MCU Phase 4: Will Black Widow's Red Guardian Fight The New Captain America?

One of the most interesting tidbits in Black Widow, the long-awaited standalone movie for Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff, was the Red Guardian's assertion that he faced off with Captain America back in his prime. The Red Guardian, played by Stranger Things' David Harbour, was active in the '80s, when Natasha was a child, before being imprisoned in a remote Russian gulag sometime between then and the MCU's present. Yet he claims in the movie that he and Captain America operated as contemporaries, rivals in the geopolitical conflicts of the era.

Whether his stories have any truth to them is up for debate. On one hand, it's easy to assume he's just being a blowhard, simply due to how the character generally behaves. On the other, it's strange that he would earnestly ask Natasha whether Steve ever mentioned him if he knew they'd never actually met. Harbour told Inverse that the stories are true, but the site also suggests he may have been speaking somewhat sarcastically.

Is it even possible that Red Guardian (real name Alexei Shostakov) and Captain America fought? After all, following World War II, Steve Rogers was frozen in ice for decades. Then again, thanks to The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, we know there were other American supersoldiers in the intervening years. Maybe Alexei fought a different Captain America? Or maybe he fought the Syeve Rogers who went back in time during Avengers: Endgame, decades of whose life remain unaccounted for in the MCU?

We may never know the answers to these questions, but the MCU does tend to follow up on stuff like this. For example, Black Widow also revealed at long last exactly what happened in Budapest--a long-running Easter egg for fans. And Harbour said during Black Widow's press conference before the film's release that the rivalry between his character and Captain America "could be explored further."

"You have this big 25-year gap that we don't know about," the actor said. "We see him in Ohio and then we see him in the prison...He has all these stories about his life and about what went on. And [it's] questionable whether or not they're real."

"I do think that the classic Cold War thing is a really fun and funny dynamic between these two guys, and the fact that they basically came up as nuclear warheads, like in an arms race together," Harbour continued. "I think it's just a really great concept that could be explored further."

At the same time, though, fans are eagerly looking toward the MCU's future. After pandemic delays and more character-focused Disney+ shows like WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki, a wealth of MCU movies are coming this year, including Shang-Chi, The Eternals, and Spider-Man: No Way Home. And in this post-Endgame world, there's a new Captain America: Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who officially picked up the shield in the aforementioned Disney+ show.

Could Sam-Cap and Red Guardian ever face off? As of the end of Black Widow, Alexei is in the wind, and we certainly haven't seen him in any of the MCU movies or shows that took place after Black Widow (post-Captain America: Civil War). But now that David Harbour has entered the MCU and been well received by fans, anything is possible.

We don't know what's next for Sam, but it seems to us that a face-off with the Red Guardian could be a lot of fun--and Harbour agrees. "I really love the Falcon character," he said. "I love Anthony Mackie just as an actor too. And now that he's wearing the Cap suit, and the amount of complexity that Alexei has with Cap in general, whoever wears the suit--he hates that guy, and he hates who he represents...I just think that dynamic would be really fun, to see [Alexei and Sam] have some stuff together."

For more on Black Widow, check out our review, ending and post-credits scene explainer, and the movie's massive opening weekend take.