Black Widow – Where Was Yelena During Avengers: Infinity War?

In the MCU prequel (Black Widow takes place between Captain America: Civil War and Infinity War), we meet Natasha’s little sister, who was also taken as a girl and brainwashed into becoming a Soviet assassin through the Black Widow program. Like Natasha, Yelena has been able to counter the psychological “training” that made her into a child killer. By the end of the film, she and Natasha have effectively teamed up with the spies who partially raised them, Alexei and Melina, to take down the Red Room and its child-trafficking leader Dreykov. But it’s in the film’s post-credits scene when things get interesting, connecting Black Widow to the ongoing MCU narrative…

The Black Widow Post-Credits Scene

In the post-credits sequence, we see Yelena visiting Natasha’s grave, signaling that the scene takes place after Natasha’s death in Avengers: Endgame and, therefore, after the people who were Snapped are returned to the universe. It’s here, if anywhere, we get clues into Yelena’s Snapped-or-not status.

While there are no definitive statements either way to confirm if Yelena was Snapped or not, it seems likely that Yelena was Snapped. This would certainly be easier for the MCU, in terms of explaining why we didn’t see Yelena hanging with Natasha in the first half of Endgame. Narratively, the Snap is an effective way of not having to work out the off-screen journey of many MCU characters.

Perhaps it is important that Black Widow doesn’t confirm nor deny Yelena’s Snap status because it leaves the franchise the option to go either way. Should the Black Widow movie do well financially and Marvel decides to greenlight another Widow-centric movie, it could ostensibly be set during the five-year time jump that takes place in the Endgame first act. If Yelena wasn’t Snapped, she could have been one of the people Natasha relied on to keep the Avengers initiative running.

In Endgame, we see Natasha holding everything together, checking in with Carol, Rocket, Okoye, Nebula, and Rhodes from her lonely headquarters in the New Avengers Facility. It’s not hard to imagine Natasha having similar calls with Yelena, the sisters working to help people vulnerable in a post-Snap reality.

Yelena Was Probably Snapped

The biggest clue that Yelena was indeed Snapped, however, is the fact that she doesn’t seem to know who Hawkeye is when Valentina gives Yelena his file and calls him the person responsible for Natasha’s death. If Yelena wasn’t Snapped, it seems likely that Natasha would have told her sister about best friend Clint Barton, especially as Natasha was so worried about Clint. No doubt Natasha would have asked Yelena for help keeping tabs on Clint as he committed global killing sprees.