Why did Joss joss Clintasha? It depends on whether or not you believe his explanation. As I understand it, Clintasha was originally intended by the Marvel execs but Whedon nixed it because, according to him, he wanted to show that ‘men and women can be friends without sex’. To which I would politely respond: bullshit. Not that men and women can’t be just friends, of course–I’m a huge fan of platonic male/female relationships (Steve + Natasha in CATWS = BROTP of BROTPs)–but if that’s what you want to show, why would you give Natasha a romance that comes out of nowhere and has no character support?

When I say Brucenat has no character support, what I mean is this: Natasha claims to be super into Bruce because he’s not like anyone she’s ever met in that he avoids fights because he knows he’ll win. Which just— What? I mean, what? The Hulk is one of the most destructive forces imaginable. When he’s unleashed he goes out of control and even kills innocent people. And she ‘adores’ Bruce because he’s understandably not into that? Not because he’s an amazingly wonderful guy who totally gets her and has fantastic chemistry with her (because as much as I love Bruce Banner, he’s not any of those things)–but because he doesn’t actually want to destroy things and kill people, even though he can? Natasha Romanoff, who put all her deepest darkest secrets on the internet in order to help Steve bring down a dangerous organisation, is so won over by a guy not being as aggressive as he could potentially be, she’s tempted to abandon her friends when the world is in danger and run off with him into the sunset? Who is this woman?

OK, yes, that’s a slight oversimplification of Brucenat in AoU, but it’s the reason I reject Whedon’s pseudo-feminist explanation for jossing Clintasha. If your intention really is to show that Black Widow doesn’t need a romantic relationship, either don’t give her one (see: CATWS) or make sure there’s a damn good explanation for it. Set her up with someone who gets her, someone you can clearly show has a close bond with her before the overt flirting and kissing begins. That’s not even a feminist issue, it’s just a basic rule of decent writing. And if it’s someone with more-or-less equal fandom status (indicating that he is as much her love interest as she is his), all the better. So with the material that Whedon already had to work with going into AoU, his options were: 1) Hawkeye, 2) OC, or 3) no one.

Because ultimately if the explanation for Natasha’s infatuation with Bruce is that he’s basically decent but has also done questionable things (making him relatable to her), that makes her just as likely to hook up with anybody else on the team. After all, they’re all good guys with complicated pasts and guilt issues. Which is kind of the whole reasoning behind sexist male fandom’s unsubstantiated insistence that Black Widow is a ‘slut’ or the ‘team bicycle’ (meaning that her sole purpose is to hook up with the more important male characters and further their story arc) an idea that comes more from sexist thinking about the purpose of female characters than it is reflective of her actual role in the comics/movies.

Ultimately, I think the explanation is really very banal: Whedon liked the whole beauty-and-the-beast feel of Brucenat (the lullaby thing? really?) and ran with it for personal reasons (i.e. identifying with the Hulk). Banner, being older, nerdier, and less ‘manly’/buff than the other Avengers, is an ‘unexpected’ love interest for the kickass Widow, making for appealing male-audience wish fulfilment. And I think Whedon also suffers from the classic writer’s inability to distinguish between regular tension and sexual tension when it comes to characters of the opposite sex (Black Widow is scared of the Hulk = Black Widow is in love with the Hulk obvs), a flaw that, frankly, you can find in lazy-ish writing literally everywhere.