Captain America: Brave New World is in theaters today. And also today? Valentine’s Day, aka when romance blooms and young hearts fall in love. Is there a connection there? Not really, unless something extremely surprising happens at the end of the big Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) and Red Hulk (Harrison Ford) fight — though there is precedent for that where Mackie is concerned.
And in fact, if you’re a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and romance, well, there have been plenty of relationships — but not a ton of heat, at least where the couples are concerned. Sure your mileage may vary, but Marvel Studios has doled out romance in short supply, often focusing far more on superheroics rather than the sort of love that makes your heart beat faster.
So with that in mind, which MCU movie is the most romantic? And which couple is the best of the best? Let’s discuss.
First and foremost, you have Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow), the OG couple from the OG Iron Man, all the way through Avengers: Endgame. Nicknamed Pepperony, which is an undeniably cute portmanteau, I’d argue that there’s not a ton of heat there, despite being named after a spicy Italian sausage. Sorry. Feel free to yell at me in the comments, but aside from the very gross, very intimate scene of Pepper removing Tony’s arc reactor in the first movie, the duo is more like good coworkers who happen to get married over the course of several movies.
Controversially, I might argue the opposite for Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) and Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) in The Incredible Hulk. Unlike nearly every other MCU movies, the characters are almost allowed to have sex, before Bruce realizes he’ll Hulk out if he gets too excited. There is real heat there in the movie — and then it’s thrown away as soon as Mark Ruffalo takes over as Bruce. And on that note, I think we can skip over the Bruce/Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) relationship in Age of Ultron entirely, though Ruffalo and Johansson are doing their best with material that, frankly, just does not make sense.
What about Thor (Chris Hemsworth)? While Natalie Portman’s time as Jane Foster was apparently a little fraught, the chemistry between the duo is undeniable, and the last line of the original Thor movie — “She searches for you” — is enough to make your heart pitter-pat. That continued in the mixed bag of Thor: The Dark World, and picked up swimmingly in the mixed bag of Thor: Love and Thunder. Thor and Jane are an early favorite for best couple; and Thor for most romantic movie. Let’s see if we can bring another challenger into the arena.
Next chronologically is… Okay, fine, here’s the winner: Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), first introduced in Captain America: The First Avenger. The story of Peggy and Steve is so epic, that’s how we close things out in Endgame, with them finally getting the dance they were denied in their first film together. There’s real simmering heat between the two, and Peggy and Cap is so good of a relationship, it makes one (well, me) actively hate the relationship with Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp) in Winter Soldier and Civil War.
A close second is Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) and Gamora (Zoë Saldaña) in the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. It ends sadly thanks to the events of Infinity War and Endgame, but that makes the flirting and dancing and earnest yearning so much better in the first two Guardians movies.
Who else we got? Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) in the Ant-Man movies, which… Does not work. Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) was good enough to power an excellent episode of What If…?, but see above re: the MCU front-loading superheroics over romance. And the less said about the Eternals sex scene where Sersi (Gemma Chan) and Ikaris (Richard Madden) lie there barely moving an inch for fear of the Disney censors, the better.
There are others, like the sadly abbreviated romance between T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o); Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany), which had more luck getting fleshed out on TV shows than in the movies; and Clint (Jeremy Renner) and Laura Barton (Linda Cardellini), which is nice and steady but not the stuff of sweeping romance.
But one more to discuss is Peter Parker (Tom Holland) and MJ (Zendaya). Their’s is the rare case of a sweet on-screen romance that works, and translates into real life. Normally it’s one or the other — rule of thumb is that an on-set affair leads to dead air on-screen — but Peter and MJ in the MCU Spider-Man movies just works. And as a bonus, it clearly works in the real world, too.
That said? Sorry, I’ve got to give it to Peggy and Steve. Sweeping romance over the decades, real simmering heat, and a happy ending? Heck, I’ll take that over superheroics any day.
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