Ambiguously Bi / Marvel Universe

Ambiguously Bi characters in the Marvel Universe.

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• Daredevil: The ending of Serpent's Crown implies Nyla Skin swings both ways based on the way she interacts with a couple of casino hostesses.
• Fantastic Four: Johnny Storm, according to some fan theories. In addition to doing things like dating non-binary aliens, it was strongly hinted that he and Daken had a fling in Dark Wolverine. While the comic never confirmed the exact nature of their relationship, when a fan asked Marjorie Lu if Johnny and Daken were sleeping together, she replied with: "They better have been, given all the hard work we put into creating sexual tension between their characters."
• The Incredible Hercules: Hercules was implied to have had relations with a large number of women and Northstar. A Running Gag is Amadeus Cho repeatedly denying that he has the same relationship with Herc as Iolaus did. While armwrestling the female Thor, he also had a line of dialogue that suggested he'd kissed the original, male Thor in the past. An alternate-universe version of him in X Treme X Men 2001 was explicitly shown to be in a relationship with Wolverine. Herc was finally confirmed to be bisexual in Guardians of the Galaxy (2020), entering a relationship with Noh-Varr.
• Iron Man: Tony Stark. (It also shows up in the movies he appears in). He's The Casanova and all of his canonical love interests have been women, but he also seems to have a thing for teasing/making Double Entendre remarks towards male characters.
  • Not to mention the fact that he publicly apologizes to both men and women when his dating profile is taken down in the comics....and when it’s put back up, it noticeably allows both men and women to send requests. There’s also a party scene from the Superior Iron Man issue that displays a half-naked Tony surrounded by both men and women who are also in various states of undress — while in his bedroom. He also once went speed dating and ended up matched with the recently-out Loki, and while they're both ultimately uninterested, it's more down to Loki's history than Loki's gender (at the time, as Loki also came out as gender fluid around this time).
  • A darker, but much earlier, point also comes up during one of Tony's public breakdowns, where news anchors are shown discussing and speculating about the cause of his recent self-destructive behaviour. One of them brings up rumours that Tony is H.I.V. Positive; at the time of publication, H.I.V. was still believed to be limited to gay/bisexual men, so this was indicating that Tony is Ambiguously Bi in universe too.
  • In the Avengers Academy game, Tony does things like referring to Thor as sexy, call T’Challa handsome to his face, tease Loki for hitting on him and compliment his hair, openly check out Captain Britain’s biceps, and seems to have no problem with the concept of himself and Steve as a couple, all while still flirting incessantly with female characters like Pepper, Nadia Pym, and Natasha Romanoff.
  • As far as the movie version goes, some of Tony’s more obvious indicators include telling Hawkeye to “clench up” when he carries him with the Iron Man suit, patting Thor’s biceps while complimenting his swing, joking about performance issues with Loki, asking his teammates as a whole (four out of five of which are male) if someone kissed him, and, of course, the ever-infamous “America’s ass” scene (in which Tony, completely unprompted, calls attention to and comments on Steve’s ass).
• Hawkeye:
  • Clint Barton's only ever explicitly been in love with women, but his interactions with Steve Rogers/Captain America have always made it look like Clint was in love with Steve. Started off butting heads, slowly became quietly affectionate, would bicker but in a way that made it clear they cared for each other, etc. While man-crushing on Steve is pretty much par-the-course, Clint went further than most examples, having Undying Loyalty to Steve to the point he was willing to quit the Avengers when Steve left so that the two could start their own team (read, Clint wanted to run away together with Steve), and he'd often butt heads with The Falcon and Bucky Barnes over the two's mutual status as Steve's best friend, out of what was literally jealousy. At one point, Clint was put in a position where he had to choose between the Avengers and the Thunderbolts (both teams he was loyal to), and more specifically Steve and Moonstone (his ex-girlfriend, whom he was still very much in love with), and it's played up as if it's one of the hardest choices he has to make.
  • Outside of Steve, Clint has also had a number of charged moments with other men, from his bromances with all three Ant-Man Legacy Character incarnations to his Headbutting Heroes tendencies with guys like Bucky and Flash Thompson, that can often end up looking like Slap-Slap-Kiss. He also spent an issue of Secret Avengers extensively flirting with Captain Britain, including gushingly complimenting his physique and how his suit looks on him.
  • And then on top of all that, there's the fact the primary colours of Clint's uniform are literally Bi Pride colours (pink, purple, and blue).
  • Kate Bishop, Clint's Legacy Character and successor, is even more explicit. While she's only ever dated boys, her friendship with Cassie Lang mirrored Cassie's dad's relationship with Clint, and her relationship with America Chavez became a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship in large part because of a flirty comment from America implied Kate was bi (though in-context and Word of God, it was only meant to be playfully teasing her due to Kate's status as the token-straight on the Young Avengers) and the popularity of the AmeriKate ship. Kate herself has made comments about being "in the closet", and though she claims to be straight she is comically attracted to LGBTQ+ folk; besides befriending America, Billy, Teddy, Loki, and Prodigy, at this point three of Kate's four canon love interests have come out as bisexual (Noh-Varr, Fuse, and Speed), making her more-or-less adopted by the LGBTQ community.
• The Mighty Thor: For someone who is effectively (if not offically) the Marvel Norse Pantheon's goddess of Beauty, Lust and Sex, Amora the Enchantress is nearly always shown to be shockingly confined to plain vanilla heterosexuality, but there are a rare few instances where female-to-female attraction is hinted at, such as with Illyana Rasputin, when the Enchantress held the young mutant sorceress captive, where the following line was delivered amidst lots of up-close whispers and a few caresses:
  "Before I am done, I shall know all thy secrets. Thou shalt serve me, Illyana. And eventually—Love me."
• Mockingbird: Hawkeye's ex-wife isn't quite as prominent as he himself in this regard, but when she first met Black Widow she gushed about how pretty she was and the two immediately developed a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship; years later, Bobbi pretty much asked Natasha and Bucky to join her and Clint for a foursome as a thanks for curing her of an STI that turned her into a KGB sleeper agent she got from Natasha. Meanwhile, her friendship with The Wasp has always been quite affectionate and almost gender-flips the Ant-Man/Hawkeye relationship, with Janet being one of the most affected by Bobbi's apparent death (the only one more affected was Clint himself), and the two more-or-less adopting a pair of teenaged former assassins together, which they lampshade and jokingly flirt about.
• Runaways:
  • Throughout the first two series, Nico Minoru only seemed attracted to guys but had a lot of Ship Tease with her Lipstick Lesbian friend, Karolina (especially under later writers). It's also implied she was initially jealous of Xavin, Karolina's fiancee. Then Runaways (Rainbow Rowell) had Nico outright tell Karolina that she has a crush on her, removing the ambiguity. They start dating later in the series.
  • In the first three series, Molly Hayes seemed to have crushes on several teen superheroes, including Speed from Young Avengers and Reptil from Avengers Academy, but also had a Pseudo-Romantic Friendship with Klara and joked that she would marry female deinonychus Old Lace. In the 2017 series, she falls under the spell of classmate Abigail, who wants Molly to be her "Best Friend Forever". She also takes it very hard when Klara refuses to come back to the team, and the next issue has her off-panel for the whole issue, with her teammates mentioning that she's been sulking a lot lately.
• She-Hulk: During a fight with villain Titania, Doc Sampson, a psychiatrist, suggests that her obsession with She-Hulk might be sexual. Titania, who's in a relationship with fellow villain the Absorbing Man, neither confirms or denies this, instead lashing out violently.
• Spider-Man: Minor villain and former Thunderbolt Joystick flirted with Scarlet Spider (both in-costume and in his civilian identity) in her first appearance, but also expressed the desire to see if a defeated female opponent was cute underneath her armor in a later story.
• Spider-Woman: Jessica Drew. All of her love interests in the mainstream continuity have been men like Clint Barton, but she's also had a lot of Les Yay with some female characters, especially her "best friend" Carol Danvers. Additionally, when asked her opinion on the female Thor, her response was "One word, Carol: hawt." Later, upon meeting Carol's Kree half-sister for the first time, Jessica immediately complimented her muscles, even saying "I love them." Blurring this further is that her Ultimate Marvel self is openly lesbian and has a crush on Kitty Pryde.
• Starbrand & Nightmask: Nightmask, in his civilian identity as college student Adam Blackveil, is hit on by both a female and a male student while working out at the gym. While he recognizes that they are flirting with him as it goes due to his little familiarity with human interaction, he looks very pleased about it and declares that he enjoys it.
• The Twelve: Laughing Mask tells Phantom Reporter that Black Widow will never love him and that "she may have found something more to her liking" over a panel of her in a Goth club with several other women. She also grows close to Laura, a woman she meets at the club. Laura wants to get to know Claire better, but she refuses. However, she also starts a romantic relationship with Jones.
• X-Men:
  • Selene isn't openly bisexual and is in fact a widow of a man named Marcus Gallio. But she also possesses some amount of Lesbian Vampire traits.
  • The relationship between Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr is at least as strong and complicated as those they have with romantic female partners. It's very easy to interpret them as being in love with each other, which would make them sort of bi.
  • Storm is probably one of the most famous examples of this trope. She's had strong romantic relationships with a lot of men, including Black Panther, Wolverine and Forge, but she's also had extremely close PseudoRomantic Friendships with Yukio and Jean Grey since the '80s. Yukio has even flat out admitted that Storm is one of the most important people in her life.
  • Kitty Pryde, especially when written by Chris Claremont. Her canonical love interests have exclusively been men (such as Colossus and Star-Lord), but she is also known for having extremely close and emotional friendships with several of the girls in her life, especially Illyana Rasputin and Rachel Summers. Notably, Kitty and Illyana are so close that Kitty is the only other person on the planet capable of wielding Illyana's Soulsword, and after Illyana was temporarily erased from everyone's memories by the Beyonder during Secret Wars II, Kitty was still able to remember her due to their emotional bond. There was also a rather infamous issue of Excalibur where Sat-Yr-9 (while disguised as Courtney Ross) celebrated Kitty's birthday in a way that seemed to echo a seduction, including a panel where Kitty actually licked frosting off Courtney's finger in a highly suggestive manner.
    • As of Marauders #12, this is much less ambiguous.◊
  • Jubilee is another character who has had mostly male love interests, but is also very close with X-23, including some blatantly sexual overtones during the period where Jubilee was turned into a vampire and bit Laura. She was also remarkably unfazed after being kissed on the mouth by Roxy, one of her female students. In the 2013 X-Men series, Jubilee recalled the first time she saw Storm, Dazzler, Psylocke and Rogue back when she was a child, and claimed this was her mental reaction:
  Jubilee: ...Total rock stars. I wanted to have all their babies.