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The X-Men veteran Wolverine and Squirrel Girl were once hinted to have a romantic past — only for her comic to further complicate the matter.
Thanks to her place in the Marvel Universe and her experience all across the galaxy, Squirrel Girl has achieved some genuinely unlikely feats. But one notable encounter that happened off-panel implied a surprising romantic partner for the young heroine. Squirrel Girl and Wolverine have been hinted to have some kind of romantic history — even if that’s something of an uneasy revelation.
Squirrel Girl was introduced in the Marvel Super-Heroes Winter Special in a story by Steve Ditko and Will Murray. Designed as a cheerful counterpoint to the more dramatic and dark stories that often populated superhero comics at the time of her creation, Squirrel Girl’s relatively benign powers — enhanced physical abilities, a large squirrel tail, and the ability to communicate with Squirrels — long had her portrayed as something of a joke character. When she appeared as a member of the Great Lake Avengers, her almost supernatural ability to defeat anyone — famously including the likes of Doctor Doom and Thanos — became a long-running idea that she was secretly one of the most impressive figures in the Marvel Universe.
New Avengers #7 by Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen highlighted this when she was hired as the nanny of Dani Cage, the daughter of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones. While there, it was revealed she’d had some previous connection with Wolverine. Addressing one another by their given first names instead of their superhero code-names, a certain sense of familiarity is established. It’s even implied by Wolverine’s comments that the pair had previously shared a romance that Squirrel Girl had wanted to move past.
Despite the potential problems of pairing Wolverine with a character so much younger than him, this was again referenced in Wolverine #8 by Jason Aaron and Daniel Acuña. While locked in Logan’s mind and dealing with a demon who’d possessed him, Emma Frost got a quick peek into a section of his mind reserved for romantic fantasies. Among the women in the room — including a variant of Emma herself — was Squirrel Girl. However, while the true nature of this potential relationship has never been fully explored, it did receive a potentially canon explanation in the letters page of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #2 by Ryan North and Erica Henderson.
In the letters page, a fan references the Wolverine connection, and the column explains that in reality, Squirrel Girl had been getting into a cab “when Wolverine ran up and hopped inside, stealing it from her.” Furious, Squirrel Girl hurled some insults back at him and claimed she never wanted to see him again — prompting their awkward encounter in New Avengers. While from a certain stand-point it makes sense to have Wolverine and Squirrel Girl be former romantic partners — especially given Wolverine’s varied love life over the years and Squirrel Girl’s ability to have connections with effectively every Marvel character as part of her charm — it’s a much more fitting revelation that they just encountered each other on the street.
On top of Squirrel Girl’s defined attraction to sweeter-at-heart characters like Speedball, it paints the far older Wolverine in a significantly worse light — especially as Squirrel Girl is a new college student during the course of New Avengers, making any possible romance all the more unsettling. It’s more entertaining to imagine Wolverine being a jerk to Squirrel Girl and earning her eternal ire, even if it was only really mentioned in passing.
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