WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Black Widow, now playing in theaters and available for streaming through Disney+ Premier Access.
With Black Widow occurring right after Captain America: Civil War, there are a lot of Easter eggs that go way back in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A major one is from 2012's The Avengers, and it comes in the finale when Natasha revisits Loki's greatest weakness to break her lifelong enemy.
In The Avengers, Loki was imprisoned on the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, with Black Widow interrogating him. She was trying to figure out his ultimate endgame, but he flipped the script on her. The Asgardian promptly brought up her past, much to Natasha's dismay as she began reliving memories from her ledger.
When he felt he had gotten the better of her, his ego slipped up, and Loki revealed his plan was to get the heroes together and corrupt the Hulk. By unleashing the Hulk aboard the helicarrier, Loki would get him to wipe out Earth's Mightiest Heroes. However, Widow was playing "innocent" and thanked him for his cooperation, as this intel sent her to try to unite her allies and let them know they were pawns.
Natasha uses that same trick in Black Widow, playing on the ego of the Red Room boss, Dreykov, after finding out he's alive. When she's taken to his quarters and exposed at the air base, she realizes she physically can't take him yet because of a pheromone, so Natasha tugs at his ego, insulting him on how he loves preying on defenseless, young women.
Just like Loki, her words and performance bring out the prideful, alpha in Dreykov as he smacks her around, but she's working him. By sneering at his ambition and the scope of his project, she's goading him to reveal the extent of the Red Room's global influence, and he spills all the secrets about these mind-controlled agents.
Along with that, Natasha sees that his ring is key to unlocking his database so he can monitor and trigger his thousands of Widows. After mining all this, she drops her scared act, echoing her same words to Loki: "Thank you for your cooperation."
Natasha then smashes her face into the desk to break her nose, shattering the pheromones' control over her. Dreykov's stunned, and this shows that Natasha knows the best way to beat men like this is to attack their ego, and it's just as impressive as it was in The Avengers.
Directed by Cate Shortland, Black Widow stars Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian, O-T Fagbenle as Mason and Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff. The film is in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access now.