Maybe She Just Wants To Rile Osborn

I don't purchase it, but I did flip through an issue of Thunderbolts a couple of months ago and thus learned the truth about the Black Widow running the team. It had appeared that it was Yelena Belova, the 2nd Black Widow, but no, it's actually good old Natasha (Natalya?), going to rather extensive lengths to impersonate Yelena*. Natasha's serving as a plant for Nicky Fury, for some reason.

Reading that made me reconsider the end of the Deadpool/Thunderbolts crossover from this spring, where Deadpool's head is cutoff, but someone sewed it back on, and it wasn't Taskmaster. Deadpool concluded Black Widow really did love him, and if it had been Yelena, well, I still wouldn't buy that, but I can see it more readily than with Original Style Black Widow**.

It's a curious decision on her part. The last time Norman Osborn saw Deadpool in that crossover, Headsman had decapitated him, and Widow was holding the head, asking if Norman wanted it as a trophy. He did not, and told her to burn it. So he believes Deadpool to be finished, yet Natasha went to the trouble of reattaching his head to his body, when she had to know Deadpool wouldn't keep a low profile. Which would mean Osborn would soon learn Deadpool wasn't dead after all, and that ought to raise some questions. Sure, we might expect Norman to be so crazy, or so busy dealing with a dozen different fronts at once to bother to really think about the implications of Deadpool not being deceased, but Black Widow wouldn't be one of Nick Fury's go-to people if she left things to chance. So why risk it?

I thought maybe since Nick Fury hired Deadpool to procure that information on how to kill Skrull Queen's, and Deadpool was technically successful, maybe Fury felt he owed him. But this is Nick Fury we're talking about; he doesn't do sentimental. Maybe Fury, or Natasha, felt Deadpool could come in handy later. Guy that crazy and hard to kill could be useful at the right time. Maybe having Deadpool alive and running about being himself makes Osborn look incompetent. It certainly frustrated him when Deadpool interrupted his interview by briefly teleporting in, and it probably raised some questions with people Osborn has to answer to or contend with.

There's always the possibility Natasha just finds Wade amusing enough that she took pity on him.

* Yelena having died after becoming a Super-Adaptoid in New Avengers Annual #1.

** She's been romantically linked to Hawkeye, Daredevil, and Winter Soldier, so suffice it to say, Deadpool's seriously outclassed, unless insanity is highly appealing to her.