The 12 Best Love Stories in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Jeremy Renner and Scarlett Johansson in “The Avengers” (Photo: Marvel)

Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton

There are some Marvel things that I will just believe are canon despite any and all evidence to the contrary forever. Avengers: Age of Ultron did everything they could to sink Black Widow and Hawkeye as a potential romance. Despite that fact, you will never ever convince me that Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton weren’t a thing. Or should not be a thing. Ever. Sure, we learned that Clint had a secret wife and kids we’d never heard about before on a farm someplace. And Ultron gave Nat that terrible “love story” with Bruce Banner. (If we’re lucky it will never come up in a MCU film again.) Both of these moves felt like they came out of nowhere. And both were Bad Decisions. Especially given the fact that they already had the perfect Avengers romance teed up in Black Widow and Hawkeye.

Director Joss Whedon insisted that he never intended for Clint and Nat to be a thing. This may come as a surprise to everyone who has seen the first Avengers movie. Or noticed that Nat wears a weirdly significant looking arrow necklace in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It certainly felt like they were building to something up until that point. And maybe we’ll never get to see the Black Widow and Hawkeye relationship we deserve onscreen. But clearly have some kind of intense, emotional history together. Clint is the one who brought her into SHIELD in the first place and presumably saved her life. The first Avengers film is largely driven by her determination to rescue her partner after Clint’s brainwashing. They’re real intense about each other for people who are just BFFs, is all I’m’ saying.

And I still want to know what happened in Budapest, y’all.