While the animated series "The Spectacular Spider-Man" has one of the best takes on Mary Jane Watson, the show made a rare choice among Spidey adaptations and didn't use MJ (Vanessa Marshall) as Peter Parker's (Josh Keaton) primary love interest. Instead, the show focused on Peter's romance with Gwen Stacy (Lacey Chabert). In the process, it modernized and revitalized Gwen Stacy's character, who was most famous for her dramatic but abrupt death in "The Amazing Spider-Man" #121 back in 1973.
In the
season 1 finale of "The Spectacular Spider-Man," "Nature vs. Nurture," Eddie Brock/Venom (Ben Diskin) tells Peter he's going to hurt the person who he loves the most. Peter thinks he's talking about MJ, and so does the audience if they knew the Sam Raimi "Spider-Man" movies. But Venom is actually after Gwen. The symbiote, having previously bonded with Peter in body and mind, knows who he's really in love with. At the end of the episode, when Gwen kisses Peter, our Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man does too.
Ever since Spider-Man debuted in 1962, there have been cartoons made about him. But it took until "The Spectacular Spider-Man," which aired from 2008 to 2009, for one of those cartoons to feature Gwen in a major role. The 1994 "Spider-Man" cartoon deliberately left Gwen out because the showrunner thought she was destined to die. As a result, the Mary Jane in that show (Sara Ballantine) feels more like a redheaded Gwen. The same could be said of Kirsten Dunst's MJ in the movies.
Someone who noticed that conflation of the two was "The Spectacular Spider-Man" creator Greg Weisman. So, when making the show, he wanted to reset their characters back closer to the original comics and give Gwen her due. As Weisman said in 2014 on his Ask Greg Q&A site: "I grew up with Gwen and Peter as a couple, and her death in the comics was devastating. So we wanted to do her character justice."
Weisman and his team succeeded in adding more to Gwen's character than her just being the girl who died. While "The Spectacular Spider-Man" ended too soon, it put Gwen back in the spotlight in other Spider-Man media. I've since changed my tune, but when I was younger, I preferred Gwen over MJ as Spider-Man's girlfriend. That's all because of "Spectacular Spider-Man." The show's cancellation, and its Peter and Gwen ultimately not getting together because of that, left a hole in young fans' hearts the same way that Gwen dying did to kids who were reading "The Amazing Spider-Man" back in 1973.
Read more: The Best Way To Watch The Original Looney Tunes Now That They're Not Streaming
Spectacular Spider-Man Made Gwen Stacy A Fan-Favorite Again
Many forget it because of how seismic her death was, but Gwen in the classic "Spider-Man" comics was a bit of a bland character. Like Aunt May, she hated Spider-Man but fawned over Peter, and Stan Lee's less-than-subtle writing verged on tropes of female hysteria. The whole reason writer Gerry Conway thought killing Gwen was a good idea is because she wasn't a compelling character or romantic foil for Peter, whereas Mary Jane was both.
So in doing "justice" to Gwen, the "Spectacular Spider-Man" team wound up better defining her character than the comics had. For instance, Gwen in the comics was a science major like Peter. "The Spectacular Spider-Man" took that a step further and made her a glasses-wearing nerd. In the pilot, she scores an internship with Dr. Curt Connors (Dee Bradley Baker) just like Peter does. Her attraction to Peter makes total sense because they have shared interests and run in the same social circles.
In her earliest comic appearances, Gwen was described as the "former beauty queen of Standard High." Peter caught her eye but he had his head in the clouds, always being so stressed by Spider-Man responsibilities and Aunt May's poor health that he inadvertently blew Gwen off at first. "Spectacular" retranslated that into Gwen being too shy and unconfident to ask Peter out. Weisman explained that characterizing Gwen on the show was all about "extrapolat[ing] backwards":
"She was always the smart girl in Pete's life. The only one who [competes] with him for understanding science. And her relationship with her single-parent father was also key. There was plenty for us to work with."
I'd argue "The Spectacular Spider-Man" drew the blueprint for Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy in "The Amazing Spider-Man" films. Premiering a scant few years after "Spectacular" had wrapped, those films also made Gwen into Peter's (Andrew Garfield) main love interest (leaving out MJ) and emphasized her passion for science. In both movies, she's working at Oscorp and her smarts get Spider-Man out of trouble several times.
Nowadays, the dominant interpretation of Gwen Stacy is as Spider-Gwen, who is worlds apart from Greg Weisman and Lacey Chabert's version of Gwen. But I maintain the cartoon made Gwen relevant again for a new generation of Spider-Man fans. Spider-Gwen, who hails from an alternate dimension, is the perfect loophole to preserve Gwen's classic death, but also return her to prominence like "The Spectacular Spider-Man" had.
If you're looking for the easiest way to keep up with all the major movie and TV news, why not sign up to our free newsletter?
Read the original article on SlashFilm.
