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- “You put on that badge because you know if you don’t, someone who shouldn’t will. But you have to understand, this mask is my badge, and I'm trying to be good too. I was trying so hard to wear this thing the way you would want, and I didn't... I didn't. I can do all these things, but I can't help the people I love the most, and they can only know half of who I am, so I-I'm completely on my own, and now I don't even know what the right thing is anymore! I don't now what I'm supposed to do, but I know... I can't lose one more friend.”
- ―Gwen Stacy
Gwendolyn Maxine "Gwen" Stacy is a young woman from New York in the universe Earth-65B. She was bitten by a radioactive spider which gave her superhuman abilities that she would use to become Spider-Woman. She appears in Sony Pictures Animation's 2018 animated feature film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and its 2023 sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and will appear in the finale of the trilogy Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse and well as a spinoff film titled Spider-Woman.
Background[]
Gwendolyn Maxine Stacy was born in the early 2000s in Chelsea, New York City, New York. She was raised by her police captain father George Stacy alone as her mother had died when she was very young. Her dad was friends with the Parkers who were their neighbors and Gwen would end up befriending Peter Parker and sharing a close bond with his family. In her teenage years, she joined a band known as "The Mary Janes" as a drummer. She would often have to defend Peter from the bullying he would face at the hands of Ned Leeds which inadvertently made Peter look even more weak and easier to bully.
In late 2016, Gwen would be bitten by a radioactive spider which would give her superhuman abilities. She would create the moniker "Spider-Woman" and make a costume and webshooters for her alter ego. She intended to use her powers to save others. Spider-Woman would become a popular and divisive figure in her city and Peter would become somewhat of a fanatic for the hero and found the hero "pretty". Her father on the other hand would disapprove of the hero's vigilantism although the hero would save him from being shot.
Gwen was going to go to her homecoming dance with Peter. She had arrived at the dance in a punk inspired dress only for her spider sense to go off as the party was attacked by a giant lizard which immediately went for Ned Leeds. Quickly changing into her Spider-Woman outfit, Gwen would swing in the way of the lizard and try to restrain it and cause a piece of the ceiling to collapse onto the giant reptile. After the rubble cleared the lizard would return to it's human form revealing none other than Peter's dying body. Peter would tell Gwen that he just wanted to be special, like her. He would mention her by her actual name causing Gwen to realize that he had known about who she was as she cradled his body as he died in her arms. Gwen's father would arrive on the scene and spot Spider-Woman holding the body of Peter Parker which would lead to him believing that Spider-Woman was responsible for the death of his daughter's best friend. He would launch various manhunts on the vigilante but to no avail.
Due to Peter's death and the manhunt on her alter ego, Gwen would distance herself from others and build up a wall around herself as she tried to never make another friend again to not suffer the pain of losing one again. She would use her powers to defend the innocents while still evading arrest from her father who had no idea about her secret identity.
Personality[]
Gwen is intelligent and quick-witted with a tendency to be sarcastic. She is also incredibly awkward and tries to put up walls to prevent people from getting close to her out of fear of losing them like her friend Peter. While she tries to keep people at bay, when she does let them in she becomes incredibly emotionally attached to them to the point of her keeping the accidentally undercut that she had gotten as a result of Miles's hand getting stuck in her hair due to her missing Miles after leaving his universe.
Physical appearance[]
Gwen in casual clothing
Gwen is a 16 year old caucasian woman of Irish descent. She is lean but muscular with a body type similar to those of a trained acrobat or gymnast. She had a short blond haircut until Miles's accident caused her to have to adopt an undercut which she continued to grow and keep in the same undercut style even as it grew longer in an attempt to remember her friend.
Powers and Abilities[]
Gwen has similar abilities to those of most spider people. She has the ability to crawl on walls, an enhanced healing factor, super agility and speed and web shooters that she herself created so she could swing from buildings. She like most other spider people has a spider sense but hers seems to be especially good as she is able to sense that Miles is in the wrong universe even from multiple universes away from him as well as the fact that her spider sense told her to find Miles even before he had been bitten by a radioactive spider.
Gwen also has ballet training as evidenced by the pointe shoes she wore in the first film and first half of the second film. She also appears to have some gymnastics training as her father wears a shirt for the gymnastics group at her school.
Appearances[]
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse[]
Gwen was sucked into a portal that lead her from her home universe of Earth-65B to the universe of Earth-1610B, and somehow traveled back to one week earlier before the super collider exploded. She ended up in New York but it was clearly not the New York that she had known. Her Spider-sense led her to find Miles Morales at Brooklyn Visions Academy. Gwen would laugh at a joke Miles would make in physics class before he would sit next to her. A day later, Miles bumps into Gwen. She asks Miles why he is so sweaty and he awkwardly explains that it was due to puberty although he quickly backtracks and is confused why he said that. He introduces himself and Gwen tells him her name is “Gwanda” most likely to avoid Miles getting confused in the chance there was another Gwen Stacy in his school. Miles is confused because he has never heard of that name before and she clarifies that she is African, South African to be exact. Miles then does the shoulder touch like his uncle taught him as a way to charm her. After taking his hand off her shoulder, Miles accidentally gets his hand stuck on the side of Gwen's hair. Miles attempts to remove his hand with brute force only for Gwen to use her legs to push him over her head. Later, at the school nurse's office, the side of Gwen's hair is shaved off leaving a handprint of Miles's hand in her hair. Outside, she sees Miles walking on a wall as she notices him going through the finding his powers stage of his journey.
Later at Alchemax, Miles and Peter are stealing information to stop the collider while escaping from Olivia Octavius, who turns out to be Doctor Octopus in Miles' universe. Gwen takes on Doc Ock and steals back the computer's hard drive. When she removes her mask, Miles recognizes her from Brooklyn Visions and Gwen properly introduces herself. The trio escaped from Alchemax's grad students security. They got on a bus and Miles consoles Gwen on the death of her best friend. He offers to be her friend if she is ready to begin making friends again. In Peter Parker's house in Queens, they meet May Parker, who is astonished to see Peter but knew that he was from a different dimension.
Aunt May leads the trio to the Spider-cave where the original Peter had kept all of his Spidey suits as well as the photographs of the criminals that he had been pursuing as Spider-Man. Here they meet the other spider people from respective dimensions; Peni Parker, Spider-Ham and Spider-Man Noir. The group discusses which one of them should stay behind to stop the collider, Miles willingly volunteers when the others start glitching in pain. They test him to see if he had what it took to be a hero, but much to their dismay, Miles was inexperienced. They discuss how they don't think Miles was ready, unaware that Miles, invisible, eavesdropped on the whole conversation and left to stop the collider regardless of what they thought. Gwen sadly watches him leave.
After Peni completed the new override key, Gwen asks the others if they had heard from Miles, and are interrupted when Miles returns to inform them that his uncle, Aaron Davis, was the Prowler and have been working for Wilson Fisk. Gwen asks Miles if he was followed and he claims he didn't think he had been. The heroes' spider-senses activate and they are confronted by the villains, with Gwen fighting against the Scorpion.
Later, the heroes visit an dejected Miles' dorm room at Brooklyn Visions, where he was devastated over the loss of his uncle. The heroes try to comfort him, telling him that they had all lost loved ones, but Miles blames himself for what happened to Aaron. Later, Miles' roommate, Ganke Lee, enters the dorm and start to read comics, with the heroes all hanging on the ceiling, but he spots them. Ganke passes out when Spider-Ham asked the heroes about animals talking in Miles' dimension. The heroes make the decision to stop the collider without Miles, due to his inexperience with his powers. They arrive at Fisk's mansion, where Fisk claimed that he and the original Spider-Man were 'very close', but Gwen doesn't believe it and called him a pig to which Spider-Ham took offence. Spider-Man Noir points out how the waiters were dressed. They then enter the mansion wearing bow ties and web up two security guards on the way. The heroes enter the collider and Peter volunteers to insert the override key, but they are forced to fight the villains, who anticipated their arrival. Despite being outnumbered and glitching out, Miles, in his new suit, arrives to aid the heroes.
Gwen is nearly bested by Doc Ock and fell into the portal, but is saved by Miles. She compliments him on his new suit. Gwen, Miles and Peter teamed up to fight Doc Ock, but when Doc Ock recovered and advanced on them, she was hit by an interdimensional semi-truck. Miles volunteered to insert the override key, and Gwen and Peter watched him swinging perfectly. Miles opened the portal and the heroes bid farewell before returning to their own universes.
Before leaving, Miles asked Gwen if he got to like her hair-do now, but she teased him by saying that she's fifteen months older than him, like in physics class, Miles quotes what Albert Einstein said about time being relative. He asked her if she wanted to be friends with him and she graciously told him that they are now friends. Gwen said goodbye to Miles and jumped through the portal to return to her universe. In her own universe, Gwen sat upon a rooftop looking at a picture of herself and Miles on her phone.
At the end of the film, Gwen opens a portal to Miles's dimension and asked him if he had a minute to talk.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse[]
Sixteen months after the destruction of the Super-Collider, Gwen has grown even more isolated than she has ever been after her experiences with Miles. Gwen constantly thinks about Miles and hopes that one day she can see him again, even seeing his face everywhere she goes. Her bandmates from The Mary Janes attempt to get Gwen to open up about what is very clearly bothering her but she refuses and angrily tells them that she's only in the band to let her feelings out through her drumming. Gwen quits the band the band and walks home alone, taking the subway.
Upon arriving home, Gwen's father asks her how she's doing with her band to which Gwen nonchalantly reveals that she had quit. Believing that his newest discoveries the Spider-Woman case will lighten her mood, George tells Gwen that he has gotten even closer to figuring out who Spider-Woman is. As Gwen folds clothes she angrily responds to him saying that catching Spider-Woman will not bring her Peter back. Feeling bad for his daughter, George asks her for a hug and Gwen immediately runs up to him and hugs him. Just then, George gets a call that there is an attack from the Vulture at the Guggenheim museum. He departs and Gwen takes the opportunity to suit up but not before glancing at the one picture she has of herself with Miles.
Gwen swings to the Guggenheim museum and immediately webs up all the police officers including her father to prevent them from getting hurt. Gwen calls out to the Vulture expecting the familiar one that she had fought plenty of times to be responsible only to find a renaissance era version of the villain causing mayhem in the building. Gwen attacks the villain as she guesses that he had arrived to this universe from another dimension similar to how she had been sent to Miles's by the collider. The Vulture manages to pin down Gwen but is stopped by Miguel O'Hara who launches himself out of a portal at the creature. Miguel helps save citizens and fight the Vulture with Gwen. Jessica Drew soon joins them and the battle grows more intense.
After defeating the Vulture and saving the citizens, Gwen gets ready to leave as she exhausted and her suit has cuts on it. She is unexpectedly confronted by her father. Gwen attempts to shoot webs at her father to disarm him but she comes to the harrowing realization that she is out of web fluid and literally cannot do anything. Gwen pleads at her father to stop but he fires a shot towards her as she manages to dodge. Gwen is out of options and does the one thing she had never wanted to do, take her mask off and reveal her face to her father. She tries to desperately explain that she wasn't responsible for Peter's murder. George is completely in shock as he's distraught by the revelation of his daughter's secret identity and the fact that in his eyes she murdered her best friend.
George still sees her as the prime suspect of the murder and asks her to surrender herself over. Gwen continues the plead and beg but it is useless. Out of the blue, Miguel leaps out and uses one of his webs to grab George's gun from him. He restrains George behind an electric barrier as he struggles to release himself from his confines. Gwen sobs into the arms of Jessica Drew as she realizes that there's no future for her here. Miguel tosses Gwen a portal watch as she puts it on her wrist. Heartbroken by her dad's apathy towards her, Gwen decides to confirm her membership to join the Spider Society and departs from her universe alongside Miguel and Jessica.
Gwen worked at the Spider Society for several months. She consistently crashes at Hobart's universe as he becomes a big brother figure to her and she joins his band and even goes on some missions with him. She also goes on many missions with Jess who becomes a sort of mentor to her. She would also meet Pavitr Prabhakar on a mission and become friends with him. At some point she would reunite with Peni and Peter B. Parker, meeting the latter's daughter Mayday. Although Gwen wanted to visit Miles badly, she along with Peter and Peni are told by Miguel and Jessica to stay away from Miles as he is an anomaly and could cause problems to the multi-verse. Gwen also learns about the canon event involving the death of Gwen Stacy if she falls in love with Spider-Man.
Relationships[]
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
Gwendolyn's drumset displaying a note from her deceased mother.
- Her mother died when she was young and a note from her is visible in her drumset next to the picture of her and Miles.
- She is 15 years old in Into the Spider-Verse and she is 16 years old in Across the Spider-Verse.
- Gwen's origin story is similar to that of the comics version of herself.
- In the sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Gwen is redesigned slightly from her appearance in the first film, with chucks replacing her ballet shoes, and having Gwen Poole's partially dyed pink highlights added to her blonde undercut hair which is now slightly longer, a design previously adapted to versions of the character in the Marvel Rising media franchise and the Disney Junior children's television series Marvel's Spidey and His Amazing Friends. This was cited by a character designer for Marvel Rising having mistaken an image of Gwen Poole by Gurihiru for Gwen Stacy while using Google Images to reference the former character's physical appearance during the series' development.
- Gwen is a cishet LGBTQIA+ supporter, having a poster that reads "Protect Trans Kids" above her bedroom door.
- In her drumset, there is a letter addressed from her mother hinting that her mother had indeed passed away sometime in her early childhood. The placement of the picture of herself with Miles seems to also indicate that she holds Miles at a similar level to her deceased mother.
- Gwen has a tendency to randomly embrace people she cares about in hugs.
- Gwen is left handed as evidenced in her introductory scene in Across the Spider-Verse.
References[]
External links[]
