All of Wolverine’s Love Interests, Ranked

Wolverine is one of the wildest mutants of all time, a dangerous person to know and be around. Wolverine is the kind of person who sometimes pushes people away because he’s afraid that his deadly lifestyle will bring pain to the people he loved. Wolverine’s life has made him into something of a loner and like all loners, he craves companionship more than anything else. This has been a big part of Wolverine’s arc over the years, as he learned to actually reach out to people. However, one place where Wolverine never had much of a problem reaching out is with women. Wolverine isn’t a conventionally attractive person, but that hasn’t stopped him from having multiple love interests over the years.

Being a Wolverine love interest isn’t always a good thing. In fact, it’s often proved deadly for the women he’s been involved with — most of the women on this list have died. Wolverine’s love interests over the years have run the gamut of different kinds of women (although several of them do have some things in common). Wolverine is something of a himbo on the level of Daredevil, but he’s had some important relationships over his existence. These are the most important love interests for Wolverine, each of them playing a rather large role in his life (we won’t be including alternate universe love interests, since most of the time we didn’t really spend a lot of time with them; so no Hercules and no Maureen or the many one-nighters we’ve seen).

8) (Tie) Rose and Itsu

So, Rose and Itsu are both extremely important to the history of Wolverine, but they’re also two of his worst love interests for different reasons. Rose was hired by Howlett family to look after sickly young James, and became his first crush. The two of them escaped the night that Thomas Logan tried to kill James and the man he thought was his father, and fled into the Canadian wilderness. James and Rose never got together; she ended up getting with a guy named Smitty, and was killed in a fight between James and his half-brother Dog Logan. Itsu was Wolverine’s Japanese wife that he married at some point in the ’40s and is the mother of Akihiro. She was killed by the Winter Soldier. The reason they are both so low, despite their importance (the women Wolverine would get with later who looked just like them) is because neither of them are very interesting characters. Rose is a cliche and Itsu has barely had any actual panels where she spoke. Itsu and Rose served as archetypes in Wolverine’s life, but they aren’t great characters.

7) Mystique

Mystique is a key character in X-Men lore, and she’s played a large role in Wolverine’s life. They met back in the early 20th century and began a relationship that would best be described as erstwhile lovers and haters. The two of them began as lovers, working together as a Bonnie and Clyde-style partnership. Mystique would eventually abandon Wolverine, and they would start to hate each other, although they would end up hooking up a few more times in the intervening years. Mystique and Wolverine didn’t really have that long of a relationship, and we mostly got to see them as enemies, but their relationship was a key part of the early stories in writer Jason Aaron’s Wolverine run of the late ’00s/early /’10s. Their romantic relationship has mostly been forgotten, especially since Marvel has brought back Destiny and made Mystique more of a lesbian than she was before (basically, creator Chris Claremont wrote her as bi, and everyone who came after him up until recently wrote her with men), which is why it places where it does on this list.

6) Jean Grey

Jean Grey is one of Wolverine’s most important — and most well-known — love interests. Their relationship has mostly been unrequited over the years. Wolverine wanted Jean Grey from the moment he met her, thanks to her resemblance to Rose, and that crush grew into love. While many fans out there like to pretend that Wolverine was the one who loved Jean and she never felt the same way as him, this isn’t exactly accurate. Jean does love Wolverine as more than a friend, and the two of have shared a lot of actual romantic moments despite Jean’s relationship with Cyclops. Both of them know that it would never work out — and we’ve seen in alternate universes that it usually doesn’t — so they have this eternal love for each other that will never really be acted on. In the Krakoa Era, there were teases that Jean, Cyclops, and Wolverine were in a throuple, all of which were subtext, but there was something going on between Jean and Wolverine at the time. Jean Grey can be rather complicated character, and this extends to her relationship to Wolverine as much as anything else.

5) Yukio

Yukio is a character that is often thought of as more of a love interest for Storm, but she and Wolverine did have a short romantic relationship during the events of Wolverine (Vol. 1) #1-4. Yukio helped save Wolverine after Shingen Yashida nearly killed him and retrained him so that he could use the man inside of him more than the beast. Since then, Yukio and Wolverine haven’t had much of a romantic relationship, sometimes hooking up, but Yukio is the person that Wolverine trusted with his foster daughter Amiko. Their love is built on the trust that they have for each other; Yukio met Wolverine during one of his more wilder phases, but she knew that Wolverine would never hurt her. Wolverine knows that despite being known as a “wild ninja” that Yukio would always be there for him and could trust her with anything.

4) Storm

Among the X-Men Omega-class mutants, Storm is in a league all her own. Storm joined the X-Men alongside Wolverine, and the two of them grew very close over the years. For a long time, they were more like family than anything else, with a platonic love. However, that would change after the Schism, when Storm, who had first chose Cyclops’s side, joined up with Wolverine after Avengers Vs. X-Men. The two of them gave in to years of romantic tension, and became the main couple of the X-Men of the early ’10s. A lot of fans (including me at the time, honestly) didn’t really like the relationship between the two of them because of their years of close friendship, but it’s definitely a relationship that makes sense the more you think about it (in fact, I would say that it makes much more sense than the Black Panther and Storm relationship; come at me in the comments and I’ll explain). Wolverine and Storm spent years saving each other lives and sharing a closeness that Wolverine didn’t really share with anyone else. Most of Wolverine’s relationship with the other X-Women were more teacher and student, and his relationship with Jean was more like a man in love with an ideal; however, his relationship with Storm was always something of a relationship between equals. There’s teases that the relationship may get picked up again soon, and that’s honestly kind of exciting.

3) Silver Fox

Buckle up, because Silver Fox gets pretty complicated. She first appeared in one of the best Wolverine stories of all-time, Wolverine (Vol. 2) #10. She was a member of the Blackfoot tribe, and fell in love with Wolverine when he was accepted into the tribe at some point in the late 19th century. The two started a life together, building a cabin in an idyllic stretch of Canadian wilderness. On Wolverine’s birthday, Sabretooth went to the cabin and ended up killing her (there’s also some implied sexual assault). This led to the Wolverine and Sabretooth’s first fight, with Silver Fox’s death being a formative part of their hate. However, Silver Fox would end up returning in Wolverine (Vol. 2) #50, when Wolverine was hunting down answers about Weapon X (this came in the aftermath of the Wolverine classic “Weapon X”) and what they did with him. Wolverine was fooled into thinking his memories of Silver Fox were fake and that the women who showed up as Silver Fox was the real thing. They ended up clashing and she was eventually killed by Aldo Ferro, who was manipulating the surviving members of Weapon X. After Wolverine regained his true memories in House of M, he would learn that his memories of Silver Fox were genuine and the one who showed up later was a clone or imposter of some kind.

2) Melita Garner

When people think of Wolverine’s best love interests, they rarely think of Melita Garner, but they should. Melita was a reporter in San Francisco and she got embroiled in Wolverine’s life when he saved her from some thugs. She decided to write about him, and got caught up in his battle against the Facility and its corporate backers. The two of them eventually started dating, and Melita did her best to act as Wolverine’s “woman in the chair”, helping Wolverine figure out what to and where to go next. When he was possessed by a demon thanks to the Red Right Hand, she’s the one who got the X-Men involved and even called on Mystique for help to exorcise the demon inside him. After the Schism broke the X-Men, she ended up getting a job at The Daily Bugle, and they continued their relationship. The two of them ended up breaking up before he got with Storm. After Wolverine’s death, she wrote a book about Wolverine’s life. She was the kind of love interest that is usually fridged, but Melita survived it all and is still around to this day. She and Wolverine worked so well together, and it’s honestly kind of disappointing that their relationship ended.

1) Mariko Yashida

Mariko Yashida is the daughter of Shingen Yashida, a powerful Yakuza crime lord. She is also the cousin of Sunfire (and her half-brother is Silver Samurai), and she met the X-Men when they sought out his help. At first, she was scared of Wolverine, but eventually the two of them got closer and closer. They fell in love and their relationship showed off the softer side of Wolverine. They even planned on marrying, but the ceremony was ruined by Mastermind, who took control of her mind and forced her to break up with Wolverine. She felt such shame at her actions after learning the truth that she refused to get back with Wolverine until she felt worthy of him again, and began to break the criminal ties of her family. She called Wolverine in for help while she was vying against Matsu’o Tsurayaba and the Hand. However, she was poisoned while making peace with Matsu’o. Wolverine would then vow to cut something off Matsu’o every year for revenge. However, this being comics, Mariko wouldn’t stay dead. She was resurrected by the Gorgon and the Hand as the Scarlet Samurai, and ended up battling Old Man Logan before making peace with him. Since Wolverine’s resurrection, they’ve only reunited once, off-panel. Mariko is Wolverine’s greatest love interest, and I’m honestly surprised that she hasn’t been brought back into his story (although, looking at the way “From the Rehashes” is going, it’s probably going to happen soon).

Who do you think is Wolverine’s best love interest? Sound off in the comments below.

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