The budding romantic relationship between Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow and Bruce Banner/Hulk was introduced in Avengers: Age of Ultron. However, Hulk flying off into space at the end of the film cut that entanglement short. Thor: Ragnarok contained a nod to their relationship, but Avengers: Endgame and Avengers: Infinity War -- despite having both the heroes on Earth -- mostly ignored their time as romantic partners. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely have now explained that decision.
In an interview with Empire, McFeely explained they had initially tried to address Bruce and Natasha's relationship in Infinity War, with many of those scenes ending up on the cutting room floor. "We certainly tried to," he said. "In Infinity War we have [unused] scenes…wrote ‘em, shot ‘em…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," he explained. "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."
Explaining why the relationship was not then addressed in Endgame, Markus said, "He was smart Hulk in this movie and it did seem a little odd, in the midst of everyone’s mourning and his change to a 2000-pound genius, to go, ‘and they’re dating!'"
McFeely then added, “We thought it would be more elegant not to address that.”
Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Danai Gurira as Okoye and Bradley Cooper as Rocket, with Gwyneth Paltrow Pepper Potts, Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, Benedict Wong as Wong, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie and Josh Brolin as Thanos. The film is in theaters now.
(via Express)