Two score and zero years ago tomorrow, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, the world was blessed to receive a baby boy named Óscar Isaac Hernández Estrada. The man now known as Oscar Isaac is an actor nonpareil; trained at Juilliard, he has shown incredible range over the course of his career, taking on comedic and dramatic roles, working in indies and blockbusters, mastering the form both onscreen and onstage. I have his Rolling Stone cover taped to my wall.
In real life, Isaac is married to filmmaker Elvira Lind. They have a baby together and I wish the whole family the very best, as I’m sure you do as well. But in fiction, Isaac is still mine to fall in love with, and it’s perfectly acceptable for me to aggressively project my own romantic tastes on the characters he plays, because that’s what Art is all about. Go to literally any art museum in the world and ask the curator what Art is and they will tell you, “Art is whatever you want. You can fall in love with an Art. It’s not weird at all, Lizzie.â€
An example of Art:
So in honor of his 40th birthday on Saturday (not to mention next week’s release of Triple Frontier!), this is a list of Isaac’s feature-film work ranked by how much I want to marry his character, from “over my dead body†to “yes, yes, a billion times yes.†(It would be nearly impossible to rank his performances by quality since he’s so good in everything all the time forever.)
Disclaimer: This list excludes voice-over work and a handful of early movies in which Isaac wasn’t one of the main dozen or so characters. I just don’t think anyone needs to look too closely at “Fartman†in Lenny the Wonder Dog, which is a real movie about a talking dog voiced by Andy Richter.
28. Apocalypse from X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
What an apocalyptic waste! In a GQ video (heads up: All the Isaac quotes in this piece are from this video), Isaac admitted that his costume made being on set miserable for him, saying it was “excruciating†to be “encased in glue and latex and a 40-pound suit.†There’s no actor who could have delivered a decent performance through all that bulk and makeup, and on top of that, all his dialogue had to be dubbed after the fact because his shoes were so squeaky.
And it’s not like he was working with great material to begin with. While the rest of the mutant characters get to be kind of interesting and care about each other, Apocalypse is the most boring bad guy in recent memory. He wants power for no particular reason, and mostly exists to stoke Magneto’s more destructive impulses. For the majority of his screen time, he’s wandering around picking up followers, like an all-powerful dad on carpool duty.
I do appreciate that Apocalypse rids the world of nuclear bombs, but he only does it so that he can be the one to destroy humanity, which is not a cute look.
Quality of Husband: Be Gone, Blue Monster
27. Jack from Mojave (2015)
This tedious meditation on masculinity, violence, death, Hollywood, and long shots of the horizon is spiced up, barely, by Isaac as John “Jack†Jackson, a homicidal vagabond who meets depressed big shot Thomas (Garrett Hedlund) in the titular desert. Jack is dirty, creepy, mean, and possibly an incarnation of evil itself, all of which I could honestly make my peace with for Isaac, but the deal-breaker is that he is so fucking obnoxious. Imagine if the most annoying know-it-all in your classics seminar never did any of the reading and was also a homeless murderer.
Here are some things he says in this movie:
—“Nuthin’s that easy, bruther, just ask Ahab’s leg.†(WHAT?)
—“I’m into motiveless malignity; I’m a Shakespeare man.†(HUH?)
—“Look at where the world is cuz of solitary dudes going mental in the desert.†(AGAIN, WHAT?)
—“Death and its raven wing. There’s a fucker walking around here with a hook and a hourglass. The gentleman himself. At least he doesn’t have a fistful of cancer.†(I AM SO MAD?????)
—“The internet is a pain in the ass, bruther. One can’t give it too large a place in one’s life. It is merely a tool.†(His line is delivered to a dog that he stole from a man he killed. The dog, sadly, cannot speak with the voice of Andy Richter.)
Quality of Husband: I’d Rather Die in the Desert
26. Prince John from Robin Hood (2010)
I think they were going for Sexy Bad Boy, but the producers of this all-around-bleh adaptation missed the mark and landed on Gross Sadistic Man. The satanic facial hair isn’t great and the light-blue contacts are downright freaky. Why would you take someone so handsome and make him so gross? Why would a person do that? I just … it makes me sad. Like when he’s naked in front of his mom and is then mean to his mom. You never wanna be with a guy who has such a fucked-up relationship with his mom. Always ends badly.
Quality of Husband: Not for All the Riches in the Kingdom
25. Nathan from Ex Machina (2014)
Rich? Very. Genius? Obviously. Fabulous dancer? Absolutely. But sadly, Nathan would prefer the company of a sex robot than that of an actual woman, and for better or for worse, a sex robot is something I can’t be right now. This slick sci-fi thriller is all twists and mind games, and props to Isaac and director Alex Garland for creating a character that at once intrigues Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) and repulses the audience.
Quality of Husband: Dude, You’re Everything That Sucks About Silicon Valley
24. Interpreter/Narrator from Che: Part One (2008)
Not sure this technically qualifies as a character? Isaac’s hot-scratchy, accented narration, is pleasant enough, but it’s still just an exposition tool. He also voices the titular revolutionary’s interpreter during the interview segments, and appears briefly on camera in a scene at the U.N. That’s it!
Quality of Husband: N/A
23. Blue Jones from Sucker Punch (2011)
Sucker Punch is about a girl named Babydoll who gets put in a mental asylum and retreats into a fantasy world where the patients are dancers/escorts at a nightclub/brothel/prison, and when Babydoll dances, she retreats further into another fantasy world where she and her friends are scantily clad video-game characters who have to achieve various tasks to get items to escape. It’s a metaphor for … something, I’m sure!
In between the over-stylized action sequences, Isaac, as the girls’ boss Blue Jones, and Carla Gugino, as their teacher Vera Gorski, are doing actual scene work. The more mature actors inject real pathos, damage, and sinisterness into their characters, so that while Jones is a brutal slimeball who on more than one occasion threatens a woman with rape, he’s also pretty damn compelling. I’m sorry, but the dangerous charm and the angry whispers and the eyeliner are kinda doing it for me. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
I can’t in good conscience recommend that Isaac fans watch Sucker Punch, but I insist that everyone watch the deleted scene where he and Gugino duet and grind.
Quality of Husband: I Hate Myself for Loving You
22. Shiv from Pu-239 (2006)
In the former Soviet Union in 1995, a man dying of radiation poisoning teams up with small-time gangster Shiv (Isaac) to sell plutonium. HBO Films released this okay drama over a decade ago and so far I am the only person I have ever met who has seen it, so instead I’d like to use this space to stump for Isaac’s other HBO work, as the lead of David Simon’s six-episode mini-series Show Me a Hero (2015), co-starring Alfred Molina and Winona Ryder. It’s about local elections and urban planning in Yonkers. But it’s really good! Isaac has a big mustache! It’s a true story! Thank you for your time.
Quality of Husband: Nuclear Winter Might Be Slightly Warmer With You
21. Bassam from Body of Lies (2008)
Bassam (Isaac) is an Iraqi local working with American CIA agent Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio) to prevent the next 9/11. He’s a family man who translates for Ferris and drives him around and (SPOILER) dies a half-hour into the movie in a big explosion. He seems like a decent chap but doesn’t have enough screen time to make more of an impression than that. Maybe his sacrifice really does help avert terrorism. I don’t know. I turned the movie off when it became clear there would be no more Oscar Isaac in it. I got things to do.
Quality of Husband: There’s Something About Bassam
20. Cecil from Revenge for Jolly! (2012)
Revenge for Jolly! follows Harry (Brian Petsos) and his unstable cousin Cecil (Isaac) as they exact bloody revenge for the murder of Harry’s dog, which I’m almost certain is also the plot of John Wick. It’s supposed to be a dark comedy, but I found the cast so likable that every death bummed me out. Fortunately, (most of) those deaths were not caused by Cecil; he’s simply an accomplice to murder (until the last act). Cecil’s a supportive cousin and loving boyfriend, and even when Vicky, a prostitute played by Amy Seimetz, tries to choke him to death, he does not inflict violence against a woman. I tentatively hope that with the right combination of lifestyle changes and therapies, Cecil would be a valuable member of society.
Quality of Husband: Wouldn’t Marry, But Would Medicate and Rehabilitate
19. José Ramos-Horta from Balibo (2009)
Also listed as The Balibo Conspiracy, this is the story of Roger East (Anthony LaPaglia), an Australian war correspondent brought to East Timor by José Ramos-Horta (Isaac) to investigate the deaths of the “Balibo 5†and the slaughter of the people of East Timor by Indonesian soldiers (using weapons sold to them by the U.S., naturally). As the prologue tells you, it’s a true story, which caught me a little off guard because in my literal decades of education, absolutely nobody ever mentioned the invasion of East Timor! There’s a lot of other history that I do know about, but this slow yet gripping narrative was all so new to me that I actually forgot to fall in love with Oscar Isaac. According to the Wikipedia page on East Timor, Ramos-Horta later won a Nobel Peace Prize, was elected president, and got shot in an assassination attempt but survived, all of which is very appealing but not in the movie, so it doesn’t count.
Quality of Husband: Great Respect, Little Lust
18. Bud Cooper in Suburbicon (2017)
As insurance investigator Cooper, Isaac gets only two scenes in this overwrought thriller — but he makes the most of them, feinting and cajoling and tricking until he’s got Julianne Moore and Matt Damon right where he wants them. A perfect example of why Isaac is so often cast as an intelligent criminal or double agent with an ulterior motive: He’s brilliant at playing the scene’s true emotional stakes without once taking off the mask his character wants the room to see.
Quality of Husband: I’d at Least Swipe Right
17. Will from Life Itself (2018)
Will (Isaac) is an intense guy. Will is intensely in love with his friend-cum-girlfriend-cum-wife Abby (Olivia Wilde), to the point where she’s like, “Calm down.†He gets along well with his parents and has no job, friends, or interests that we see. Then Abby, weeks away from giving birth to their daughter, gets hit by a bus and dies. Rather than raise his child (which would put him in the Hot Single Dad Hall of Fame), Will goes into an intense depression and writes the first few pages of a terrible screenplay. Then he (SPOILER) SHOOTS HIMSELF IN THE HEAD IN FRONT OF HIS THERAPIST. That’s just the first part of the movie.
Life Itself was so roundly panned that writer-director Dan Fogelman decided that critics were just too “cynical†to appreciate it. (He also asked why, if it’s bad, Amazon paid so much money for it, which is a very good question.) I won’t add to the pile-on! I’ll just say that if Will could get his shit together, maybe he could find a wife who didn’t wander into the middle of a busy street so much.
Quality of Husband: Yes? No? Maybe? I don’t/do/maybe want a sensitive guy to be deeply in love with me and it would be/would not be/might be romantic to die carrying his child? Love is and is not the only reason to live, and passion is not and is the most important element of a relationship, and this movie did and did not make sense, so I can and cannot come to a verdict here.
16. Reeves from 10 Years (2011)
10 Years is a decent but forgettable dramedy starring all of 2011’s favorite actors — Chris Pratt, Aubrey Plaza, Rosario Dawson, and Channing and Jenna Dewan-Tatum pre-divorce — as high-school classmates who reconnect at their ten-year reunion. Isaac plays Reeves, who since graduation has become a successful musician with a hit song called “Never Had.†That song is about a girl. That girl is at the reunion. That girl is played by Kate Mara. That girl listens to the song. That girl puts one and one together. She and Reeves make out in a parking lot. It’s not a particularly challenging character, but this movie gets a hundred bonus points for letting Isaac sing and play guitar. He actually wrote “Never Had,†proving again that he is a talented angel who can do no wrong.
Quality of Husband: Happy to Make Out With Him in a Parking Lot
15. Rydal from The Two Faces of January (2014)
Another entry in the catalogue of con artists caught in some sort of cat-and-mouse game, Rydal (Isaac) is a streetwise American living in Greece who spends his days bilking tourists and his nights bedding pretty girls. Until he takes up with Chester and Colette (Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst), rich and on the run from a bigger fraud. Amid shifting loyalties and the de rigueur love triangle, Rydal comes off as a decent guy who doesn’t take advantage of people while he’s taking advantage of them. Isaac is charming and emotional, talks about art history, wears sunglasses, and explores ruins all around the Mediterranean. There’s no question: You root for this guy in every scene.
Quality of Husband: Would Love a Beachside Fling
14. Paul Gauguin from At Eternity’s Gate (2018)
Friends, I could sit here and tell you how Isaac, as Painter With Opinions Paul Gauguin, has a mustache, gives advice about the Good Way to Make Paintings, and wears hats. I could dissect his emotional commitment and then throw in a “draw me like one of your French girls†joke. We’d all, I’m sure, have a lot of fun.
But the thing is, even at my most obsessed, I am not as invested in Isaac as van Gogh (Willem Dafoe) is in Gauguin. To wit: I’ve never even considered cutting off any part of my body. The thought didn’t even occur to me. And Vincent did it in the age before antibiotics. That is devotion (also mental illness). Van Gogh, you win this round!
Quality of Husband: Can’t Compete With Vinny, But I’ll Love You From Afar
13. Mike Perry from Won’t Back Down (2012)
It’s a predictable feel-good story about Moms Fighting the System so unsubtle that the color palette literally becomes more saturated as the characters become more hopeful. But grounded in strong performances by Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis, it’s highly watchable, especially with the addition of Isaac as Mike Perry, cool-guy elementary-school teacher straight out of a promotional video for Teach for America. He plays the ukulele! His big flaw is that he likes unions too much! He lacks the special sauce (slash sad backstory) to really tug at my heartstrings, but when another teacher (Rosie Perez) jokingly asks him to take his shirt off at a bar, I did feel seen.
Quality of Husband: Won’t Say No!
12. Joseph from The Nativity Story (2006)
Did you forget Catherine Hardwicke made a movie about the birth of Jesus starring the girl from Whale Rider? Joseph is a carpenter who — actually, not going to explain the plot of this one. I assume you are all familiar with the concept of Christmas. Isaac brings the necessary intensity to the role, but I actually think he’s a little miscast. According to the script, Mary isn’t interested in having sex with Joseph. Sure, she’s a virgin who’s pregnant with the Messiah, but I find it hard to believe that anyone could look at Oscar Isaac and not want to fool around at ALL. He’s so devoted and so cute and they are already married. Mary, what’s your problem? Maybe they should have gone with a less attractive actor or, well, maybe there are a few teeny-tiny logic holes in the New Testament.
Quality of Husband: Worth Every Donkey
11. Standard from Drive (2011)
When Standard (Isaac) went to prison, he left his wife (Carey Mulligan) to take care of their son, and to fall for the charms of her handsome taciturn neighbor (Ryan Gosling). In the same previously mentioned GQ video, Isaac talks about how he developed this character with Drive director Nicolas Refn. Isaac wasn’t interested in playing Standard as he was in an earlier draft of the script (he was, literally, too standard), but Refn was open to Isaac’s input, and the two collaborated on the character’s backstory to make him more interesting and complicate the love triangle between him, Mulligan, and Gosling. And it WORKED. Even if you’re rooting for the newer romance, there’s just no denying that Standard deserves a second chance. What, are there rocks where your heart is supposed to be? Look at the guy with his son! Stellar example of Isaac turning a one-dimensional character into a fleshed-out character, and using a handful of scenes to deliver a fully developed performance.
Quality of Husband: I’ll Wait While You’re Locked Up, Babe
10. Orestes from Agora (2009)
Not the mythical Orestes, the historical one, who lived in Egypt when Egypt was Roman. Orestes (Isaac) is a friend and student of the philosopher-scientist Hypatia (Rachel Weisz), who is working to solve the mathematical puzzle of the heliocentric model of the solar system. He’s in love with her, but she’s just too committed to scholarship to be somebody’s wife (as in The Nativity Story, slightly unbelievable, but okay). He declares one day during a seminar that he has found perfect harmony (big thing for the ancients) in her, so the next day, to prove that she is not perfectly harmonious and beautiful, she HANDS HIM HER BLOODY PERIOD RAGS.
I!!! LOVE!!! MOVIES!!!
(It’s a real shame this didn’t get more play Stateside. It’s not like audiences are overloaded with historical epics about groundbreaking female mathematicians who were assassinated for religious and political reasons.)
Quality of Husband: Orestes, You Have a Brilliant Mind, Good Values, and Amazing Taste in Women, So You May Have Me and My Menstrual Blood for Life
9. Abel Morales from A Most Violent Year (2014)
Isaac called this tense drama “a gangster movie without the gangsters,†and the description is apt. It’s very much The Godfather: Part II, if the Corleones really had started that olive-oil importing business, except it was heating oil. Isaac plays Abel Morales, the Ur-American businessman who starts out with good intentions but faces choices with only bad options. In a single shot, he runs and falls in a camel coat and Armani suit: That’s it; that’s the movie. It’s great and he’s great!
AMVY would have ranked higher on this list were it not for the fact that his chemistry with Jessica Chastain (as Abel’s wife, Anna, played with such steely conviction that you’ll get goosebumps) were so good. The sparks truly fly between the former Juilliard classmates, and Isaac has said that “doing those scenes with Jessica was so much fun.†I don’t want him for myself; I want him to be with her, always and forever. I know they’re both married to other people but, reader … I ship it!
Quality of Husband: BRB, Dyeing My Hair Chastain Red
8. Llewyn Davis from Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Like many a Coen brothers protagonist, folk musician Davis (Isaac) is a little bit of a loser. He says no to the opportunities he should say yes to, he forgets what he needs to remember, and his ex (Carey Mulligan! Again!) is maybe pregnant with his baby and needs money for an abortion, even though the baby could have been fathered by her new boyfriend, in which case she would keep it, but she can’t take the risk … And it turns out that the last time he paid for an abortion, the girl didn’t go through with it, so there’s a possibility he has a kid out there somewhere. It’s a lot! But despite it all, Davis fulfills the three basic requirements of making me fall in love with him: He takes care of a cat. He plays guitar. He’s very sad.
Inside Llewyn Davis showcases Isaac while allowing room for other actors to shine; has him play guitar in a way that’s impressive, not intimidating; and keeps the camera firmly focused on his face, letting Isaac draw you in with the smallest change in expression or pitch. He’s a master of deadpan; the little nod at 0:51 of the video above kills me every time.
Quality of Husband: I’ll Have Your Baby, I’ll Have Your Abortion, Let’s Talk About It
7. Laurent from In Secret (2013)
Can I get personal for a sec? I feel like we’ve been together long enough at this point that I can trust you not to judge me too harshly. I lost my virginity … a lot later than I would have ideally preferred. Not that there’s a right or wrong time, but there’s definitely a right time period, and I missed it by several years. All I’m saying is, I very much get how frustrated Thérèse (Elizabeth Olsen) is when she realizes that her sickly cousin-husband (Tom Felton) will never be up to the task of making her feel like a natural woman.
I don’t blame her for having an extramarital affair with hot painter Laurent (Isaac). A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do! Now, does that justify conspiring with her lover to kill her cousin-husband? I guess not. But then again, she’s a poor woman without family or skill and it’s 1867. She can’t just get a divorce. So … I get it. I get where she’s coming from. I do get it.
It’s fine if you disagree, but at least keep in mind that this is the only movie in the Isaac oeuvre in which his character hides under a woman’s skirt and performs enthusiastic cunnilingus on her (to completion!) while she’s talking to Jessica Lange.
Quality of Husband: Not Saying I’d Never Commit Murder to Be With Him
6. Evgeni From W.E. (2011)
The historical half of this stylish drama, directed by friggin’ Madonna, sets a high bar for commitment: Enamored with married American socialite Wallis Simpson, the prince (later king) of England showers his love with jewelry, abdicates the throne, and goes into exile so that he can marry her. They are not Nazis (though they are also not not Nazis), and it’s very romantic.
Still, the parallel story line, set in late-1990s Manhattan, manages to clear that bar. Puckish Russian security guard Evgeni (Isaac) is besotted with Wally (Abbie Cornish, who is also a rapper and no one ever talks about it, but we need to), the despondent housewife of a wealthy shrink. After he woos Wally with his charm and humor, Evgeni takes his rightful place atop the pyramid of Sad Hot Men by explaining that the watch he wears was a gift from his wife, who died three years ago; he keeps a picture of her in the pages of a Rilke book. Reader, I ate this movie with the biggest spoon my hormones could make.
Quality of Husband: God Save This King!
5. Outcome #3 from The Bourne Legacy (2012)
Why is this brief part from the Not Matt Damon Bourne Movie so high on the list? Because once again, Isaac took a character with very little screen time and turned him into a living, breathing, hurting person. During a brief conversation, not–Jason Bourne Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) deduces that his host was taken out of “the field†of spy work because he fell in love, prompting Isaac to brood in a way that men have not brooded since the days of Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. The guy lost everything because he fell in love! With me, because he fell in love WITH ME.
Quality of Husband: I Don’t Know Why I’m Obsessed With You, I Just Know That I Am
4. Michael Boghosian from The Promise (2017)
In the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, Michael (pronounced Meek-aisle) Boghosian (Isaac) is an Armenian apothecary who dreams of opening a clinic in his rural village. So he gets engaged and uses the dowry to pay for medical school in Constantinople. There (Constantinople, not medical school, which is only for guys), he meets the worldly and beautiful dancer, teacher, and illustrator Anna (Charlotte Le Bon), and falls in love with her, though she is with Chris (Christian Bale), a Hemingway-esque American reporter with the Associated Press. Romance! Passion! Lush sets! A love triangle where everyone is a good person that becomes a love square when Boghosian marries his fiancée and then goes back to being a triangle when she dies! Orphans! Priests! Genocide! A “but I thought you were dead!†story line that is pretty similar to the backstory of Casablanca, but in a good way! Best of all, a woman tending to a man’s head wound and then making out with him, which I consider to be the height of sexy.
Everyone in The Promise is very handsome and Good and Strong, but of course, Michael is the Goodest and the Strongest. The movie also gets points for accuracy: Both of the female characters are down to have sex with Oscar Isaac’s character as soon as humanly possible.
Quality of Husband: I Promise to Make Any Promise You Want!
3. Kane from Annihilation (2018)
Before he went into the Shimmer, Kane (Isaac) was a loving and brave special ops soldier who wasn’t as intellectual as his wife, Lena (Natalie Portman), and that disconnect may have been why she had an affair with a colleague. I know that cheating isn’t a reflection of the value of the person being cheated on blah blah blah, but WHOMST IN THEIR RIGHT MIND CUCKS OSCAR ISAAC????? LENA, YOU FOOL.
I don’t care if the man who shows up is my husband or his alien doppelgänger; if he’s sick, I, too, will risk it all to save him.
Quality of Husband: Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, Ain’t No Valley Low Enough, Ain’t No Supernatural Dimension Dangerous Enough to Keep Me From You
2. Peter Malkin from Operation Finale (2018)
This movie allows Isaac to do so much of what he is amazing at: simmer with anger over something worth simmering about; do stuff his own way when the plan’s not working; have sexual tension with a woman he deeply respects (a doctor played by Melanie Laurent); wear sunglasses; play mind games; be a haunted hero. But unlike the various crooks on this list, this time his tricks are for a most noble cause: bringing a Nazi to justice.
The tone is somber but not depressing, heavy but not melodramatic. Three cheers for respectful depictions of humanity’s darkest periods! And the scene where Isaac speaks Yiddish to his mom is just the sprinkle on the sundae for a li’l Jewish gal like me.
Quality of Husband: If I Could Find a Guy Half As Great As Malkin to Wed, Dayenu
Side note: Nick Kroll, hello.
1. Poe Dameron From Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
More like P-oh daaaaaaaamn-eron. What a dreamboat. This was the performance that turned me from fan to stan. Move over Tom Cruise in Top Gun and step aside Will Smith in Independence Day, the movies have a new king of the fighter pilots. The cool and easy charm of Paul Newman with the dramatic conviction of Marlon Brando, but in a good mood. It’s like someone took the best of original-trilogy Luke and the best of original-trilogy Han and packed it all into five feet and nine inches of pure unadulterated confidence.
You can’t not be in love with Poe; it’s physically impossible. He flirts with literally every character he meets. Whether he’s teasing Kylo Ren and General Hux (“I talk first?†“Holding for General Hugsâ€), giving Finn his jacket and the galaxy’s most sensual shoulder pat, or acting like a hot rod in front of General Leia and Admiral Holdo, the man is the mayor of swoon city. Look at how he cares for BB-8 and tell me that’s not the guy you want raising your space kids.
Poe is the definition of husband material. He’s the man you want by your side, because through thick and thin, he can handle himself, or at least break the tension with a joke and a smile. Basically, the ultimate life partner. In one of their first interactions, Finn (a name Poe gave him, BTW) asks him, “Can you fly a TIE Fighter?†And Poe, cocky with the skills to back it up, responds, “I can fly anything.†Yes, sir. Yes, you can.
Quality of Husband: Best in the Galaxy.