A defense of Natasha’s storyline in Age of Ultron by a woman in the process of learning to be a person
While I haven’t been through the same experiences that shaped Natasha’s past, I feel like I have a perspective on her that many people with more normal childhoods don’t see.
I was not intentionally shaped to be unable to emotionally connect with people, but a childhood with what was probably a combination of Autism, leaky gut, and food opiate addiction left me in a similar situation, in many ways. In college, my first ever real best friend helped me to find the diagnosis of Aspergers, and from there I learned to eat differently, to eliminate the dulling opiate-like effect that certain foods were having on me.
It felt as if I’d come alive for the first time.
Emotionally connecting with people was new and intoxicating, and it was a handful of years later that I married my first boyfriend, the only person I’d ever kissed.
It was a mistake that many other people could have predicted. Although I had abstract knowledge that it was likely to be a bad idea, I had no experience, no basis for a gut reaction to guide me. And the relationship was filling a void that had gone hollow for so much of my life.
So when people tell me that Natasha’s fixation on Bruce came out of nowhere, was too fast, too sudden, or uncharacteristic of her character up to that point, I don’t understand how they can narrow down her possibilities like that, especially when her storyline in TWS had a major factor of her learning how to open up to people and connect in a real way.
Gaining Steve’s trust was formative, enlightening, a big step in her opening up to new kinds of connections. Gaining the trust of both Bruce and Hulk, enough to make the Lullabye possible? I can easily see how that could be intoxicating.
The romance was clumsy and uncomfortable on both their parts, yes. Mistakes were made, yes. But for me, that just makes the whole story all the more believable.
I know some people see it as a token romance-for-the-sake-of-romance, but to my eyes, it was barely about romance at all. It was about Natasha dealing with what had been done to her, learning what she wanted and who she was. It was about her developing as a person and making those mistakes necessary to learn. To me, it’s a beautiful continuation of her whole arc, from a programmed tool to a human being with all kinds of needs, priorities and preferences.
It felt real to me, it felt right, and I will defend it, even though in-story and from Bruce’s perspective especially it was kind of a train wreck. It wasn’t perfect, and that’s a lot of what I love about it.
