Because of her traumatic origin, Black Widow's strategy toward recruiting Bruce Banner in The Avengers becomes incredibly questionable.

Black Widow’s approach toward Hulk in The Avengers is actually incredibly dark, given what is later revealed about her MCU origin. Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), more popularly known as Black Widow, is perhaps one of the more secretive heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Naturally, this is because of her status as a highly trained spy and assassin, but also was partially created by the hero being regularly relegated as a side character in the MCU. However, thanks to her solo film, a significant part of Black Widow’s background is revealed, shedding light on her motives and actions during her Avengers tenure.

In The Avengers, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) reactivates the Avengers Initiative as a response to Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) Chitauri invasion. Black Widow is given the task of recruiting Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), so she heads to Kolkata, India, where Bruce is treating the locals while seeking refuge and controlling his transformations. A girl then asks him for help in treating her sick father, leading him to an empty cottage on the outskirts of the city. As it turns out, the child is Black Widow’s means of luring Bruce into meeting her and enlisting him into the superhero team.

As shown in Black Widow, Natasha had been a part of the Red Room since her childhood, getting introduced to the program from a very young age. While her trick might have been simply a way of reaching Bruce, the nature of her origins make this method far more unsettling. Since Natasha’s deflection to SHIELD required her to shut down Black Widow’s Red Room, she knew the dangers of child espionage, and as such, she was aware of the benefits of stopping such an operation. Consequently, her reverting to the methods she grew up with in order to reach her goal is truly questionable. For someone who experienced trauma and conditioning all her life, Black Widow should have known better than to involve another child in dangerous espionage tactics.

Additionally, at that point in the MCU timeline, Bruce Banner was considered highly dangerous, since the Hulk was still a relatively new and unpredictable character. In fact, he was the subject of an ongoing manhunt — a fact that Black Widow knew, so she did not even dare to approach Bruce entirely on her own for risk of him immediately hulking out. Thus, leaving a young girl alone with Bruce in The Avengers was arguably problematic, as she might also have endangered an innocent life in the process.

However, Black Widow’s Hulk trick in The Avengers might be so questionable a move for the character because it was simply done out of convenience — a one-time task done for the greater good. After all, merely four years later, she embarked on a journey to finally put the Red Room and its operations of control and endangerment to an end. While that would not totally absolve Black Widow of her past crimes and actions, she still managed to redeem herself in the end.

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