5 Years Before The Avengers, This Comedy Gave Us the Chris Evans & ScarJo Story the MCU Wouldn’t Do

Before Chris Evans became Captain America and before Scarlett Johansson was officially the Black Widow, the two of them had already done a movie together that, looking back, feels almost like a deliberate provocation. This is because it gives audiences exactly the kind of dynamic the Marvel Cinematic Universe never wanted to commit to: a romance with real chemistry. And it was such obvious chemistry that it’s honestly funny how, once The Avengers came out and put their characters side by side as teammates in the biggest blockbuster of the decade, Marvel Studios spent years acting like the idea of them as a couple wasn’t even on the table — while the audience did the exact opposite.

During Phase 1 and Phase 2, Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff were very shipped, mainly because the MCU has always been great at building intimacy through small moments: a lingering look here, a slightly more personal conversation there, and that feeling that there’s a deeper connection happening underneath what the script is actually spelling out. But in the end, Marvel did what it does best whenever it doesn’t want to complicate things: it dodged the topic, pushed each character into a different emotional direction, and left fans with crumbs.

The Nanny Diaries Made Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson’s On-Screen Romance a Reality

This whole ship happened because the actors, aside from having a great friendship off-screen, always gave off serious couple energy inside the MCU. But what’s even more interesting, and what a lot of people don’t know, is that another movie had already proven that years earlier.

The Nanny Diaries, released in 2007, follows Annie Braddock (Johansson), a recent college graduate trying to survive that frustrating stage of life where you don’t know if you’re officially becoming an adult or if you’re still pretending everything will somehow magically work itself out. She ends up taking a job as a nanny for a millionaire family in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, stepping into a world where money can buy everything except emotional maturity. Her controlling and unhinged boss treats the house like an empire and her son like an accessory, while the husband basically exists in ghost mode. But in the middle of all that chaos, Annie meets Hayden (Evans), known as the “Harvard Hottie.”

And what makes the romance work in this movie isn’t even the script trying to force a cute vibe — it’s the fact that both actors are clearly comfortable with each other on screen. Their flirting has timing, it feels natural, and it has that classic 2000s rom-com energy that audiences always fall for. Evans’ character is the typical charming, attractive, slightly cocky guy, but he’s not a jerk. He’s the kind of love interest who, in most movies, would just be treated as the “prize” the main character gets. But here, he becomes more than that: he becomes a break from reality, a breath of fresh air, a piece of normal life in the middle of Annie’s completely absurd routine.

The Nanny Diaries doesn’t try to turn the romance into something huge, because it doesn’t need to. The movie focuses on the fact that Annie is in a very specific place in life: she’s exhausted, emotionally drained, and surrounded by rich people who live as if consequences don’t exist. So when Hayden shows up, he represents a possible life outside that nightmare. He doesn’t save her in some grand, dramatic way, but he reminds her that pleasure, lightness, and attraction still exist in the real world. It’s simple, it works, and honestly, it’s more effective than a lot of planned blockbuster romances.

And it’s impossible to watch it today without thinking for the millionth time: why didn’t Marvel ever do this with Steve and Natasha? The chemistry was always there, and the MCU even played around with it at times, especially once it started pairing them up on missions and making them emotionally closer. Who doesn’t remember all the tension-filled moments in Captain America: The Winter Soldier? Watching those scenes again, it almost feels like they were written that way just to mess with fans.

Overall, the studio always treated that possibility like it was too dangerous: maybe because Steve had to remain “Peggy’s guy” until the very end, maybe because Natasha had already been pushed into other romantic directions (especially a controversial one), or maybe because they simply didn’t want to touch a pairing that would completely change the internal dynamic of the Avengers.

Steve and Natasha’s Unused Arc Shows the MCU Never Knew How to Handle Romance

Of course, it’s not a universal opinion that Steve and Natasha should’ve been an official couple in the MCU. Still, most fans were basically begging for it, and it absolutely could’ve been an opportunity to try something different (even if it eventually didn’t work out). But the truth is that Marvel has always seemed to have one major limitation: it never really knew how to build an adult romance without making it feel like wasted screen time. Natasha and Bruce, for example, always felt more like an idea than something organic. Steve and Sharon happened too fast and had no impact. Tony and Pepper worked because their chemistry and continuity were established from the very first movie. But outside of that, the MCU spent years treating romance like an accessory instead of something essential to who these characters were beyond being heroes.

In The Nanny Diaries, Johansson also delivers something Black Widow rarely got to do: be messy, be funny, and be human. Annie isn’t always in control because she makes mistakes, improvises, and gets herself into awkward situations. And that makes her relationship with Hayden feel much closer to the audience, because it’s realistic. That’s where the sense of missed opportunity hits. Steve and Natasha could’ve been exactly that inside the MCU: two broken people trying to find a sense of normalcy in each other. Marvel itself, back when it was just comics, was always about flawed, human heroes.

And it’s not like The Nanny Diaries is a perfect movie either. It has that very specific early-2000s comedy-drama aesthetic, it sometimes overdoes the tone, and its social critique can be pretty on-the-nose. But it nails what matters here: it gives a relationship that feels real enough for the audience to buy without effort — and it’s coming from Evans and Johansson. Maybe for anyone who watched it before the MCU, the ship would’ve started right there. But even for people who only discovered them through Marvel movies and naturally got hooked on their chemistry, it’s proof enough. So it’s a shame they wasted that dynamic just to tie the characters to other pairings that aren’t nearly as beloved.

In the end, it’s become a great little piece of trivia for anyone who always wanted to see what that romance could look like (even if it’s not in the same universe). Now that time has passed and Marvel Studios is trying to fully get its momentum back, hopefully this sticks as a lesson: stop flirting with an idea and actually commit to it. If they’re willing to lean into fan service in so many films, why didn’t they even take a risk in this department?

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