I’ll Never Forgive ‘Materialists’ for Choosing the Wrong Guy

This story contains spoilers for Materialists.

Pedro Pascal’s charm is unmatched. Where Hollywood is packed like sardines with conventionally attractive, white-bread Chrises, Pascal is one of one, with a kind soul hidden underneath his rough exterior. He’s a lumberjack on a mass-market romance novel and the soft-spoken DILF next door. Watch him in any scene of The Last of Us or Game of Thrones and you’ll be weak in the knees. (Pascal would know, as he’s weaponized his own “slutty little knee” ever since he graced the cover of Esquire in 2023). So when the 50-year-old actor shows up as a love interest in Celine Song’s latest romantic drama, Materialists, I didn’t even need to see the other guy.

However, there is another guy … played by one of those Chrises I mentioned: Chris Evans. And Dakota Johnson’s character chooses him over Pascal. In Materialists, Johnson plays a matchmaker named Lucy, who broke up with John (Evans) because they constantly fight over money. (John is somehow a struggling actor, despite looking awfully like Captain America.) Years later, Lucy makes enough of a salary as a high-end matchmaker to live comfortably in New York City, even if she still hasn’t found love. She’s a bit of a materialist, as the title would suggest, who cynically sees people as numbers. Meaning: A partner's worth is measured in age, salary, height, and number of hairs on their head.

In walks Harry (Pascal). According to Lucy, Harry is a “unicorn” in their industry. He’s wealthy, attractive, and tall (enough). Clearly he doesn’t need a matchmaker. If Harry has any flaws at all, it’s that he’s tried desperately to fall in love in the past and nothing ever worked out for him. He tells Lucy that he worries that love is simply unattainable for him. And yet, he’s set on wooing her. She eventually accepts his affection, and she promptly falls in love with his lavish apartment, his lifestyle, and his attention—what more could you ask for? You just bagged Pedro Pascal, girl! As far as I was concerned, Song could have ended the movie right there.

Instead, Materialists isn’t shy about Lucy learning that love needs to factor into her numbers game as well. In fact, she says exactly that when she breaks up with Harry in the third act. The worst part? The breakup immediately follows Harry’s most vulnerable scene, when he reveals that he underwent some insane surgery on both of his legs just to make himself a little bit taller. It might sound silly, but Song directs Harry’s confession with care—and Pascal plays the moment with the utmost sincerity. So it’s a shame that this marks the moment when Lucy realizes she’s in love with the other guy. (Apologies to all my short kings out there—apparently, you can’t even make yourself slightly taller with I-can’t-believe-it’s-actually-real limb-lengthening surgery.)

However affecting the scene is, this is when I felt a little bit of Hollywood seep into the story. Of course, Lucy learns the lesson that you cannot manufacture love—even if you use Love Potion No. 9 to trick Pedro Pascal into falling in love with you. But Harry is still an incredible man on his own merits and maybe even a better one than John.

Plus, Song writes the darker plot involving Lucy’s client Sophie (Zoë Winters) to drive home even further her message that a person’s value is different from a person’s soul, let alone what they’re capable of behind closed doors. In the latter half of the film, Sophie is assaulted by her date (not the John Magaro voice cameo we were hoping for) even though he “checked all the boxes.” You can’t know someone, truly, until you find out for yourself. So that’s when Lucy realizes that her feelings for John are more important than anything Harry can offer her, materialistically.

And yet the implications of Lucy’s decision feel very real ... until you remember the choice is between men who look like Pascal and Evans. Hell, if my financially struggling ex was Chris Evans? Maybe I’d take a second look too. But over Pedro?! Couldn’t be me.