'Black Widow' finally answers the decade-old question about what happened in Budapest, but the wait didn't pay off

• Warning: There are spoilers ahead for "Black Widow."
• The solo film for Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) finally reveals what happened in Budapest.
• But it felt like a lazy way to move the film's plot along while tying up an unresolved fan question.

It's taken about a decade, but Marvel has finally revealed exactly what happened in Budapest.

The city has been a longstanding inside joke of sorts between Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) since 2012's "The Avengers."

In that film, as they battled the Chitauri aliens invading New York City, Nat told Hawkeye it was "just like Budapest all over again." Clint, disagreeing, said, "You and I remember Budapest very differently."

Since then, the two have name dropped Budapest throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe without providing any more context to what happened during the mystery mission to make it so memorable.

The duo most recently referenced Budapest during their final trip to Vormir in 2019's "Avengers: Endgame," smiling and chuckling about it.

But the release of Marvel's long-delayed "Black Widow" finally tells fans what happened in Budapest and it's really not a laughing matter.

What happened in Budapest: Nat and Clint (thought they) took down the Black Widow program and its leader

In "Black Widow," Nat briefly describes that the Budapest Operation was part of her final initiation as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. She tells Yelena she killed Dreykov, who was the leader of the Red Room, which is a top-secret Soviet training program to create young female assassins, including Nat and Yelena.

"It took almost destroying the entire city just to get to him." Nat says. "Killing Dreykov was the final step in my defection to S.H.I.E.L.D."

The act involved "imploding a five-story building," "shooting it out with the Hungarian Special Forces," and then hiding for 10 days with Clint before they could escape Budapest.

Yelena tells Nat that the Budapest Operation wasn't actually a success. Dreykov was still very much alive and was still making sure Widows were trained and operating in secret throughout the world under his orders.

"Black Widow" follows Yelena and Nat as they team up to take down Dreykov and the organization once and for all.

This Budapest answer was a bit of a letdown

The movie's long-awaited explanation for Budapest felt like a lazy, contrived plot device created to move the film's plot forward while simultaneously putting a neat bow on an unresolved fan question.

Most disappointing was that fans received a flashback without ever showing Hawkeye - even though he was referenced throughout the film. At one point, Natasha points out a cramped area to Yelena where she and Clint hid for days.

How do you show a defining moment in Nat and Clint's friendship that's been referenced multiple times throughout the MCU without bringing Renner back for a cameo, even if it's a small one? It would have made the moment feel much more authentic.

Instead, it made "Black Widow" feel a bit cheap, like an afterthought of a movie that was given to Johansson after her character died simply because the "Avengers" movies were so successful that it couldn't possibly hurt to give the character a spinoff.

It's not just odd that Renner doesn't make an appearance. The entire explanation for the Budapest Operation is unsatisfying.

What Nat doesn't share with Yelena immediately is that the Budapest mission also involved killing Dreykov's daughter in order to get to him (or so she thought), something that haunts her throughout the film. By the film's end, Nat is horrified to learn she actually didn't kill Dreykov's daughter, but instead disfigured her so much that Dreykov decided to turn her into a mind-controlled, mask-wearing warrior.

After knowing the trauma attached to the Budapest operation, it feels weird for it to be something that Nat and Clint referenced so light-heartedly in both "Avengers" and "Avengers: Endgame."

Clint and Nat smile wide in 2019's "Endgame" as they're on their way to Vormir on a spaceship and he says, "We're a long way from Budapest."

What are they chuckling about? Shouldn't they feel like Budapest was a harrowing event that neither one of them really wants to discuss, let alone quip about?

It doesn't match the tone Nat has in "Black Widow" where she's suddenly traumatized and heavily bothered that she left a child maimed after initially believing she killed her. Unless dark humor is how Nat copes with trauma, it feels a bit strange that this is the event that Nat and Clint continuously reference throughout the MCU.

"Black Widow" is currently in theaters and streaming on Disney+ for an additional $29.99. You can read our review here.