…Who is usually an easy mark for het pairings.

For instance, the Tony/Pepper relationship in IM2 and Avengers was a big piece of what scuttled my interest in reading Steve/Tony, because, aw! look! two people canonically in love with each other, aw yes, I want THAT to work out well!

…So it was HILARIOUS to me that this movie basically lifted verbatim the justification that I have seen in EVERY STEVE/TONY FIC THAT FELT IT HAD TO ACKNOWLEDGE TONY/PEPPER for the demise (sorry: hiatus) of Tony and Pepper’s relationship. Not that it is not a 1000% valid reason for Pepper to decide to love herself and get out of Dodge (it was! it is! it ever shall be!) and not that they didn’t do a lovely job in the few moments devoted to it of showing that Tony is genuinely devastated, and you can see how that contributes to the choices he’s making–but, man, it was like when you’re listening to something in a foreign language and then all of a sudden it pops into English for a few words or a line, “Well, I really couldn’t let the Iron Man thing go, and I wrecked a country, and I’m just not an easy person to be with–” and it’s totally jarring because I KNOW THOSE WORDS ALREADY.

Uh, the rest of this got long because I did some point-by-point summarizing of relationship arcs from my memory of seeing the movie once 24 hours ago. If you have seen the movie, you can probably guess who’s under the cut, and apologies for any nuances I am getting wrong!

So moving on to the NEXT most perfunctory treatment of a het relationship in this movie, oh my god, Steve/Sharon. I thought that Sharon was an awesome character in this–clearly pursuing her own goals and making her own choices, and balancing her determination to keep her job and work within the system with her sympathy for and loyalty to Steve. That was great.

What was not great was… if… this… was supposed to… show them developing a relationship…? That kiss over the trunk of her car was the most “um okay contract says we have to put a kiss in the movie somewhere, how about–there? yeah, okay. NOW KISS.”

And it was especially startling because of how much it contrasted with the pairings I actually DID come out of the movie shipping–Wanda/Vision and, in more of a “I really want them to have sex but an actual relationship would clearly be COMPLICATED” way, Natasha/T’Challa. Because it’s clearly not that the Russos can’t write inviting subtext for a het relationship or are hostile to developing those relationships across the board; it seemed like they just. really. were not interested in encouraging anyone to ship Steve/Sharon.

(And I want to say again: If you do, Godspeed, friend! I know it’s a really important ship in the comics, and if you want to work with what they gave us in these movies, go for it, Sharon is awesome, Steve is awesome, they are certainly two people who deserve to be having lots of happy excellent sex and love and affection, and if you think they should get that from each other, great! But WOW the Russos did not really put their backs into selling it.)

So like: look at how Vision and Wanda’s relationship is introduced. Literally the first thing we see Vision do is ghost through Wanda’s bedroom wall, and she replies by exasperatedly calling him Viz and reminding him that they have talked about this. So: they are already on close personal terms with each other. He comes to her bedroom, she has a special nickname for him, and it is very clear that they have been living in close contact and developing a friendship. Additionally, that specific interaction serves to remind us that even though he’s played by grown man Paul Bettany and encompasses the experiences and memories of JARVIS, he’s still new to being human, so he’s not such a mismatch in age with young adult Wanda as he might otherwise seem.

Then: he’s cooking for her! He’s putting effort and thought into pleasing her, which is a sweet gesture! He’s doing it badly, which is also sweet and again emphasizes that he is young and inexperienced, and they have this adorable kitchen interaction that turns Much More Complicated when we realize why he’s trying to entertain her–but it’s still clear that his affection for her is sincere.

Then Wanda needs to get out and has to fight him! And they have obvious feelings about having to go against each other, which again just serves to show how invested in each other they are, and how much affection they already have for each other!

At the end of their big fight sequence, they’re together again, apologizing to each other–and even though they’re separated after that, and neither of them speaks a line during our final glimpses of them, we see each one looking lost in ways that echo each other despite their very different circumstances, and it’s not hard to conclude that at least a part of what each of them is missing is the other. So even though they’re parted, they have this complete arc going from friendship/affection to being forced onto opposite sides to reconciling to being unwillingly parted, and you get to see all of that demonstrate how they feel about each other. And how they feel about each other may or may not be romantic or sexual but look I think we have all worked with a lot less.

ON THE OTHER HAND, Steve and Sharon. Their first interaction, well into the movie, consists of Sharon explaining–while not speaking personally to Steve but addressing an audience of hundreds–why she has never trusted him with mildly private information about herself (that I think a lot of us assumed he would have known or guessed).

Then they have a brief private conversation where she tells him some more about secrets she has kept–ways they have been further apart than Steve even realized, while also making clear that they have had no contact and made no effort to get or stay in touch before this–and then PLOT strikes and they split up to do their jobs without much of a backward glance. From there, Sharon pops up to do Steve a favor, deliver some exposition, and do him another favor–and like I said, she’s a solid character, I like her, and I don’t OBJECT to her winding up with Steve, but nothing in these interactions makes this personal or intimate–it’s all taking place with others around in a way that makes it a very public footing.

(Which is HILARIOUS with the kiss, when it’s Bucky and Sam watching, but their reactions seem infinitely more natural and logical than the kiss itself, which seemed to arise entirely from the fact that they were standing facing each other and ran out of stuff to say? Steve’s line about it being late was… wildly unfounded by anything that has been established between them up to that point.)

And after the kiss, Sharon just VANISHES from the movie, and, evidently, from Steve’s awareness. Which isn’t particularly a criticism of the movie or Steve–her position as a person working within the establishment means her path diverges decisively from Steve’s at that point, and Steve is BUSY. But it does mean that the movie is making nooooo effort to persuade us that Steve has actual feelings about Sharon, or Sharon about Steve, that extend beyond that moment. Again, compare to the whole arc Wanda and Vision get. It would not have been difficult, or taken up much more space, to cast all of this in a different way that would show Steve and Sharon having some connection and growing closer through these events, but… that is not what’s in the movie.

Even Natasha and T’Challa get more of an arc than Steve and Sharon–they meet, flirt, connect on an emotional level immediately after the Vienna bombing. They have these private and somewhat intimate encounters–Natasha recruits T’Challa when they need help. And when she has to betray him to pursue her own priorities and loyalties, it’s obvious that it pains her to do so, and that he feels some degree of betrayal, because the connection they have MEANS something to both of them.

So, uh, in conclusion I think it’s pretty obvious which ships (or male-female relationships, romantic or not) this movie actually wanted us to care about and which… it… did not.