell Natalya why “Alexei and I went home...and why I do not hate the Winter Guard.” 

Three weeks before...

Yelena and Alexei are working together to break into a highly secure base in order to steal mission details for something called Operation Snowblind, the Red Guardian’s last assignment.

Red Widow is shown working for the Security Council and leading the Winter Guard.

As she’s assigning the task of hunting Yelena and Alexei down she describes Alexei as the U.S.S.R’s “failed response to Captain America,” “declared MIA after the Cold War,” and “resurfaced in the United States after rotting away for years in prison.” But also frames him as a childhood hero for most of those present at the meeting. She describes Yelena as “Yelena Belova aka White Widow, aka Black Widow, aka the Red Room’s second biggest mistake.”

There’s a throwaway line where Red Widow mentions that the Winter Guard doesn’t question orders. But several members like Darkstar, Crimson Dynamo (the defacto leader), and Ursa Major express discomfort at their assignment.

Crimson Dynamo aka Dmitri Bukharin comments that hunting down Yelena may be in their purview but that Alexei was a national hero and he didn’t agree to lead this new iteration of the Winter Guard to be a hit squad. Vanguard aka Nikolai Krylenko seen above in red, says Alexei may never have been someone to idolize and if he was, that person is long dead and that those who looked up to him should be the ones to bring him down anyway.

Alexei and Yelena recover the hard drive containing information on Operation Snowblind. Yelena is skeptical of the hard drive’s worthiness of the impending fight with the Winter Guard and Alexei responds with the Russian proverb: “What the pen writes the axe cannot erase.”

Yelena engages the Winter Guard while Alexei secures an “exit strategy.” The only remarkable thing from the fight was this weird interaction between Mikhail and Yelena (and yes, Mikhail, as in the guy Natalya said the Red Widow killed 3 weeks from now):

I’m holding out hope but the stereotyping so far is either purposeful in order to be refuted and used later but right now it’s in place of Mikhail having an actual personality. I have no earthly, yawning fuck why it was necessary to mention that Yelena smells like Alexei in this other than bearlore but ok. Reading forward this dynamic can be inferred, at least to me, as a very close friendship or allyship that eventually turned adversarial as Mikhail and Yelena continue to snipe at each other’s choice of work:

This is interesting twofold: one, we have no idea what Operation Snowblind is and why it would make Yelena choose to forgo her usual operational mystique in order to obtain the hard drive, but from what is shown in Widowmakers she’s disillusioned by the government and contract work in general and may be moving onto more loftier pursuits in the name of the Russian people. Two, it’s interesting in a story building sense because Yelena’s love for her country being directly at odds with that country’s love for her is very relevant in modern Russia:

WIDOWMAKERS PANEL 1:

WIDOWMAKERS PANEL 2:

...i digress.

During Yelena’s fight with the Guard Alexei is doing something with the hard drive (???) and is interrupted by Vanguard, who’s wearing an iteration of the Red Guardian’s OG suit, he then boomerangs the kid through a window which was funny. But if I have to suffer through this boomerang again after waiting until 2019 to get a proper shield I’m rioting.

I simply hate him, your honor. 

Anyway, Alexei reveals there’s a traitor in the Winter Guard who’s helping him, he then presses a button and blows up Crimson Dynamo. Darkstar appears like she might have gotten to Dmitri quick enough but I think the implication is that he’s dead or critically injured.

Red Widow pursues Alexei and Yelena as they run to the plane, but Yelena incapacitates her. From the following panel I think that Red Widow and Yelena are going to become dedicated enemies moving forward.

The issue ends with Yelena chiding Alexei for murdering or attempting to murder Crimson Dynamo. From what Alexei says, Operation Snowblind has something to do with the “enlightening of superheroes” which he describes as “rarely a painless process” therefore murder is justifiable, I guess?? It’s still not clear if the spy working with Alexei is Red Widow or someone else entirely.

I didn’t mind this issue. Clearly it's attempting to tie in different themes from the film in order to pull in the movie’s audience, but I don’t hate it. What I’m getting more nervous of is another fucking villain arc for Alexei. They appear to be setting him up as a foil for Yelena: Modern Russia vs Soviet Ideals. I really hope this isn’t the case or if it is I hope he’s redeemed in a way that doesn’t involve another death.