She-Hulk just cleared up a debate that’s been raging on the Internet for more than a decade: Is Captain America a virgin?
It’s a conversation that kicks off in She-Hulk, Disney+’s winking new comedy that delights in poking fun at the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s self-seriousness. While in the car with her cousin Bruce Banner, a.k.a. The Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), Jennifer Walter (Tatiana Maslany) presses Bruce on what he knows about Captain America‘s sex life.
She lays out her theory. “Steve Rogers did not have a girlfriend before he went into the service,” she says.
“Says who?” asks Hulk.
“This History Channel,” says Jennifer. “So he becomes Captain America, and from that moment on, a symbol of America, he is rushed to the frontlines. He becomes a war hero. Then he’s frozen in ice. So based on everything you’ve told me, after he gets unfrozen he goes from world-threatening disaster to world-threatening disaster. That’s when he’s not a fugitive from the law, right? So it seems like he was pretty, pretty busy…Obviously Captain America was a virgin.”
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Before Bruce can reply, their back-and-forth is interrupted by a spaceship. Luckily, the two will circle back to the conversation before the end of the episode and reveal some tantalizing news.
In case you’ve missed the ongoing debate about Steve Rogers’ chastity, there are a few other reasons that fans have long suspected Cap (Chris Evans) is a virgin. Steve Rogers’ Boy Scout personality combined with the sexual mores of the 1940s suggest that he would not have lost his virginity before receiving the supersoldier serum during World War II.
Notoriously, he never actually gets to take the love of his life, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), out on a date before he crashes a plane to save the world, suggesting they were not able to consummate the relationship before he was frozen for several decades. (That is, until he travels back in time to reunite with her at the end of Avengers: Endgame—but more on that later.)
And his undying love or Peggy suggests that he would have remained faithful to her even once he woke from cryogenic sleep in the modern era. Sure, he flirts with Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. But she ends up with Bruce Banner, at least for awhile, and we never see awkward conversations about a love triangle at the Avengers compound, so we can assume that nothing actually ever took place between the two.
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His only other suggested love interest is Peggy’s grand-niece, Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), which, gross. The two lock lips (again, gross), but let’s all hope and assume they never did more considering that Steve is probably her grand-uncle (gross!).
Now we, the audience, know that Captain America is certainly not a virgin by the end of Avengers: Endgame. In the final minutes of that movie, Steve Rogers travels back in time to find young Peggy and live out the rest of his life with her. We know from Captain America: The Winter Soldier that Peggy got married and had two kids, and Endgame seems to confirm that her unseen husband was actually Steve Rogers post-time travel.
It’s unclear when Steve travels back in time whether Steve and Peggy get together in a parallel timeline or whether Steve was Peggy’s husband all along and fathered her two children. Considering the elusive way in which Peggy talks about her partner in The Winter Soldier, it’s safe to assume the latter. The writers of Endgame have suggested as much.
But, apparently, Jennifer and maybe even Bruce think Captain America is dead at the time of She-Hulk, which takes place post-Endgame. The world at large would be unaware of his time travel shenanigans. That seems to be a secret that Cap’s besties Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson and Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes have held close.
In an end-credits scene for the first episode of She-Hulk, Jennifer pretends to drunkenly cry over the disappearance of what Ant-Man affectionately referred to as “America’s ass.” “It’s just so sad. Steve Rogers did so much for his country, and he never got to experience sex,” she says. “Did you see that ass? That ass did not deserve to die a virgin. It’s like, so sad.”
Bruce relents. “Steve Rogers is not a virgin,” he says. “He lost his virginity to a girl in 1943 on the U.S.O. Tour.”
Jennifer immediately drops the teary eyed act. “Yes, I knew it,” she says triumphantly.
Thinking about the circumstances in which Steve would have shared this information with Bruce is pretty hilarious on its own. I guess there was a lot of time to kill around Avengers headquarters in those five years during the Blip. But, finally, confirmation.
And in case you think this is some diversion from Marvel canon, let Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige assure you it is not: In an interview with Variety, She-Hulk showrunner Jessica Gao said she posed the question to Feige and got the answer “straight from Kevin’s golden mouth.”
“I can’t describe to you how thrilled and shocked I was that not only was Kevin on board with answering the question,” she said, “that he supplied me with the canon answer.”
For her part, Jennifer is elated. “Captain America fu—” she yells, and then the screen cuts out because this is a PG show. After many long years worrying that America’s greatest soldier never got laid, we share Jennifer’s enthusiasm.
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Write to Eliana Dockterman at eliana.dockterman@time.com