Steve and Natasha on “Endgame” [SPOILERS!]
I really loved “Endgame”. Seriously. The greatest super hero movie of all time, easily. As a Cultural Studies researcher I couldn’t be more pleased with Marvel.
Athough that, as a feminist and a Romanogers shipper since first movie of the Avengers, I want to make some remarks about Steve and Natasha’s relationship and also their endings and how the fandom is dealing with it.
I understood Natasha’s death because I know who is producing the movie and which are their intentions. She had no family or other human connections beyond the Avengers [let’s note how disruptive Black Widow is a character for being a sole woman with agency, including sexual agency]. Clint had his nuclear family. The MCU is still somehow based and made under the logic of [patriarchal] family (even though, I love the disruptions of that on MCU, as, for example, the Guardians of the Galaxy). The chosen one for the sacrifice was clear for me since the beginning of the discussion between Tasha and Clint.
Although that I deeply disliked Steve’s ending. I wish he had died on the battlefield or something like that. Seeing him together with Peggy sounded like an odd to the traditional/White family of the United States. See that house, how it looks. I know Peggy is a badass female character, but the overall of the scene still brings me back to conservative discourses. I know Steve might have a background on that kind of discourse, but he had grown a lot out of it while adjusting to contemporary times.
Natasha Romanoff was part of it. She taught him other kind of women. Postmodern women, female people with agency and choice, traumas, hard background, fighting everyday to pay for their sins. She is not as powerful as Carol Danvers, she is not as idealized to him as Peggy. She was a flawled human being. And he learned to be her friend, her working companion, to respect her even if she broke with everything he believed ought have be ‘female’.
That’s why I love them so much and ship Romanogers as hard as possible.
And that’s why I loved that sandwich scene SO MUCH. It’s perfectly crafted. It’s sweet, Natasha cries so naturally in front of him and he gives up the “let’s move on” discourse, stopped being everyone’s cornerstone and becomes a scared, sensible man. Like, how much beauty there’s on it. As a Black feminist scholar, I come to believe each day more that love lies overall on the small yet potent acts that we share together, that they are our fuel to resistance and to keep moving life despite all suffering. That scene bought this perfectly.
I mean, I wish we stopped to try the fix-it fan fics so much (there are about 4-5 pages of these on Archive of Our Own) and thought about these five years that Steve and Natasha kept a supportive friendship and how they shared affect and helped each other out of pain and kept bounds too sustain their broken minds and souls.
That’s a way to counterpoint Russo’s idealized ending to Steve. Showing other perspectives of love as writing women is also a way to dismantle patriarchy (even if it’s yet White and heterosexual love).
I will write my own fan fic about it. It will not be fixing anything.
It’ll be about the small-yet-powerful acts of shared affection. It will be about midnight pizza and movies. About the respect of listening to each other’s pains and secrets. It will be about foot massage. It will be about eating sandwiches and talking. It will be about huging and crying.
That’s the reason I will always love Romanogers: They have shown to me that no matter how much you’re lonely or broken, you can always find someone who will not misjudge you and your pain.
Thank you, Natasha and Steve, forever. <3
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