A spy who was a mother to two girls as a cover, and found that the cover had become the job.
Melina Vostokoff is the mother in the fake family that Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova grew up in, and a mother to them in more than name. Rachel Weisz plays her. She is a seasoned spy who trained in the Red Room as a Black Widow herself, and a scientist whose research into methods of mind control is done for General Dreykov.
Black Widow is about what the Red Room did to the girls it took, and Melina is on both sides of that: she helped build the machine, and she is a mother to two of the people it was used on. When the family comes back together she helps Natasha rescue the Widows and destroy the Red Room, which is the choice the film has been waiting for her to make.
Show detailsThe other Melina
The animated What If…? has a version of her who took over the Red Room after Natasha killed its previous leader, and who runs a brainwashed Steve Rogers as her weapon against Natasha and Captain Carter. Weisz voices her in the second season and Kari Wahlgren in the third; Wahlgren also voices a version in Marvel Zombies. This catalogue does not count animated variants for live-action characters, so those are not in her list.