My friend…. this is really funny, because I also just read this article today, and I was all geared up to write a rant about it when you popped into my inbox 😂
This is one of the most asinine articles I’ve ever read 🤣🤣🤣 and I’ve read quite a few in regards to certain characters in the MCU.
First to address your point about Chris Evans– I do feel pretty bad for him. I think he genuinely connected to and cared about Steve Rogers as a character. From the interviews in which he talks about Steve, and particularly Steve’s relationship with Bucky, I can tell he really put a lot of thought into Steve’s heart and frame of mind, and I think he really made MCU Steve Rogers his. Certainly any new film incarnations of Steve will be measured up against Chris’ interpretation, haha.
It’s just… I don’t think Chris would have wanted Steve to be disrespected like this. Ruffalo himself said he thought Chris would have put a stop to it. So it’s distasteful that everyone would just go ahead and make obsessing over Steve’s virginity a big part of Jennifer’s character while laughing at it all the while. (I can’t read Chris Evans’ mind– maybe he doesn’t care, though I like to think he does.) As a big fan of Steve, Disney has not failed to disappoint me time after time, and this is just the icing on the cake.
And Sam, our new Captain America! Why does the MCU seem to forget that they have a new Captain America? Is it because they’re spending all their energy marketing another Captain? 🤔 You’d think he would be of more note to a Manhattan lawyer’s mind since he stopped freedom fighters antifa terrorists from killing the GRC members? Hell the Hollywood Reporter forgot and Chris had to remind them. I do feel bad for Anthony Mackie. 🤦 Silver lining– at least She Hulk isn’t obsessing over Sam’s virginity??
And yes, I do agree that reducing Steve to jokes about his ass and virginity are a cheap shot. And it shows how puerile and insipid the MCU has become. They have nothing of note to say and they grab for anything that they think is funny, to the point of making jokes of their most beloved characters. I know they’re aiming for the widest audience imaginable, including kids, but that doesn’t mean they need to write like high schoolers (though tbh I know fanficcers in high school that write better than these guys). What mature adult honestly gives a such a huge crap about whether or not a (thought to be) deceased public figure and national hero had sex?
The first paragraph had me rolling my eyes already:
Jennifer Walters is the hero we all deserve, because in the very first episode of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, she finally gets to the bottom of one of Marvel’s biggest mysteries: Did Captain America die a virgin?
And it just gets worse.
As She-Hulk continues, viewers can expect to see more hilarious, meta, and, yes, horny moments like this. “The horniness! That stuff is my favorite,” Maslany says with a laugh. She loved how Jen is obsessed with Captain America’s virginity because “it’s the human side of him, the real side, the thing that she would [relate to].”
You’re telling me that Jennifer Walters, a lawyer whose opening scene showed her practicing her closing argument for a case against powerful business interests that caused the deaths of innocent people– that Jennifer Walters, who was standing up for the little guy– that this strong, compassionate woman, is “obsessed” with Captain America’s virginity of all things because it’s the “human, real” side of him that she would relate to?? Not the side of him that stood up against bullies at great detriment to his own well-being, even before he had the serum? Not the side of him that curled over a grenade to protect his fellow soldiers? The side that went into a Nazi death camp solo to rescue his best friend (and hundreds of other POWs) when the army left them for dead? The side of him that leveled a Nazi-infested US intelligence agency? The side of him that did exactly what she was shown to be doing right at the beginning of her own show??
I think @luna-rainbow said it best– “to reduce “the human side of Steve” (or anyone, for that matter) to whether or not they fucked…is seriously superficial, intrusive and just pathetic.”
But the actress admits she had no idea this was something Marvel fans have been wondering for years, adding, “I love that that’s how everybody’s thinking. In that vein of that question, there’s a lot more Easter eggs like that throughout the season. There’s something later that’s a really great moment with a cameo that I won’t say what happens, but it’s basically like a walk of shame that’s really funny.”
I shudder to imagine what horrors await us.
And if any fans are wondering how credible Bruce’s intel is, the debate can be put to rest: This is officially the true story of how Captain America lost his virginity. “We didn’t set out thinking that we were going to be able to answer it,” Gao tells EW. “It used to just be a running joke, that it’s going to be a lifelong obsession for Jen, that this is the one thing that keeps her awake at night. It actually used to be in the show a lot more, where in every episode there would be some little reminder, like you’d see that her search history was this, and she was always in asides talking to other characters where everybody’s reaction was like, 'She’s talking about this again.’”
You’re kidding me right? Does nobody on this team see how creepy it is for a grown woman to be obsessed lifelong with a dead man’s sex life? Compare it to a random male character obsessing every night over whether or not Natasha had been a virgin when she died. And for this to be the thing that keeps her awake at night? Out of all the things she’s experienced??
But then Gao got the definitive answer — and permission to use it — from Marvel’s mastermind. “It was actually Kevin Feige who said, 'I know the answer. I can tell you. We can do the answer,’” Gao recalls. “And I was like, 'You have the answer, and we can tell everyone?’ And he was like, 'Yeah.’ So this is Marvel canon. This is straight from Kevin Feige.”
SO IT WAS YOU, KEVIN FEIGE!!! Honestly when I read this I almost felt relieved. If it’s Feige’s own fatuous headcanon, I can ignore it. Why does the status of Steve Rogers’ virginity take up so much of his headspace that he feels the need to insert it into a show that has nothing to do with him? And they were going to have it in every episode? Why?! PLEASE tell me they aren’t doing that anymore. I don’t want anyone in the MCU to ever utter Steve’s name again.