Platonic Life-Partners in the Marvel Universe.
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Multiple Media
Multiple Media
- Marvel Cinematic Universe
- Throughout their appearances, Black Widow and Hawkeye have been firmly established as having an incredibly close but strictly platonic friendship. Avengers: Age of Ultron reveals that Natasha is the only Avenger that knew about Clint's family and that she's Honorary Aunt to his children, with the youngest child being named for her. While they sometimes end up on opposite sides, it's clear they still care about each other even while fighting. In Avengers: Endgame, they discover that the only way to acquire the Soul Stone is to sacrifice a person you love and both immediately try to sacrifice themselves to spare the other. Natasha ends up being the one who dies and Clint is obviously devastated by the loss of his best friend.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. initially establishes this with Dr. Leopold Fitz and Dr. Jemma Simmons, with several Season 1 episodes all but referencing this trope by name. By late Season 3, however, their relationship is no longer platonic.
- In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America and Black Widow share an onscreen kiss, pose as lovers when running from S.H.I.E.L.D., and open up emotionally to each other, but decide to remain as close friends. She also spends most of the movie trying to get him a date.
- Agent Carter portrays the relationship between Peggy Carter and Howard Stark as this. They're clearly Vitriolic Best Buds, despite the fact that Stark is usually an unabashed womanizer. This is perhaps best exemplified in the first episode, when he calls Carter "pal" and gives her what amounts to a bro-hug.
- Eternals: Gilgamesh and Thena have had platonic partnership for centuries, with the duo being Force and Finesse Bash Brothers in ancient times and Gilgamesh promising to help Thena manage her Mahd Wy'ry in the present.
Comic Books
Comic Books
- Wolverine has this kind of relationship with most of the X-Women, Psylocke and Storm standing out among them. He'll go to amazing lengths to help them, and even harbors a bit of Big Brother Instinct towards any would-be suitors, but when it comes to getting in a relationship with them himself, it just doesn't seem to happen. Fans speculate this is due to his awareness of his own Cartwright Curse. Additionally, he's over 150 years old and his healing factor continues to slow his aging process tremendously, which makes most of his options both a May–December Romance and a Mayfly–December Romance.
- However, Wolverine has pursued relationships with his teammates in alternate timelines, including marrying Storm in a "What If?" and being involved with her in the war-torn alternate future in Days of Future Past. There's also his fixation with Jean Grey.
- Nightcrawler and Shadowcat have a similarly close relationship. When Kurt leaves to join Excalibur, she goes with him. While they did once consider actually dating, they decided it would just be too weird (partly due to the fact that she was also involved with Kurt's Heterosexual Life Partner Colossus.)
- There's a lot of this among the X-Men in general. Domino and Warpath, Wolverine and Shadowcat, Storm and Bishop, etc.
- An alternate Wolverine is in a long-term romantic relationship with his timeline's version of Hercules, which avoids the Mayfly–December Romance issue (both being ageless), flips the May–December Romance (~170 years versus thousands), and avoids the Cartwright Curse, what with Herc being immortal.
- Fantastic Four: The Thing and The Invisible Woman have this kind of relationship. (Early in the series, Ben was actually in love with Sue, but that was just how Stan Lee rolled. And Ben got his own girlfriend not long after, anyway. Besides, things would have been weird for Reed if his best friend and girlfriend started seeing each other.)
- Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja were this in the original Marvel Comics run... although it wasn't that platonic on Conan's side...
- This is basically Loki and Verity's relationship in Loki: Agent of Asgard. While they met at a speed-dating event, Verity was only there because her mother talked her into it, and she's generally uninterested in romance.
- Miles Morales and Jessica Drew develop into this in Ultimate Spider-Man, after Jessica begins helping and mentoring Miles. Of course, given that Jessica is a lesbian (and a fair bit older than Miles), platonic is really the only way it could be.
- Takes on a more interesting twist when one remembers who Jessica Drew is in the Ultimate universe (Peter Parker's female clone.)
- Deadpool has this kind of relationship with his secretary, Sandi Brandenberg. The two have known each other for years now, are extremely close, and Deadpool is highly protective towards Sandi, but the two have never tried to pursue any sort of relationship with one another. This is notable, because Deadpool is a notorious Casanova Wannabe, so knowing someone for so long and never once trying to get it on with them is pretty unusual for him.
- Modern incarnations of Hawkeye and Black Widow are usually depicted this way. There's a great post explaining their relationship here: x
.[Hawkeye falls out of a window onto a car]
Isiah: ...That looks bad.
Black Widow: He'll be all right. - Spider-Man:
- Peter's relationship with Betty Brant, his ex-girlfriend, is of this nature. She considers him her best friend.
- He's also close with Jessica Drew, given the similar spider theme that connects them. Despite it being somewhat easy to see, Peter and Jessica have never treated each other as more than just friends. It helps that Jess is far less of a Distaff Counterpart to him in comparison to others like her who bear close ties to their male counterparts; outside of their powers, Jessica's backstory is about as far removed from Peter's as it can be, especially since they don't became acquainted with each other until both have earned some city miles as superheroes.
- Speaking of fellow Spider-people, there's Spidey and Spider-Gwen. While Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy have more often than not been romantically linked to each other in many mediums before Earth-65's creation, the mainstream Spidey's relationship with this alternate universe counterpart of his deceased former love is one of pure Snark-to-Snark Combat given how many potshots both take at each other both on and off the clock as crime-fighters. That said, they do look out for each other very closely; in their first meeting, both of them make a mutual Declaration of Protection to honor the memory of their deceased counterparts, and since then, they've had their fair share of adventures together, especially considering that Gwen has become a fresh migrant to the mainline Marvel universe. Helps that neither of them seem to be romantically interested in each other: Peter acts more like an older brother figure, he's had time to move on from his Gwen romance-wise, Gwen herself treated her Peter like a close friend and was surprised that he had harbored feelings for her, and she seems to be attracted more to Miles Morales given their closer ages.
Western Animation
Western Animation
- X-Men: Evolution:
- Kurt and Kitty actually have this sort of friendship in a few different universes, including the main Marvel 616 universe, where they've been best friends and thicker than thieves since the 80's.
- Iceman and Jubilee also count, as they spent almost all of their screen time during season 2 together, always went along together on wacky hijinks, and seemed practically inseparable.
- Scott and Jean, prior to their actual getting together, had shades of this as well.
