Red Room (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.

Red Room
Interior of the Red Room Art by David López
First appearance	Black Widow #2 (June 1999)
In-universe information
Locations	Russia
Character(s)	Natasha Romanova Yelena Belova Winter Soldier
Publisher	Marvel Comics

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the Red Room appears as a Russian program which trains young orphan girls to become elite assassins named Black Widows. The program is featured heavily in the film Black Widow (2021) which sees its termination.

Fictional history

Origins

In the Marvel Universe, The Red Room (Красная комната) is one of the K.G.B.'s espionage training programs. For decades it was a Cold War facility to train female spies known as Black Widows. In some stories, it employs biochemical enhancements for its agents and also implants them with false memories, similar to the Weapon Plus Program. It also trains mutants as agents.

Black Widow Ops Program

In the work of Richard K. Morgan, the Red Room recruits 28 orphan girls to become undetectable deep-cover agents to infiltrate China and the West. Professor Grigor Chelintsov uses psychotechnics to imprint them with fabricated memories. making them believe they were trained in ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre. Furthermore, the girls received a special treatment designed by biochemist Lyudmila Kudrin that allows them, for decades, to remain young, healthy and resilient at superhuman levels.

Wolf Spider Ops Program

Niko Constantin was the only male trainee of the Red Room's male equivalent of the Black Widow Ops program dubbed "Wolf Spider" (Паук-Волк). He proved an effective killer, but impossible to control, leading the program to be declared a failure. Years later, he was found imprisoned in a Russian gulag, leading a gang of convicts dubbed the Wolf Spiders, and holding a grudge against Bucky Barnes, one of the Wolf Spider trainers.^[1]

Yelena Belova

The K.G.B. continued to use the Red Room in the late 1970s. It successfully trained their agent Yelena Belova, though she soon left the service.^[2]

North Institute

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 investigations 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 prior 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.^[3]

Omega Red

The Red Room featured in Uncanny X-Men. The group bought Omega Red's freedom with the hopes of using him to their own ends. The Red Room 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.^[4]

Widowmaker

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.^[5]

All-New, All-Different Marvel

The All-New, All-Different Marvel was revealed that Hank Pym's daughter Nadia van Dyne through first wife Maria Trovaya was raised in the Red Room.^[6]

In other media

Marvel Cinematic Universe

See also: Red Room (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

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.

• The Red Room first appeared in the film Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) when graduate Natasha Romanoff is recalls her training in a nightmare.^[7]
• The television series Agent Carter depicts a precursor to the program which began prior to World War II.^[8][9]
• The Red Room is featured heavily in the film Black Widow (2021).^{[10][11][12][13]} Prior to the film, Romanoff believed the Red Room to be destroyed after seemingly having killed Dreykov. However, Dreykov emerges alive and continues the program. The film sees the Red Room's termination at the hands of Romanoff and her sister, another Red Room graduate, Yelena Belova.
• An alternate version of the Red Room appears in the Disney+ animated series What If...? (2023) episode "What If... Captain Carter Fought the Hydra Stomper?". This version is led by Melina Vostokoff who brainwashed the Hydra Stomper / Steve Rogers. Melina is later confronted by Captain Carter and an alternate version of Romanoff. After gaining consciousness, Rogers destroys both Melina and the Red Room.