In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there are many different romantic relationships that are featured throughout the movies. Many fans and critics alike have noted that many of the romances in the franchise are rather forced or not developed well enough, but there are also some couples that were done justice. While most of the boyfriends in the series are good people overall, this doesn’t mean they are perfect or that they are always good partners.
Here are the worst boyfriends in the MCU ranked leading up to the worst of them all.
Scott Lang
Scott Lang is one of the best fathers in the entire franchise, and he’s overall a good person. His relationship with Hope Van Dyne is given a fair amount of development, and they are a cute couple. While he’s overall a great boyfriend, he can be a bit oblivious and not always on Hope’s level. However, while he might not always be as smart as her, they make a good pair despite the fact that he’s a bit goofy.
Thor
Thor is probably the most positive and hilarious of the original six Avengers in the MCU. He’s an extremely strong and talented warrior, but he’s also surprisingly kind and sweet. While he’s an overall good boyfriend, the main reason he’s on this list is the fact that he and Jane have such little chemistry on screen. This makes their relationship hard to believe and makes Thor seem somewhat insincere in his feelings for her. Also, the fact that this romance is practically dropped in later movies creates some disconnect.
Vision
Wanda and Vision are another couple from Marvel comics that doesn’t always translate perfectly into the MCU. While they are given some development on-screen, their relationship doesn’t always fit with the rest of the world. While Vision seems to try to be a good boyfriend, the fact that he’s technically not human and has a very different perspective on the world makes him seem a little out of touch with Wanda and her life at times.
Steve Rogers
Steve Rogers might be someone who cares about doing the right thing and tries to protect the people he loves, but he’s kind of a bad boyfriend at times. A lot of this can be contributed to bad writing and flip-flopping on who the filmmakers wanted him to end up with.
However, the fact that his relationship with Sharon is completely dropped and that he goes to the past to be with Peggy makes him seem like a pretty poor boyfriend to both of them. Also, while they aren’t a canon romantic couple, the fact that Steve leaves behind Bucky makes him seem like a bad boyfriend in a different way.
Stephen Strange
The relationship between Stephen Strange and Christine comes off as filled with some unfortunate gender stereotypes and tropes. Strange is rather arrogant and condescending, and it’s hard to see what Christine would find endearing about him. One of the worst moments is when he basically mansplains to her how to perform surgery on him. Overall, Strange is not a good boyfriend and Christine gets relegated to a love interest role that’s rather unfortunate.
Bruce Banner
One couple that many fans of the franchise didn’t love was Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanoff. The relationship seemed to come out of nowhere and didn’t make much sense. Everything about them felt forced and the scene where Natasha compared herself to a monster because she couldn’t have children was really unfortunate. Because of the fact that the franchise tried to retcon this relationship, it made it seem like Burce just left her unceremoniously and never talked to her about their relationship again.
Star-Lord
Star-Lord might not be the worst boyfriend in the MCU, but he’s one of the most annoying. This relationship is another that is filled with rather unfortunate gender tropes. While Gamora is clearly the more experienced and intelligent of the two, it’s still Star-Lord who is the leader of the Guardians. He’s rather arrogant, annoying, and over-emotional. His worst moment is when he lets his emotions over Gamora’s death ruin the plan to get the Gauntlet from Thanos. Gamora wouldn’t have been impressed by this.
Tony Stark
Tony Stark is so high on this list mainly because of the kind of boyfriend he was in earlier movies. While he becomes a much better partner and eventually husband topper, early on he had a ton of issues.
He started off as a womanizer who didn’t really respect any of the women he slept with or interacted with. Then, after he started dating Pepper, he was still rather selfish and didn’t even remember that she was allergic to strawberries.
Odin
If this was a list of the worst fathers in the MCU, Odin would definitely be close to the worst. But, on top of that, he’s also not a very good husband. Odin is overall a selfish jerk whose wife seems to take a secondary role to him. He also clearly doesn’t love Loki or really understand or respect Freya’s love of her son. The fact that Odin is such a jerk and rather ruthless overall makes him a bad partner.
Erik Killmonger
While all of the other boyfriends on this list do some rude things at times, nothing can compare to what Erik Killmonger does to his girlfriend Linda. While we only see her briefly in the movie, it’s implied that they are together. Killmonger ends up shooting and killing her when Klaue uses her as a human shield. However, he doesn’t do this on accident as he is totally fine with killing her so that he can achieve his ultimate goal of killing. There’s pretty much no other way to get worse as a boyfriend than murdering your own girlfriend.
