The Untold Truth Of Taskmaster

The Taskmaster that we see in the Black Widow movie seems pretty faithful to his comic book roots — perhaps surprisingly so, given how other Marvel Cinematic Universe villains have been changed from their source material for the screen. The version of Helmut Zemo that we see in Captain America: Civil War, for instance, is a drastic departure from the costumed Master of Evil that we see in classic Avengers stories like Under Siege, even if it would've been truly amazing to see that exact same movie play out with Daniel Brühl wearing a purple ski mask capped off with a golden crown.

Taskmaster, on the other hand, is more in the vein of Hela, Thanos, and even Batroc the Leaper, all of whom made it to the big screen with most of their visual identities intact (the key word there being mostly; R.I.P. to Batroc's waxed mustache). The look is almost exactly what you'd expect from a live-action adaptation of Taskmaster's original George Pérez costume, with a little bit of the mid-2000s Udon Studios redesign thrown in. He's even got the shield with the big T on it, something that might've seemed unforgivably comic booky back before the MCU, but works just fine in a world where we've seen a giant purple spaceman try to destroy the universe with a handful of magic rocks. Taskmaster's mask in particular is notable, as it maintains the skull imagery while also completely obscuring his eyes with a visor that makes him look like the Soviet Union's Cold War-era attempt to recreate Vic Rattlehead, the mascot for Megadeth. It's a strong look, and in completely reducing his face to a grinning skull — something that wasn't really done for the MCU takes on other comic book characters with similar looks, like Crossbones — it separates him visually from any humanity, something that seems to be a theme in the film.

It also has a few not-coincidental practical benefits, too. Completely obscuring the Taskmaster has allowed Marvel Studios to promote the film without revealing the mystery of who's under the mask, something that's pretty surprising for a pop culture juggernaut that ranks among some of the most-promoted franchises of all time. Perhaps more importantly, it also allows the film to easily replicate the coolest thing about Taskmaster's powers: he fights like everyone, all at once. Put them in that costume, and a stunt double who's good at archery and one who can replicate Black Panther's distinct fighting style can pretty easily pass for the same guy. It's Marvel movie magic!

While he's done his share of hands-on villainy, the Taskmaster's true calling has always been a more noble one: education! That's right, everyone. He's a teacher, spending his time giving of himself and his knowledge to shape the minds of tomorrow.

Okay, fine, the Taskmaster's version of education isn't that great, especially when you consider that his "school," the Taskmaster Academy, is less of a learning institution and more of a for-profit training center for henchmen. Really, though, that's probably the best career to get into when your most marketable skill set is doing jump kicks like Steve Rogers. For a low price, Taskmaster takes on classes of aspiring supervillains, and teaches them how to not only fight like superheroes, but more importantly, how to fight against them. There's no better way to prepare for fighting Captain America than by training with a guy who can fight exactly like Captain America, but who doesn't actually want to give you a concussion with his shield and send you off to super prison.

While this mostly functions as a pretty amazing explanation for where all the masked members of Hydra and AIM get the confidence to try to punch out Iron Man or whomever, it's worth noting that it's not just the bad guys who've taken advantage of the Taskmaster's skills. He's also been responsible for training John Walker — better known as U.S. Agent — during his brief stint as Captain America, and for training recruits for the government after the Superhero Registration Act passed during Marvel's 2005 Civil War event.

Like Deadpool, the Taskmaster made his living as a super-powered mercenary for hire when he wasn't running henchman classes, meaning that the two characters ran in pretty similar circles. While their first encounter didn't exactly end on the best of terms, they'd end up encountering each other pretty often, and that led to a friendship.

One of the Taskmaster's most prominent roles in the comics — arguably even more well-known than his own solo miniseries — came when he was a member of Deadpool's supporting cast. His frequent appearances were mostly due to the fact that Deadpool hired Taskmaster's ex-girlfriend, Sandi Brandenberg, to be his secretary. But when Deadpool blew up, lost his memory, changed his codename to Agent X, and was then revealed to have not been Deadpool all along (it's a long story that's actually even more complicated than it sounds), Taskmaster helped to re-train him as an assassin and later fought alongside him.

In more recent years, the two mercenaries have had a more back-and-forth frenemy relationship. They've occasionally come to blows while on opposite sides of a conflict, but Deadpool was also willing to help Taskmaster out by going easy on him in a fight so that Taskmaster could still get paid. He even invited Taskmaster to his bachelor party before he was married to Shiklah, a succubus who was also Queen of the Undead. That, as you might suspect, is also a long story.

Okay, so here's where it gets weird. While he's mostly shown up as a villain or a supporting character, the Taskmaster has dabbled in being a protagonist in his own right thanks to two self-titled miniseries. The first is a relatively straightforward action adventure — although it does include the interesting note that if he watches things at double-speed, Taskmaster actually can move at twice the speed of a normal human for a few seconds at a time — but the second story by Fred Van Lente and Jefte Palo is full-on bananas.

The main premise is that the Taskmaster, ironically enough, has a memory problem. His brain is so loaded up with Shang Chi's punches and Daredevil's backflips that his muscle memory has overwritten other, less important things, like his past. In order to keep himself centered, he has to keep tracking down his own memories, following his history so that he can piece it together and figure out who he is. It's sort of like Memento meets Johnny Mnemonic, only a million times weirder. The path to Taskmaster's memories leads him through things like an encounter with Don of the Dead, a Latin-American drug dealer who turns out to be a white American S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who'd taken the "Don of the Dead" identity after Taskmaster trained him, something Taskmaster doesn't remember.

That, however, pales in comparison to where that series ends up: Wewelsburg II, a small town in the Bolivian Andes where Nazi scientists escaped to after World War II in order to continue their experiments cloning Hitler. The most successful result was the long-time Marvel villain the Hate-Monger (who first showed up back in 1963), but the scientists wound up with a gigantic stockpile of cloned Hitler-brains, which leaked the Fürher's "bio-chemical essence" into the local water supply. The result? Every man, woman, and child in the town essentially has Hitler's brain, leading to a constant warfare among themselves for control of the town. So, you know, the next time someone tries to tell you how serious the Punisher is or whatever, remind them that he lives in the same world at Hitler Town.

While it's doubtful that the Don of the Dead or the Taskmaster Academy's acclaimed henchman resource program will make it into the MCU, it's not difficult to imagine how Taskmaster's presence could be felt in the upcoming Black Widow movie. 

Most of Natasha Romanoff's history has to do with her training in the Red Room, a secret Soviet program designed to create a series of highly trained agents who are given the codename of Black Widow. Of course, that actually already exists in the films. In addition to being briefly shown in Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Red Room also produced Peggy Carter's nemesis, Dottie Underwood, on the Agent Carter TV show. With the Taskmaster's history of training supervillains, and his ability to serve as the perfect teacher in virtually any style of combat, it's easy to picture him as one of Natasha's trainers ... and maybe even the person who's sent to clean things up once she defects to S.H.I.E.L.D.

Sure, that's a pretty straightforward espionage plot, but it's also one that could fit neatly into the world of the MCU. Then again, given that we've seen Infinity Stones, Celestials, time travel, the Quantum Universe, and a talking raccoon in those movies, there's always a chance — no matter how slim it might be — that Taskmaster and Widow will end up fighting a climactic battle in Wewelsburg II. Seeing Marvel characters beating up a couple hundred Hitlers might just make Black Widow the feel-good movie of the year. 

Much like the way that the comic book Taskmaster ran his school for aspiring supervillains, the cinematic version has also embraced his calling as a teacher. This time, he's the guy running the Red Room, the top-secret Russian training facility that produces the super-spies of the Black Widow program. As a result, he's someone that our most familiar Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff, knows from her past. He's also apparently responsible for training Yelena Belova, the second Black Widow in the comics who initially set out to eliminate and replace Natasha long after the original's defection to S.H.I.E.L.D,, who is played in the film by Florence Pugh.

The fact that it's the Taskmaster, however, adds another layer to the story of Black Widow returning to the Red Room with the intention of taking it down. Not only does the Taskmaster's ability to replicate any movement that he sees make him the perfect combat instructor, it also hints at something that might just be the true purpose of the modern MCU Red Room. Outside of a brief, hallucinatory flashback in Avengers: Age of Ultron, we never really see much of what Natasha's training was like in the MCU, and what we do see seems like some pretty standard stuff — or at least as standard as it can be when you're training someone to be so good at being an assassin that it got her onto a team with the literal God of Thunder. Guns, martial arts, ballet. You know. Russian spy stuff.

The fact that Taskmaster can fight like the Avengers, though, might just mean that this resurrected Red Room isn't just training its soldiers to take on enemy spies. In the comics, the thing that makes training with the Taskmaster such an alluring prospect is that if you're sparring with a guy who fights exactly like Captain America, (or Black Panther, or Iron Fist), then you might just figure out how to beat Captain America. If that sounds like a long shot, consider that Cap and the Winter Soldier, the product of a similar, Red Room-adjacent program, laid a beatdown on Iron Man that was about as devastating as the one Thanos did. If the Red Room is turning out soldiers designed specifically to take down superheroes, and each one of them is as good at what they do as our own Black Widow is, then there's a very good reason why Natasha would want to take them down that goes well beyond revenge and atoning for her own dark past.