Red Room (Marvel)

The Red Room is an organization that features in Marvel Comics.

History

The Red Room was a secret program that was established by the Soviet Union that had ties to Department X. (Captain America v5 #27)

As a requirement of the Black Widow program, all of its operatives were chosen from orphans. (Black Widow v2 #5) A number of Red Rooms were created for the Black Widow Project. (Widowmaker v1 #1) The original twenty seven Black Widow deep cover agents were deployed in China and the West. (Black Widow v2 #4) During the 1960's, a male counterpart to the Black Widow program was created called Wolf Spider with male trials undergoing the procedure. However, it never produced an operative that Department X's Red Room were satisfied with as the closet success was Niko Constantin who was borderline psychotic and had to be locked away in an insane asylum. (Captain America v1 #617) The daughter of Hank Pym and his first wife Maria Trovaya was brought to the Red Room after the death of her mother. She was given the name Nadia and underwent combat training but was switched to research after she showed an aptitude for science. (All-New All Different Avengers v1 #9) The Red Room dispatched one of their Black Widow operatives to kidnap the scientist Ho Yinsen. He was taken to the warlord Wong-Chu where Yinsen was forced to work for his weapon development program. (Black Widow v6 #6) It also maintained its own Mutant program with dozens of operatives that possessed the X-Gene and thus superhuman abilities. (Uncanny X-Men v1 #498) After Wakanda revealed its existence to the world, the rogue intelligence agency that was the Red Room sought to acquire that nation's advanced technology. To that end, they deployed the Winter Soldier and blackmailed the Mutant Darkstar by threatening to kill her brother. They had her sent as an envoy to Wakanda where she used her powers to help in the deployment of the Winter Soldier. The Black Panther thwarted the spies but a failsafe mechanism teleported the Winter Soldier and Darkstar away during their detention. (Rise of the Black Panther v1 #3)

Agents of the Black Widow program in the United States sold most of their projects biotech to an American corporation. (Black Widow v2 #5) Near Yakusk in the Sakha Republic of Russia, the Dark Ocean Society led by Ronin struck at the Red Room training facility situated there where they killed all the recruits. (Widowmaker v1 #1)

As a result of M-Day, all the Mutant operatives of the Red Room lost their powers and the program later discovered that this was a world wide phenomena. Deprived of their powers, these powerless operatives were then ordered to kill themselves as they had no further purpose. (Uncanny X-Men v1 #498) It was later responsible for the capture of Colossus, Wolverine along with Nightcrawler where they brought the three to Russia and intended to discover why a select number of Mutants such as those in the X-Men retained their powers after M-Day. (Uncanny X-Men v1 #497) When the three freed themselves, the Red Room deployed Omega Red who they had acquired and were experimenting on in the hopes of improving his healing factor. (Uncanny X-Men v1 #499)

Anya who was the daughter of the Headmistress that ran the Red Room used funding that she had acquired to create a new version of the Red Room that had no government oversight. This version of the program was known as the Dark Room and began recruiting young girls to be trained as operatives. (Black Widow v6 #4)

Despite its seeming collapse, the Red Room was eventually reformed and began to re-commission its operatives. Following the Secret Empire, Natasha Romanoff was killed and the Red Room decided to clone her where the new body was given all the memories of the original through a psychic. She initially believed that she had been resurrected from her death at the hands of a Hydra Captain America and began to serve as an operative for the Red Room. In time, she began investigating the facility and came to determine that she was in fact a clone of the original. (Tales of Suspense v2 #103)

The Winter Guard later staged a surprise attack on Avengers Mountain using their mole Gorilla-Man. This allowed the Red Widow to direct her team in ambushing She-Hulk where they succeeded in capturing Jennifer Walters and returned her to base. Once there, she was placed in the Room where they began their efforts at brainwashing her into becoming one of their agents. (Avengers v8 #46)

Overview

In appearance, the Red Room were trained assassins tied to the Russian government. (Black Widow v1 #1) It was said that the experiments of the Red Room had ties to Department X. (Captain America v5 #27)

Average Red Room assassins were trained to mastery in no less than seven martial arts. (Unstoppable Wasp v2 #3) There were no details in the Red Room's commands with only orders given to its operatives. (Secret Empire v1 #6)

The early condition process was crude by comparison but extremely powerful that used psychochemicals. This left them with pleasant memories of their training that they could enjoy but if thought logically about it then they experienced nausea, headaches and eventually unconsciousness. These were designed to act as deterrents to prevent the operative from examining their origins. (Black Widow v2 #4) Memory inducement and hypnotic blocks were part of the training program used on the Black Widows. (Black Widow v2 #5)

Black Widow operatives were all rewired biochemically where they were given a ramped up immune and cell repair systems. As a result of these modifications, the subject had four to five times the healing ability of a normal human. This meant that the Black Widow hardly ever got sick and age slowly. Due to these healing factor, Black Widows could not become pregnant as a newborn fetus was seen as a parasite by the body. During such moments, the body runs hostile bio-chemistry leading to an automatic miscarriage as a failsafe. (Black Widow v2 #5)

It was said that the reason the Red Room was so successful at assassination was because people tended to underestimate girls. (Unstoppable Wasp v1 #4) If threatened with discovery, the Red Room enacted hibernation protocols where their facility was dismantled with all active agents going to ground and recruits being terminated. (Tales of Suspense v2 #103)

A splinter group was created within the Red Room that differed from the other assassins who focused on the art of assassination. However, they came to seek the means of destroying entire nations or superhumans leading to the creation of Science Class. (Unstoppable Wasp v1 #5) It also maintained its own Mutant program with dozens of operatives that had the X-Gene giving them a range of useful mutations such as enhanced strength, X-ray vision, mental telepathy along with many other such traits. (Uncanny X-Men v1 #498)

They were shown to make use of cloning technology allowing them to create multiple copies of a person. (Tales of Suspense v2 #103) A practice of the Red Room was to keep cloned bodies of high-value agents. This was a preferred method of replacing dead agents though for a time there was a program for replacing their bodies with Super-Adaptoids. (Tales of Suspense v2 #104) One of their creations was the Icepick Protocol that involved lacing their Black Widow agents with microscopic biomachines. These nanites infested the host who was unaware of them in their body whereby they passed them on through sexual contact. Once activated, the protocol caused anyone exposed to the nanites become a sleeper operative following commands given to them. (Black Widow: Deadly Origin v1 #2)

The KGB maintained secret off-the-book training facilities that were called Red Rooms. (Widowmaker v1 #1)

Members

• Vasily Karpov : a male who was part of Department X and was involved in the Red Room experiments with him also involved in control over the Winter Soldier. (Captain America v5 #27)
• Iosef : a male instructor in the original program that taught skills to the Widow trainees. (Black Widow v6 #4)
• Ivan : an older male agent that served a transportation role. (Black Widow v6 #6)
• Alexander Cady : a male who headed the reformed Red Room who was killed by the Winter Soldier. (Tales of Suspense v2 #103)
• Natasha Romanov :
• Yelena Belova : a blonde haired female assassin who served as a Black Widow who was said to be the first student in the history of the Red Room to surpass Natasha Romanova. (Black Widow v1 #1)
• Yurgei Ivanov : a male psychic who was known by the code name of Epsilon Red where he had a psychic rapport with the Black Widows allowing him to store their memories where he used his powers to implant them into cloned bodies of deceased operatives. (Tales of Suspense v2 #103)
• Nadia van Dyne :

Notes

• The Red Room was created by Devin Grayson and J.G. Jones where it made its first appearance in Black Widow v1 #1 (June, 1999).

Alternate Versions

• In What if … Magneto and Professor X had formed the X-Men together? (2005), alternate reality was shown where Magneto and Professor X worked together. This world had the Red Room with Black Widow Natasha Romanov training a male Mutant operative named Peter Rasputin. Alexei Vazhin of the Federal Security Bureau presented Rasputin to Professor Charles Xavier for his newly formed X-Men after taking Colossus from the Red Room.

In other media

Television

• In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Red Room was referenced in the setting of the animated television series in the episode "Hulk vs. the World". It was revealed to be the password for Black Widow remote database.
• In Avengers Assemble, the Red Room was mentioned in the setting of the animated television series in the episode "Nighthawk". When Black Widow was a spy, the Red Room implanted a post-hypnotic trigger word designed to put her into programmed sleep until the counter word was spoken. From the files gathered by Falcon, Nighthawk used this information in order to knock out Natasha Romanov. In "Seeing Double", Natasha Romanoff stated she remembered little of her life till the Red Room and after becoming the Black Widow she destroyed the Red Room. However, in the modern day, Baron Strucker reactivated the Red Room program under HYDRA that operated at the Deep Forest facility in Siberia.
• In Agent Carter, the Red Room was referenced in the live-action television series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Dorothy Underwood was shown to had been an agent of a precursor to the Black Widow program who operated during the Cold War.

Film

• In Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Red Room was referenced in the live-action film set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where it was mentioned by Natasha Romanov as the place where she underwent the training to become the Black Widow. Candidates were shown to be young girls with only the strong surviving and their graduation involved the agent being sterilised thus preventing them from having children. Flashbacks caused by the Scarlet Witch caused Romanov to re-live her training at the hands of Madame B.
• In Black Widow, the Red Room featured in the setting of the 2021 live-action film. It was revealed that it was headed by Dreykov who had sleeper agents in America steal data on a mind controlling pathogen. This was used on Black Widow agents forcing them to obey his every command from his floating headquarters. Natasha Romanova had believed she had killed Dreykov but in reality she had critically injured his daughter instead and in the years afterwards he had built his network of assassins from the shadows. The Black Widows had surgery conducted on them to remove any their reproductive organs and making them unable to bear children whilst subjected them to a pheromonal lock that prevented them from harming their leader.

Video games

• In Marvel's Avengers, the Red Room was referenced in the setting of the video game. A time-event called the Red Room Takeover involved an unknown virus that took over the HARM Room which was sent by 'Rooskaya' who was actually Yelena Belova.

Appearances

• Black Widow v1: (1999)
• Black Widow v2:
• Widowmaker:
• Avengers v8:

External Links

• Marvel Database Entry
• Wikipedia Entry

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