Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova almost had a more traditional Black Widow costume in Hawkeye.
Josh Nizzi, a concept artist for Marvel Studios, shared an unused costume design for Yelena Belova that she would have worn in Disney+'s Hawkeye. The costume is a true Black Widow ensemble, with the classic hourglass logo stitched across the chest. "This version of Yelena was about her taking up the mantle of Black Widow - more custom and sleek," Nizzi said. "I think it was almost used before things shifted."
Nizzi has shared several unused costume designs for characters in Hawkeye, recently sharing another unused look for Yelena in which she would have worn a cape. "Here is an unused look I did for Yelena in Hawkeye," Nizzi said of the outfit. "I was combining New York winter and tactical wear."
While these costumes for Yelena never made it to the small screen, the character donned several iconic looks throughout the Disney+ series, including a comics-accurate, all-black ensemble paired with the green night-vision goggles. Another outfit that was worn in Episode 5, "Ronin" even hid a Black Widow Easter egg.
"It was another carryover from her costume from the end of Black Widow that she had lots of enamel pins," said Hawkeye costume designer Michael Crow in a previous interview. "There's a direct and obvious link to the film in the form of a spider pin. There's also a pin that's even more personal to Yelena herself: a finger gun." According to Crow, Pugh thought the finger gun pin was "a cool reference" to her character "because it's something that Yelena does in Black Widow a couple of times."
Yelena Belova as she appears in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has a distinct, personal style, something Pugh helped to cultivate as she was developing the character, which first began while she was filming 2021's Black Widow. "I think something that I really appreciated was [Black Widow director Cate Shortland] was so welcoming of me to figure out how she thinks and how she moves and what she wears," Pugh said. "I think, for me, that was such a fun part of figuring out this character because she really comes out of the Red Room and can start life, and she can buy her own clothes, and she can buy a vest that has lots of pockets and she's really excited by it," she said.
Introduced to the MCU in Black Widow, it was later confirmed that Pugh would reprise the role in Hawkeye, with Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) assigned to Yelena as her next target in Black Widow's post-credit scene by Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). While the character's current future in the MCU is unclear, Pugh and Spider-Man: No Way Home star have discussed the possibility of doing a Spider-Man/Black Widow crossover.
All six episodes of Hawkeye are now available on Disney+.
Source: Instagram