2021's "Black Widow" was always a puzzling movie for me. You're finally giving the one woman on The Avengers her own movie after you kill her off in "Avengers: Endgame"? Hence it is a prequel, one that takes place within the third act of "Captain America: Civil War." Then there's the film's story being built around the vague allusions to Widow's history in "The Avengers" from "Dreykov's daughter" to a past mission in Budapest. Once more, wiki-brained nerds proved they can't tell when a line is there to suggest a character has an offscreen history, not set up a spin-off.

But having seen "Black Widow," I understand why it got pushed to Phase 4. The movie is more than anything a torch passing from one Widow to the next: Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) to her little sister, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). Pugh has since shown up as Yelena in the...