before Kevin Feige was the big dog he is today at Disney the movie portion of Marvel (Marvel Studios) had to report to the main company (Marvel Entertainment) about everything he did. a gentleman named Ike Perlmutter is CEO. long story short, Ike is a jerk. he didn't feel that movies led by women and black people would sell well. in 2015 Disney made Marvel Studios a separate entity from Marvel Entertainment and now Feige can do whatever he wants because he no longer reports directly to Perlmutter. then Marvel released Black Panther and Captain Marvel which are smash hits both breaking $1B at the box office. so yeah Black Widow should have been made a long time ago, but they kinda weren't able to. she has been in more of the movies than any other character so i guess that's kinda something?