'Black Widow' Error Spotted by Marvel Fan Months After Release

By Michael Hein

It's been about five months since Marvel Studios' Black Widow was first released, but fans have just now caught a pretty egregious continuity error in the film. The movie starts with a flashback scene set in the 1990s, and it shows one Yelena (Violet McGraw, playing a young version of Florence Pugh's character) holding a My Little Pony doll. As one fan pointed out on Reddit, that toy didn't exist at the time.

Black Widow is now on Disney+, available to watch and re-watch ad infinitum with a subscription. That has given fans time to dig into the nitty-gritty of the movie – and in this case, their children as well. The original Reddit post explains that the user's daughter identified Yelena's doll as a Twilight Sparkle doll from the show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, which ran from 2010 to 2020. The user added: "I would like to credit my 7-year-old daughter who's watched My Little Pony more times than I can count and has so many of the toys for me ever even noticing this."

"The set of MLP toys that ran in the 90s had very similar designs to the 2010 era toys," one commenter wrote. "I know both sets had a Rainbow Dash, for example (she was my favourite.) It could have been a prop they couldn't find and replaced it with the new MLP doll instead." Another person added: "Wait until you see all the 2014 Ikea furniture young Kate Bishop has in 2012!" while a third wrote: "Well... it can be explained by the multiverse I guess? My Little Pony could exist earlier in that timeline?"

There were bound to be some mistakes in Black Widow, considering how much the movie jumps around in the timeline. It begins with Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena as children in the 1990s and then jumps ahead to 2016 – not to the present part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It takes place between the movies Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, with some debate among fans about its order among the other movies set during this timeframe.

Black Widow is often criticized or mocked by die-hard fans of the MCU because of its relative insignificance to the rest of the over-arching plot. It provides a stand-alone story for Black Widow as fans had long requested, but since they already knew her character well by then, it did not have an origin story to tell. Due to events in other movies, the plot here fell flat for some, but all-in-all Black Widow has moderate to positive reviews among critics.

The movie may be reaching its widest audience ever now that it is available with a subscription to Disney+. The next entry in the MCU is Spider-Man: No Way Home, which will hit theaters on Friday, Dec. 17 in the U.S.

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