Warning: This post contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.
The Avengers: Endgame writers have revealed why they didn’t address the romance between the Hulk and Black Widow after building it up in Avengers: Age of Ultron.
In case you forgot, Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff got quite cosy in Age of Ultron, but the movie ended with Bruce flying off into space without anything more happening between the pair.
They were then reunited in Avengers: Infinity War and they shared an awkward look and that was it. They never once brought up their potential romance or their cheeky little kiss!
It turns out there was a reason for this, but you might not like it.
Stephen McFeely, Avengers co-writer, told the Empire Podcast that there was simply too much plot to cover in the last two Avengers movies so they couldn’t fit the relationship in.
“We certainly tried [to continue the story]… In Infinity War we had scenes — we wrote them, we shot them — of them sort of hashing that out. ‘You’ve been gone, I’ve moved on’ – that kind of stuff.
“It became very clear that if a scene was not on the ‘A plot’, it could not survive Infinity War.
“That thing has to be on rails just to get to the finish line. You couldn’t wrap up loose threads just because you wanted to.”
When it comes to Endgame, co-writer Christopher Markus added it would have been “odd” if their relationship developed while they were trying to bring back half the world and their fellow superheroes.
“It [would] seem a little odd, in the midst of everyone’s mourning and [Hulk’s] change to a 2,000-pound genius, to go, ‘And they’re dating!'”
The romance is sort of brought up, however, after Natasha’s death when Bruce reacts with anger after finding out, but so does everyone else.
So, we guess it made sense to cut those scenes, but it doesn’t make us feel any better that we missed out on more Mark Ruffalo scenes…