my honest thoughts on how The Spectacular Spider-Man show did Mary Jane
The Good : honestly the only thing I could really think of that they got right was the party girl aspect, calls Peter “Tiger”, being flirtatious, her staring off as a friend to Peter,Gwen and Flash just like in the source material, that’s like the only things I’ve seen from this MJ that reminded me of herself from the 60’s-early 70’s.
The Bad : I do think the writers did a pretty poor job at show her attraction to Peter especially when Greg Wiesman in a podcast said that MJ indeed did like Peter and was attracted to him but didn’t get close to him because she saw him as a “risky guy” he never explains why but the only thing I could really think of is parallel lives where MJ saw Peter for the first time in his backyard raking leaves and found him as “cute” that’s probably where her attraction to Peter started like Weisman said then a year later she saw Peter climbing out and knew Peter was Spider-Man which scared the shit out of her because she now knew Peter was living a double life which is what her father did and her father was a terrible person,i fully believe that the show was going to take this route because this to me made the most sense into why Spectacular MJ saw Peter as risky but here’s the thing, even despite that MJ being afraid she still showed attraction to Peter to the point where fans without knowing any context would know that she’s a contender as a love interest but spectacular didn’t do a good job at that, most “casual” fans thought that MJ in this show was just going to be a friend to Peter and Gwen which if you know more context of this show you know that wasn’t going to be the case, do I blame the fans for thinking that? Absolutely not it’s not their fault it’s the shows fault for doing a poor job at showing MJ’s attraction to Peter which made people think this, only one time was MJ flirty with Peter was that Halloween episode where he was in his spider-man suit, 1 time in the 18 episodes that she was in, pretty ridiculous if you ask me.
also her homewrecker personality was missing
Another thing, MJ didn’t seem hesitant to go on a date with Eddie without knowing anything about him and caught feelings for Mark just because he drew her and was being seductive, the real 616 MJ would’ve been smart enough to see that, even when MJ dated Harry in the comics her feelings for him weren’t strong at all. Makes no sense for MJ to fall for a guy like Mark a kid with a gambling addiction, this is literally the mistake Raimi did with his MJ.
being overshadowed by Gwen was also a flaw that this MJ had, anytime any version of MJ gets overshadowed by Gwen it’s immediately failure because in the comics it’s the opposite, Gwen was supposed to be the goal, Gwen was supposed to be endgame until Stan Lee and his writing team specifically Conway realized Gwen was uninteresting and offed her to make room for MJ.
even if MJ and Peter got a romantic dynamic in this show it wouldn’t had lasted long because the show was supposed to be 5 seasons and Greg Weisman’s boss confirmed that they were going to do “The Night Gwen Stacy died” after the 5 seasons , they didn’t want to kill Gwen in high school and they were planning 2 dvd movies after the show which would’ve taken place in college which I’m assuming one of those movies would’ve been “The Night Gwen Stacy died” and then the other one I can’t even guess but if this was the case this would mean that MJ and Peter’s dynamic would’ve been limited.
so basically Gwen would’ve been the love interest from season 3-5, killed off in the dvd movie and then 30 minutes of Peter and MJ romance, I’m sorry I can’t help but fucking laugh this would’ve been so bad.
Conclusion: there’s way more i could add but i feel like that was enough to say about the character, before you guys say that MJ was the one that was supposed to end with Peter in this show so it doesn’t matter yes im aware and it does quite matter to show MJ’s true character, I don’t know to me it feel very poor and it’s disappointing to me that we haven’t see an accurate version of MJ, maybe one day… may one day.
The Good : honestly the only thing I could really think of that they got right was the party girl aspect, calls Peter “Tiger”, being flirtatious, her staring off as a friend to Peter,Gwen and Flash just like in the source material, that’s like the only things I’ve seen from this MJ that reminded me of herself from the 60’s-early 70’s.
The Bad : I do think the writers did a pretty poor job at show her attraction to Peter especially when Greg Wiesman in a podcast said that MJ indeed did like Peter and was attracted to him but didn’t get close to him because she saw him as a “risky guy” he never explains why but the only thing I could really think of is parallel lives where MJ saw Peter for the first time in his backyard raking leaves and found him as “cute” that’s probably where her attraction to Peter started like Weisman said then a year later she saw Peter climbing out and knew Peter was Spider-Man which scared the shit out of her because she now knew Peter was living a double life which is what her father did and her father was a terrible person,i fully believe that the show was going to take this route because this to me made the most sense into why Spectacular MJ saw Peter as risky but here’s the thing, even despite that MJ being afraid she still showed attraction to Peter to the point where fans without knowing any context would know that she’s a contender as a love interest but spectacular didn’t do a good job at that, most “casual” fans thought that MJ in this show was just going to be a friend to Peter and Gwen which if you know more context of this show you know that wasn’t going to be the case, do I blame the fans for thinking that? Absolutely not it’s not their fault it’s the shows fault for doing a poor job at showing MJ’s attraction to Peter which made people think this, only one time was MJ flirty with Peter was that Halloween episode where he was in his spider-man suit, 1 time in the 18 episodes that she was in, pretty ridiculous if you ask me.
also her homewrecker personality was missing
Another thing, MJ didn’t seem hesitant to go on a date with Eddie without knowing anything about him and caught feelings for Mark just because he drew her and was being seductive, the real 616 MJ would’ve been smart enough to see that, even when MJ dated Harry in the comics her feelings for him weren’t strong at all. Makes no sense for MJ to fall for a guy like Mark a kid with a gambling addiction, this is literally the mistake Raimi did with his MJ.
being overshadowed by Gwen was also a flaw that this MJ had, anytime any version of MJ gets overshadowed by Gwen it’s immediately failure because in the comics it’s the opposite, Gwen was supposed to be the goal, Gwen was supposed to be endgame until Stan Lee and his writing team specifically Conway realized Gwen was uninteresting and offed her to make room for MJ.
even if MJ and Peter got a romantic dynamic in this show it wouldn’t had lasted long because the show was supposed to be 5 seasons and Greg Weisman’s boss confirmed that they were going to do “The Night Gwen Stacy died” after the 5 seasons , they didn’t want to kill Gwen in high school and they were planning 2 dvd movies after the show which would’ve taken place in college which I’m assuming one of those movies would’ve been “The Night Gwen Stacy died” and then the other one I can’t even guess but if this was the case this would mean that MJ and Peter’s dynamic would’ve been limited.
so basically Gwen would’ve been the love interest from season 3-5, killed off in the dvd movie and then 30 minutes of Peter and MJ romance, I’m sorry I can’t help but fucking laugh this would’ve been so bad.
Conclusion: there’s way more i could add but i feel like that was enough to say about the character, before you guys say that MJ was the one that was supposed to end with Peter in this show so it doesn’t matter yes im aware and it does quite matter to show MJ’s true character, I don’t know to me it feel very poor and it’s disappointing to me that we haven’t see an accurate version of MJ, maybe one day… may one day.