Black Widow is finally hitting theaters, but is a sequel coming next?

Cate Shortland is making her MCU debut with Black Widow, and she had some killer help.

While the upcoming (and long-awaited) Black Widow movie will give a proper sendoff to Scarlett Johansson’s MCU character, the film will also be teeing up a potential new franchise inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Given that Johansson’s character Natasha Romanoff dies in 2019’s epic Avengers: Endgame, this spinoff is a prequel that fills in some gaps from her backstory. Namely, it finds Natasha returning to Russia to her “found family” in between the events of Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War. That found family includes David Harbour’s Red Guardian, Russia’s counterpart to …