Rumored Plot for ‘Black Widow’ Solo Movie Involves Y2K, Fall of Communism

As the MCU has begun to diversify, the cry for a Black Widow movie has grown steadily louder. Marvel announced the film's director would be Cate Shortland (Lore, Berlin Syndrome) a few months back, and now it seems that work on the film's story is coming along nicely, other than the fact that it doesn't really make any sense.

ComicBook.com has run with this rumored plot that complicates the timeline of the MCU even further...

At birth the Black Widow (aka Natasha Romanova (sic)) is given to the KGB, which grooms her to become its ultimate operative. When the U.S.S.R. breaks up, the government tries to kill her as the action movies (sic) to present-day New York, where she is a freelance operative. The standalone film will find Romanoff living in the United States 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union.

This would set the action of the film in 2004, just six years before she crossed paths with Tony Stark, so that sort of makes sense. However, how old could she possibly be when the wall comes down? Winter Soldier placed her birth date in 1984, which would make her five at the fall of Communism. Why would they be attempting to kill a five year old? How deadly could a kindergartner be?

None of this makes sense, which makes this other rumored plot element make even less sense. According to MCU Cosmic, the film may actually be set even earlier than 2004. Like four years earlier, when she was a lethal fifteen year old...

According to the rumor, the Y2K bug on December 31, 1999 will play some part in the plot of Black Widow.

Who knows whether there's legitimacy to any of this. I suppose the only question left to ask is, do they go with Looking for Freedom or Wind of Change as the empowering ballad over the end credits?