10 Marvel Duos Who Will Never Meet In The MCU
There are some team-ups that will sadly remain in the pages of comics.
The vastness of the Marvel Universe allows for all sorts of seemingly incompatible characters to meet and bounce off of each other. Whether they be unlikely pals, sworn enemies or star-crossed lovers, there are infinite opportunities for unique dynamics between characters from all corners of the universe.
This is something that Marvel movies have been previously unable to take full advantage of. Due to plummeting comics sales in the 1990s that left Marvel on the verge of bankruptcy, the company sold the film rights of many of its famous assets - Sony got Spider-Man, Universal got the Hulk, and 20th Century Fox got the X-men.
Considering Disney's purchase of Fox, and with Spider-Man and the Hulk on loan from their respective owners, surely that means every Marvel character is now free to interact with one another? Sadly, while this may have been the case if the merger had happened sooner, the deaths, disappearances and retirements of several major MCU characters have made some meetings unlikely or impossible.
Let's take a look at all the Marvel duos who'll never be able to meet onscreen.
MCU spoilers ahead!
10. Daredevil And Black Widow
Netflix’s Daredevil, before its cancellation after three seasons, adapted two of the horned hero’s major love interests – reporter Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), and the Hand-trained ninja Elektra Natchios (Élodie Yung).
A romance that the show was unable to adapt, however, was between Matt Murdock and Natalia Romanova, aka Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow.
The two heroes met in Daredevil Vol 1 #81, when Widow rescued Daredevil from drowning after he lost a battle to the supervillain known as the Owl. They fought alongside a few times afterwards and developed feelings for each other, culminating in the couple moving to San Francisco in #87, only six issues after their initial meeting. There, they lived as a couple by day, and fought crime together by night. The pair eventually split but remained good friends.
Sadly, the reintroduction of Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock in Spider-man: No Way Home proved too late for his character to meet Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha, who had sacrificed herself for the soul stone in Avengers: Endgame.
Despite Cox’s enthusiasm for “the Daredevil/Black Widow stuff” which he finds “really funny and sexy at the same time”, the window of opportunity has been closed on this one.