I'll admit, when Square Enix hinted the Black Widow would be joining its Marvel Variants line, I was a bit concerned. The Variants line is filled with some fairly radical redesigns of familiar characters, and some of the artistic choices made for the DC Variants line's female figures left little to the imagination. However, once I saw the prototype at SDCC this year, I was actually excited to see the final version. The Black Widow on display there wasn't quite as massive a departure as some previous Variants figures had been, and showed a lot of unpainted promise for the final release.

This week, Square revealed the fully-painted prototype, and the images (courtesy of ToyArk) show off a Black Widow that's actually really close to her comic book counterpart. Only Iron Man, Spider-Man, Venom and Thor have been shown off in this form to this point. Each of those is still immediately recognizable, but share some influences that are instantly noticeable as Play Arts style. The new Black Widow, while proportionately rocking some Taylor Swift legs, doesn't appear to look that drastically different from iterations of her design that we've seen in her comic book past.

Though you could get a good idea of the detail on the unpainted prototype Square had on display at SDCC, the paint app really highlights the impressive sculpt of Widow's uniform. The red highlights throughout really make this more than just another black catsuit, and those thigh-high boots are certainly something else. The fine details in the Widow's Bite bracelets looks sharp, too, but the snub pistols are a little disappointing. I was expecting a little bombast somewhere in this figure after the body was so (relatively) tame. I do love that head sculpt though, and the extreme hair flip happening is dramatically deserving of the character.

There's no release date information available yet, but with Venom dropping in November, it's entirely possible Black Widow could also arrive before year's end. Expect her to cost at least $100 when she does arrive.

 

Square Enix
Square Enix
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