The 12 Best Love Stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell in “Captain America: The First Avenger”. (Photo: Marvel)

Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter

Everyone loves Steve and Peggy. Everyone. It’s pretty much impossible not to. Because not only are these two adorable together, they’re also painfully tragic. Their relationship and its many near misses is guaranteed to give you all the feels, no matter how many times you watch it unfold.

As love interests go, Peggy Carter remains one of the best in any action movie, let alone in a superhero story. (And don’t even get me started on how wrong it was that Agent Carter got canceled.) This is largely because she’s a fully realized character in her own right first, separate and apart from her relationship with Steve. She’s brave, intelligent and tough. She’s a talented soldier and intelligence agent who’s just as capable as any man. And in a universe dominated by people with super powers, this is an awesome (and important) thing to see.

Most importantly, Peggy cared about Steve long before he ever got the super soldier serum and turned into Chris Evans with a Marvel trainer. She saw the hero in him when he was just a skinny little kid from Brooklyn. And it’s hard not to applaud her for that. We cried with her as she listened to Steve’s plane go down. We wept even harder when Steve woke up in modern day New York and reunited with Peggy, now much older. And we sobbed some more when we found out how hard she had worked to keep Steve’s legacy alive after he “died”. (That Smithsonian interview!) In short: We basically just cried a lot. Because these two characters would have had such a happy life together, but never got the chance.