During February, love is in the air because of Valentine’s Day. In the Comic Book World, you’ll find many classic and great tales of love stories, from the iconic couple of Clark Kent and Lois Lane and the more complicated relationship of Batman and Catwoman at DC Comics, to the long history between Sue Storm and Reed Richards or Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker at Marvel Comics. And many many more!
Today, we turn the spotlight on a ‘more’ recent romantic relationship in the pages of Marvel with the tragic history of Black Widow and Winter Soldier — Natasha Romanova and James ‘Bucky’ Barnes. This spy couple was created during the classic modern run of Ed Brubaker on Captain America. As the writer said himself “One of the reasons I thought she and Bucky made sense together was that they both have that brainwashed aspect, and I also thought it was a clever way to integrate her preexisting continuity as the femme fatale/fake ballerina.”
The perfect mix of espionage, thriller, and romance, Black Widow and the Winter Soldier’s romantic history is as complicated as it is tragic. Today, we revisit their history in comics!
Between Comrades: How Bucky Barnes met Natasha Romanov
Introduced in the first issue of Captain America, James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes was Captain America’s best friend and sidekick during World War II. He fought Nazis next to Steve Rogers, joined the Invaders, and formed the Young Allies among other things. However, both men were presumed dead after the crash of an experimental plane in which they were onboard. While Rogers was frozen for decades in icy waters, Barnes supposedly died in the explosion.
Despite everyone, including Cap, thinking Bucky was deceased for decades, the truth was more complicated. Barnes survived the presumed explosion, only to be discovered by the USSR. Stricken with amnesia and missing his left arm, Barnes was transformed into the Winter Soldier, a lethal assassin serving Russia’s Department X.
Several years later, the Winter Soldier would meet the Black Widow, an encounter that the writer has seriously thought about and planned. As he said to Newrama: “It’s something I’ve been planning to include for a long time, yeah. In the Winter Soldier origin issue, which is in my second Cap trade, we show the history and the timeline, and in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, he was deep in Department X. That was an actual Soviet special section during the Cold War, where they did their experimental stuff, like brainwashing and the like. So, when I was researching it, it occurred to me that the Red Room program would have been attached to Department X and that if the Black Widow was being trained in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, they probably met. I sat on it for a long time, though, because I was waiting for a moment when they’d meet in the modern world.”
So how do they meet? Winter Soldier ended up at the Red Room. At this assassin training facility, he participated in the Black Widow Ops program as a trainer for a certain Natalia Romanova. What was a professional assignment transformed into something quite different when the two started an affair, causing cracks in the winter soldier’s mental programming. After an incident during an assassination operation, Department X put an end to it by separating them and keeping Barnes in stasis whenever he wasn’t needed for a mission to prevent any further deterioration in his programming.
After they separated, Natalia found the Winter Soldier. Discovering what Department X had done to him left her devastated.
The Return of The Winter Soldier
If you ask yourself why Natasha never talked about The Winter Soldier before, Brubaker explained it by saying that “she’s just got a complicated past as a spy, and implanted and erased memories, and probably also because she was a spy, she would have tight lips about almost anything from her past, especially from so long ago, unless it was coming back to haunt them all now.”
This is what happened when Barnes reappeared in Captain America (2004) #6. Activated to steal the Cosmic Cube from Red Skull, The Winter Soldier came into confrontation with Captain America. The confrontation ended when Captain America used the Cosmic Cube to restore Winter Soldier’s lost memories, leading to Bucky’s return to change side.
Shortly after, Steve Rogers found himself at odds with Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, over the Superhuman Registration Act, triggering a Civil War in the superhero community that tragically ended with Captain America’s death.
In response, Barnes tried to get Captain America’s shield back to avenge Rogers by defeating Iron Man. When he stopped the convoy carrying the famous weapon, he met Black Widow once more and defeated her, taking control of Captain America’s shield.
However, their story didn’t end there. The conflict between Winter Soldier and Iron Man took an unexpected turn, bringing them face to face once more. Stark wasn’t interested in fighting Bucky, he wanted to fulfill Rogers’ last request who wished for Barnes to become Captain America.
As the new Captain America, Bucky Barnes spent a lot of time working alongside Black Widow. During those missions, they found out who they were without any programming. They rekindled their romantic relationship and found some sort of happiness together… if only for a little time.
The tragic love story of Bucky and Natasha and The Aftermath
As Ed Brubaker told in an interview about the conclusion of his Winter Soldier series, “This was a place where I knew the second and third arcs would end up being more about Black Widow because she’s somebody Bucky cares about. And if you read my ‘Daredevil’ run, you know that basically anything Matt Murdock cared about was ripped from his hands. I only have one speed, and it’s ‘Destroy’!”
True to his words, Brubaker ended the love story of Bucky Barnes and Natasha with tragedy. The beginning of the end started with the return of Steve Rogers from the dead, retaking the Shield, and becoming Captain America once again. As for Bucky, he chose to fake his death and resumed covert missions as the Winter Soldier, often in the company of Black Widow.
Barnes became the target of an unstable ex-Soviet spy named Leonid Novokov who viewed Barnes as a traitor and set out to ruin his life. To do so, he kidnapped and brainwashed Natasha into thinking she was a double agent. Barnes and her friends go on a chase to get her and when they finally succeed in having Nat back, she has unfortunately lost all her memories of Bucky. The decision is made not to do experimental treatment in the hope of restoring her memories and their romantic relationship simply ends following this tragic turn of events. Feeling responsible, Barnes distanced himself and continued working alone.
Despite their separation, Bucky consistently watched over Natasha, acting as a guardian angel. For the past years, Natasha has faced many challenges, including death, cloning, murder accusations, and memory loss. But did she eventually recall her time with Bucky?
As Natasha and Bucky’s paths crossed, their friendship grew and as they became closer, there were hints that she remembered their story before an official confirmation from the Black Widow herself in the series Web of the Black Widow (2019-2020).
However, the couple didn’t rekindle their romantic relationship. An enemy of the Black Widow tampered once again with her memories in the recent series Black Widow (2020), putting the spy through the ringers. The emotional toll requires Natasha to process recent events and losses. Nevertheless, the couple ends on an uplifting note, with Natasha acknowledging that they always come back to one another.
For more reading, go check out our Reading orders for Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) and Bucky Barnes (Winter Soldier).