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Major spoiler alert for Avengers: Endgame, ok?

The MCU can boast a lot of superlatives. It’s the most lucrative movie franchise of all time, has an incredible roster of insanely popular characters, and has some of the most arresting plots and fight scenes in the superhero genre. Before Avengers: Endgame, however, there was something missing from Marvel’s track record of excellence. None of their movies delivered a good romance.

That’s not to say that the MCU is completely devoid of romance. Many of its heroes have love interests, and some have their story stretched out over multiple films, but none of them have matched the scale and grandeur of the MCU’s action scenes or individual character arcs. For a long time it seemed like these Marvel movies could do everything but deliver a satisfying romance. Their track record, Pre-Endgame, is certainly disappointing:

Clint Barton met his wife and had children off screen. Bruce Banner had a girlfriend in The Incredible Hulkand she was never heard from again after that movie. Wanda and Vision were weird and he’s dead, Thor and Jane broke up, Peter Quill and Past Gamora have a lot of work to do, Scott Lang justgot Hope Pym to be nice to him again, Peter Parker’s first love interest was the daughter of a flying sociopath and also moved away, and T’challa and Nakia’s surely fascinating romantic history is only ever alluded to in the course of Black Panther.

The closest thing the MCU has to a decent romance is the evolving relationship of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, but while many of their moments together are sweet the arc of their love has been fairly routine. Even in Endgame, when they marry and have a child, Pepper’s scenes are too few to feel invested in what felt like an inevitable pairing. They’re a loving, pragmatic couple, but despite Tony’s repulsor blasts they generate little heat.

Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter, however, have always had that duende. Their slow burning chemistry over the course of Captain America: The First Avengerwas cut tragically short by the circumstances of Cap’s fate, but instead of letting the thwarted romance exist as a dangling thread, the MCU movies and TV shows always followed up on what Steve and Peggy meant to each other.

Fans of Agent Carter, Peggy’s short-lived television series, got a closer look at what her life was like in the aftermath of Steve’s ice bath watched her feel his absence while moving on. From that show and her heartbreaking appearances in laterCaptain America movies, the audience learns that she lived a full life but always loved Steve. How could she not? She witnessed his heart before he gained his powers, and it was the greatest possible heart. Their swing-and-a-miss at being together was a loss for both characters, and their story has always felt like one of the MCU’s greater emotional tragedies.

On Steve’s side of the equation, Peggy Carter was one of the two most profound gaps in the life he found when he reanimated in 2012 (the second, obviously, is his best friend Bucky Barnes, but Bucky “died” in Cap’s original time). Cap’s every attempt to cope with the hole in his heart left by outliving his friends has been thwarted by further strife: Bucky and Peggy are alive, but one is a brainwashed killing machine and the other is suffering from dementia. When Peggy dies, Steve bears her coffin and mourns her, but never stops treasuring her memory.

Even when he’s kissing her niece. Listen, he was grieving.

Endgamedoes a good job of reminding the audience that losing a chance at happiness with Peggy is Steve’s greatest regret in his life (it is arguably on par with failing to stop Thanos), so when he sees her while time-traveling to the 1970s it’s hard to blame him for feeling the spark of that love ignite again in his chest. It’s possible to interpret that moment in Peggy’s office, when he sees she kept his picture on his desk, as one where he makes up his mind — saving the universe is his first priority, but if he survives he’s coming back for his girl.

Of course Cap does survive, and once he finishes the business of stopping Thanos and burying his friend, Steve abandons the future for thechanceof being with Peggy again. It’s fitting that the last shot of Endgame is Steve and Peggy finally getting their dance, since their miraculous second chance symbolizes everything the Avengers were fighting for. Love, hope, the joy of reunion. And an opportunity perhaps, to be satisfied with their lives.

That’s a goddamn romance. It took 22 movies and a lot of thinking other people were dead, but Steve and Peggy’s loving reunion pays off because it took the entire journey of the MCU to bring them back together. Even as it kind of breaks the space-time continuum, it’s the only satisfying way to end Steve’s story. By tying romance into the personal arcs of both characters and framing love as a risk always worth taking, the MCU finally nailed what makes for epic love on screen. May Steve and Peggy live happily ever after.

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