Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff have a complicated history.
From that scary chase scene to that infamous heart-to-heart,
here are the biggest Black Widow and Hulk scenes in the MCU ranked from best to worst.
The best scene between Natasha Romanoff and Bruce Banner just might be their first. It comes in "The
Avengers," when Natasha has been tasked with recruiting Bruce to the team. At the time,
Bruce is on the lam, living in Kolkata and working as a medical doctor. He shows up at
what he believes to be the home of a patient, but instead, he finds Agent Romanoff waiting for him.
Bruce is immediately on edge, and he asks if the building is surrounded. But Widow is calm
and casual, assuring him that they're alone. She tells Bruce that she's come to recruit him for his
scientific expertise. Smiling nervously, Bruce muses that perhaps she's come to lock him up,
which Widow denies. Finally, Bruce slams down his fists and shouts,
"Stop lying to me!"
At this, Natasha becomes deadly serious and draws a hidden gun. It's now clear that Natasha has been
absolutely terrified of Bruce this entire time but was hiding it like a champ, something further
underlined by the reveal that S.H.I.E.L.D. agents had the building surrounded the entire time.
It's a tense and beautifully constructed scene that also
manages to quickly teach us everything we need to know about these two characters moving forward.
Bruce is trying to achieve balance between his two halves and doesn't want to be caged. Natasha
is excellent at hiding her feelings, and she's far deadlier than she seems. On top of all that,
it's Mark Ruffalo's first real scene playing Banner, and he totally knocks it out of the park.
Another of our favorite moments between Hulk and Widow comes at the end of "Avengers:
Age of Ultron," in a scene that's arguably the final resolution of their romantic subplot,
though we didn't know it at the time. After defeating Ultron, the Avengers are fleeing
the floating chunk of Sokovia where they took their stand against the killer robot.
Although most of the team, including Black Widow, escaped aboard a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier,
the Hulk opted for a different way off the island, flying away in a stolen Quinjet.
As he flies further and further away from the rest of the team, Natasha pops up with a video message.
With visible concern and longing on her face, she pleads with him to turn the plane around.
Instead, Hulk terminates the message and sits in silence as the Quinjet flies off into the unknown.
It's a beautiful little scene that we enjoy, in large part,
because of its simplicity. Bruce never wanted to be an Avenger in the first place, and now,
he has a chance to disappear forever. His only regret is that he won't get to see Nat again,
and all of this is clear on both of their faces, without either of them saying a word.
Another Hulk and Black Widow scene that we simply adore comes early in "Age of Ultron,"
as the Avengers celebrate victory over HYDRA back at Stark Tower. Natasha is pouring some
drinks behind the bar, and Bruce walks up to her, and things get a little flirty.
It begins with pleasant banter, as Bruce uses an old movie lean to get Natasha to play along.
As their flirtation continues, though, Natasha essentially confesses that she has feelings
for Bruce and tries to get a sense of whether or not he feels the same way.
Since Bruce is a huge dork, though, he's less skilled at this sort of banter,
and he fails to give Nat the answer she's looking for.
This moment is a big shift in their relationship, when their simmering romance officially
transitions from subtext to text. Though this romantic pairing took many audiences by surprise
during their initial viewing of this film, it's a genuinely great little interaction. The two
have some real chemistry, and it's nice to see two somber characters having a little fun. Also,
it's a little thing, but we love the fact that Widow, being a veteran superspy, is way better at
flirty roleplaying than the awkward and uptight Banner. All in all, this scene is a delight.
When Loki's forces launch a surprise attack against the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier in "The
Avengers," an explosion sends Bruce and Natasha tumbling down into the aircraft's lower decks.
Natasha finds her leg pinned under some debris, and Bruce,
overwhelmed by his stressful surroundings, starts to turn green. By the time Natasha
frees herself and starts limping away, Bruce has become the Hulk. From there, a tense chase scene
ensues as an injured Widow struggles to run and hide from a monster that used to be her ally.
This little horror interlude is a really cool scene, and it's a nice tonal contrast
with Bruce and Natasha's usual flirtations. That being said, we don't love the fact that
during this sequence in which all the rest of Avengers get to do cool stuff,
the lone female member of the team is relegated to getting injured, running away from a monster,
and then spending the rest of the sequence cowering in a storage room before finally getting
rescued by Thor. After losing a few points for that, this scene is still pretty great overall.
After their tearful goodbye at the end of "Age of Ultron," Hulk and Widow's romantic subplot
is more or less dropped from the series moving forward. There is, however, a little nod to their
past entanglement in "Avengers: Infinity War," when the team is re-assembling in order to make
a stand against Thanos. After spending several years as a fugitive, when Black Widow finally
rejoins the team, she finds an unexpected person waiting for her back at Avengers HQ.
During Bruce and Natasha's brief interaction,
it's immediately clear that the pair still have a great deal of affection for one another,
but it's also clear that neither one is entirely sure of where they stand or what they want from
each other. The two never get to have another big heart-to-heart, at least not one that we see,
and they spend the rest of the film fighting against Thanos, rather than patching things up.
We wish this scene could be a bit longer and that it gave us a resolution to this
particular plotline, but "Infinity War" is such a dense film that we imagine the filmmakers just
didn't have time for it. That being said, what we do get here is still pretty great,
so this awkwardly sweet little scene stands out among the Bruce and Natasha moments.
Here's a scene we have mixed feelings about from "Age of Ultron." Natasha has
been captured by Ultron, and Bruce arrives to save her. He frees her from her jail cell
and tries to convince her to leave with him, but she wants to stay and fight.
We cut away for a bit and see that Ultron has begun his final plan,
to levitate a section of Sokovia up into the sky. When we return to Bruce and Natasha,
he tries again to convince her to leave with renewed vigor. Instead, Natasha does this:
"I adore you."
After the kiss, she pushes him into a pit. A moment later, the Hulk leaps
up from the abyss below and lands in front of Natasha, grinning and ready for action.
This scene isn't higher on our list because it's an example of a time when the writers
want to have it both ways. They want to show the audience that after everything he's gone through,
Bruce is genuinely traumatized and he no longer wants to be the Hulk. At the same time, though,
for the climax of their big superhero movie, they want the good guy version of Hulk to be involved,
punching robots and stuff. Their way of accomplishing both these goals is to have Natasha
non-consensually transform an unwilling Bruce. It's fine, but it's also sort of a cheap "gotcha"
twist, and it's played entirely for laughs in a way that doesn't really acknowledge that this is
a genuinely awful thing for Nat to do to Bruce, who really doesn't want to be the Hulk anymore.
After the team breaks through the defenses of a HYDRA base, it's time for the Avengers to
reassemble and head home. However, since the Hulk is still rampaging around in the woods,
Natasha is sent out to calm him down. And it's here that we get to see the first
appearance of the team's new technique for de-Hulking the Hulk — the lullaby.
"Hey, big guy, sun's getting real low."
With a gentle caress of the Hulk's palm and forearm after uttering this code phrase,
Natasha seems to immediately calm the Hulk down. Then, after a moment,
the big guy backs away and collapses to the ground, transforming back into a shirtless Banner.
Honestly, we can't really decide how we feel about this scene. It's sort of a cool idea
that Widow has the ability to help calm down the Hulk and get him to transform back into Banner,
but the whole scene has a sort of uncomfortable energy to it that just doesn't work for us. We're
not really sure what director Joss Whedon was thinking with this one,
but if he was going for sexy, he very much missed the mark. It seems like perhaps even
some of the other folks at Marvel also weren't super big fans of this somewhat awkward scene,
as it was later turned into a punchline in "Thor: Ragnarok."
Despite their long history, Black Widow and the Hulk share barely
any screen time during their final film together, "Avengers: Endgame."
Natasha's storyline focuses much more on her relationship with Hawkeye,
and Bruce's time is split between reconnecting with Thor and doing science stuff. That
being said, the pair do have one brief interaction together early on in the film.
When Natasha, Steve, and Scott meet Bruce at a diner, we learn that the big guy has now
merged his two halves, Hulk and Banner, into a single being. Banner explains that one reason
he decided to do this was because he personally blames himself for the team's loss to Thanos.
There's no flirting, but Natasha does make some time to comfort Bruce,
and to compliment him when he worries he might not have the expertise to figure out time travel:
"Well, you pulled this off. I remember a time when that seemed pretty impossible, too."
The scene is more of a group moment, but it's worth mentioning because believe it or not,
it's the last time that we get to see Hulk and Widow have a real conversation.
It's a perfectly fine scene. The only reason we're ranking it so
low is because of how anticlimactic this ends up being as the pair's last true interaction.
After a loss to Ultron that included an accidental Hulk rampage, the team decides
to lay low at Hawkeye's rural family home. While they're there, Natasha decides to make her play.
She asks Bruce to run away with her, but he refuses, saying she's out of her mind. His
reasoning? He feels that being the Hulk means he can't have a normal relationship with her,
and he can't have kids. She responds by telling him she can't either,
and that the Red Room that trained her also had her sterilized.
"It's efficient. One less thing to worry about."
Perhaps there's a version of this scene that could've worked. We'd love to see more
of Widow and Hulk talking about how they both feel like monsters who don't fit in.
That whole dynamic is the main reason why they work so well as a pairing. But in this
specific execution, the writers tried to convey this idea in a truly tasteless way,
by having both of them lament their infertility. Presumably without realizing it,
the scene basically implies that people who can't have kids are unfit to be in a relationship,
and that they're, well, monsters. Even if it wasn't the intended message,
this complete catastrophe of a scene clearly gets the bottom spot on our list, with a bullet.
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