Red Room | |
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![]() Interior of the Red Room Art by David López | |
First appearance | Black Widow #2 (June 1999) |
In-universe information | |
Locations | Russia |
Character(s) | |
Publisher | Marvel Comics |
The Red Room is a fictional location appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The Soviet training facility was created to produce highly specialized spies, including Black Widows Natasha Romanova and Yelena Belova.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the Red Room appears as a Russia-based program that trains young orphan girls to become elite assassins called Black Widows. The program, and its end, are portrayed in the film Black Widow (2021).
In the Marvel Universe, The Red Room (Красная комната) is one of the K.G.B.'s espionage-training programs. During the Cold War, it trained female spies known as Black Widows. In some stories, it administers biochemical enhancements to its agents and implants them with false memories, similar to the Weapon Plus Program. It has trained mutants as agents.
The K.G.B. use the Red Room through the late 1970s. It trained their agent Yelena Belova, though she soon left the service. [1]
Natasha Romanova, weary of espionage and adventure, retires to Arizona but is targeted, as were the other Black Widow graduates of the Red Room, by the North Institute, on behalf of the Gynacon corporation. Romanova's investigation leads her back to Russia, where she is appalled to learn the extent of her past manipulation. She discovers the Black Widows are being hunted because Gynacon, having purchased Russian biotechnology from Red Room's successor agency 2R, wants all earlier users of the technology dead. After killing Gynacon CEO Ian McMasters, she clashes with operatives of multiple governments to help Sally Anne Carter, a girl Natasha befriended in her investigations, whom she rescued with help from Daredevil and Yelena Belova. [2]
The Red Room bought Omega Red's freedom with the hopes of using him to their own ends. They also captured Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler to interrogate about the events of M-Day that cost most of their mutant operatives their powers. When the three X-Men escaped, the Red Room commander unleashed Omega Red only to end up killed by him. Omega Red is mostly impervious to Wolverine's claws; the Red Room had been experimenting on him in an effort to enhance his healing factor. After Nightcrawler intervenes and knocks Omega Red unconscious, he is returned to S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. [3]
In the Widowmaker comic, the Red Room was the site of a mass slaughter of K.G.B recruits by the Dark Ocean Society and Ronin as part of a false flag operation to force a war between Russia and Japan, intended to restore Russia's former glory. However the operation was foiled by the combined efforts of Natasha Romanova, Hawkeye, Mockingbird, and Dominic Fortune. [4] The All-New, All-Different Marvel revealed that Hank Pym's daughter Nadia van Dyne through first wife Maria Trovaya was raised in the Red Room. [5]
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the Red Room , also known as the Black Widow Program, is depicted as a top-secret Russian training program, led by Dreykov. The program takes young orphan girls and turns them into assassins named Black Widows.