History
Origin
After the original Black Widow was killed by an evil duplicate of Captain America, the Black Widow Ops Program created a clone of her. Unbeknownst to her handlers, she retained all the memories of her former self thanks to Ursa Major having bribed Epsilon Red, the Red Room operative in charge of granting Red Room clones selected memories from their original selves. Her superiors tasked Natasha with targeting the remnants of both Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D.,[1] which drew the attention of her former lovers, Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier.[2][3]
Weeks later, Black Widow delved into the secrets of the Red Room and found out about their cloning program, and learned in the process that she was a clone herself. Natasha was urged by Ursa Major to destroy the Red Room, so she started working behind the scenes against her handlers. When Natasha was ordered to kill former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Sally Blevins, she used an amnesiac clone of Yelena Belova to fake Blevins' death. After the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye caught sight of her, Natasha had another clone of Belova impersonate her in order to mislead the heroes.[1] Eventually, Natasha killed one of her handlers, Alexander Cady, and pinned his death on the Winter Soldier to make the Red Room believe he was on their trail, which prompted her superiors to send her to deal with him.[1] Natasha revealed herself to Bucky and Clint after abruptly killing the Orphan Maker,[4] then used their disbelief and trust in her former self to trap them in a Red Room safe room to prevent them from interfering further with her work.[1]
The apparent disposal of Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier, as well as Cady's death allowed Natasha to rise to the ranks of commander. She influenced the Red Room recruits to secretly turn them against their masters. Natasha's plan came to an abrupt end when Clint and Bucky tracked her down to the Red Room base. The discovery by her superiors that the two heroes were still alive forced Natasha to drop her cover. She killed her superiors, liberated the recruits and killed all of the clones as well as Epsilon Red. When authorities arrived to the scene, Black Widow made her escape. She left her former lovers two notes, one for Hawkeye asking him to stop looking for her, and another to Bucky inviting him to join her in her endeavors to end the Red Room.[5]