WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Black Widow, now playing in theaters and available for streaming through Disney+ Premier Access.
Red Guardian is, to put it mildly, a bit of a blowhard. Played in Black Widow by David Harbour of Stranger Things fame, Alexei Shostakov has spent the past 20 years in a Russian prison, regaling his fellow inmates with spectacular tales of his glory days as his country's only super-soldier. As he flexes his enhanced strength in an arm-wrestling contest, he even boasts about fighting Captain America at the height of the Cold War, which, considering the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s timeline, is impossible.
Far from a continuity error, the claim makes Alexei the butt of the joke in Black Widow. He’s called on it by everyone from a fellow prisoner to the surrogate daughters who can barely stand him. While it could open a new chapter in the MCU’s super-soldier history, it’s far more likely that Alexei simply enjoys telling whoppers.
The joke begins in prison, where Alexei defeats a seemingly endless array of arm-wrestling opponents with little effort. As he does so, he describes an early-1980s confrontation with Captain America, during which he took his opponent's shield. One challenger, Ursa, has the temerity to ask the obvious: How could he fight Captain America while Steve Rogers was still frozen in ice? Red Guardian breaks his wrist for his audacity, leaving the remainder of his tall tale unchallenged.
The fiction continues after he's rescued from prison by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), who posed as his daughters when they were part of the same Russian sleeper cell in 1990s Ohio. Afforded a moment alone with Natasha for the first time in two decades, Alexei's interest turns to Captain America: "Did he talk to you about me? You know, trading war stories."
When Natasha doesn't understand who he's talking about, Alexei presses on, clarifying, "Captain America! My great adversary in this theater of geopolitical conflict. Not so much of a nemesis, more like my contemporary or co-equal. I always thought there was a great deal of mutual respect."
It needn’t necessarily be a false claim, at least not entirely. While Alexei certainly didn’t face Steve Rogers, he could have fought another U.S. operative injected with a variant of the Super-Soldier Serum. Isaiah Bradley’s introduction in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier opens the door to the possibility of another, albeit secret, American Super-Soldier operating in the 1980s, and functioning as Red Guardian's "great adversary."
However, it's far more likely that Alexei has manufactured the rivalry, either by embellishing an encounter with a far less-powerful foe or by flat-out lying. That’s very much in keeping with the character and his MCU origins.
According to Captain America: The First Avenger, the Super-Soldier Serum enhances the essence of whoever takes it. Fans saw this not only with Steve and Isaiah, but with John Walker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, whose rage intensified to lethal proportions. Red Guardian lies, easily and naturally, both in his “Communist Captain America” persona and as the deep-cover operative we initially meet in Black Widow.
Indeed, the notion Red Guardian might have bought into his own P.R. is in line with Black Widow's questions of identity. “I could have been more famous than Captain America,” he tells Natasha. Red Guardian was, first and foremost, a Russian propaganda tool against the west, not dissimilar to Steve Rogers’ early days as a USO sideshow. But where Steve rejected the phony heroics, Alexei embraced them. By now, they’re all he has, and he might not even be capable to differentiating the truth anymore.
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.