Kevin Feige Hints at Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Return to the MCU

It is no secret that audiences can expect to see Florence Pugh’s Yelena in the upcoming Hawkeye series, but could Contessa Valentina Allegra de la Fontaine show up too? It would make complete sense based on the Black Widow post-credit scene and a recent interview with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige seems to suggest we have yet to see the last of the Contessa.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus made her debut to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier when she swept in out of nowhere to recruit the disgraced John Walker (Wyatt Russell), but in a recent episode of the D23 Inside Disney podcast, Feige confirmed what we all knew and said that this was not meant to be her first introduction to audiences. “Initially Val was supposed to be introduced in the tag of Black Widow.”

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While things were shifted around due to the pandemic last year, as Feige tells it:

“It actually didn’t change anything based on where you met her first. She was always going to be a mysterious figure, portrayed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, that stepped in out of nowhere. We just initially planned for that to be in Black Widow instead of [The] Falcon [and The Winter Soldier].”

The post-credit scene in Black Widow made it clear that Yelena already had a working relationship with Val, but what exactly is Val’s endgame? While Feige stopped short of revealing her exact plans he did tease the future:

She’s doing something. She’s in recruitment mode. Does Yelena already work for her? They seem to have a connection at that point.”

Fans weren’t the only ones excited about the legendary Julia Louis-Dreyfus joining the MCU, as Feige discussed just how long they had been planning to bring her into the universe:

“The future is bright for the MCU because Julia Louis-Dreyfus is in it. We are gigantic fans of her at Marvel. […] The notion of bringing her into the world was always something, if we could find the right thing, we wanted to do. When this role came about and the opportunity to have her in [Black] Widow, in [The] Falcon [and The Winter Soldier], and maybe in some other things coming up…”

While Feige didn’t explicitly say when fans could expect to see Valentina again, he did seem to expect fans to be surprised by her next cameo. Since she didn’t pop up at the end of Loki this week and it seems unlikely that she would appear in The Eternals or Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, it’s highly likely that she may play a part in Marvel’s next major live-action series — Hawkeye.

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