Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr. ignited a firestorm in April 2022 with Amazing Spider-Man #1 (Vol. 6), leaping six months into the future and revealing a seismic shift in Peter Parker’s life. The once-reunited couple, Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker, who had rekindled their romance in Nick Spencer’s Amazing Spider-Man run, were no more. Peter was adrift, consumed by despair and anger, an emotion mirrored by everyone around him – Aunt May, Randy Robertson, even the stalwart Fantastic Four and Captain America. Mary Jane wouldn’t answer his calls. Debt collectors were relentless. He was working for Norman Osborn, of all people! But the most earth-shattering reveal? Mary Jane was now living with Paul, her new partner, and raising their two children. This cliffhanger ending to Wells and Romita’s debut issue sent shockwaves through the Spider-Man fanbase. Now, a year later, Amazing Spider-Man #21-25 are peeling back the layers, revealing the events of those missing six months. The burning questions are finally being answered: Why did Mary Jane and Peter break up? Who is Paul? Why is everyone furious with Peter? What transpired during those lost months? And, the question on every long-time fan’s mind: Will Mary Jane and Peter find their way back to each other? However, for me, seeing Stephanie and Owen rush into Mary Jane’s arms at the end of that fateful issue sparked a more profound question: Should Mary Jane even be with Peter Parker in the first place?
(Note: This article contains plot spoilers for Amazing Spider-Man #21-25.)
My journey with Spider-Man comics began in March 1986, a mere three years into my own life. Peter and Mary Jane’s marriage in June 1987’s The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21 solidified their status as a couple throughout my formative years. The 2007 “One More Day” storyline, which fractured their marriage, felt like a personal betrayal, even during a period when I had stepped away from comics. Years later, my deep affection for their relationship led me to write “Spider-Man and the Black Cat: Flirting with Perfection,” an exploration of Peter’s connection with Felicia Hardy. Even then, I felt compelled to preface my thoughts on Peter and Felicia by stating, “It’s no secret I love Peter and Mary Jane together. Their relationship was the foundation of all the Spider-Man comics I read as a kid…For me, they’ve always been Marvel’s power couple (sorry Reed and Sue) and a testament to love’s power to endure all things.” My devotion to Peter and Mary Jane was clear from the outset, even when discussing another of Peter’s romantic interests.
Amazing Spider-Man #1 by Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr., revealing a changed reality for Mary Jane and Peter Parker.
That article became the genesis of a series delving into Peter Parker’s extensive romantic history. The second installment, naturally, focused on the iconic redhead in “Spider-Man and Mary Jane: Soul Mates? Y/N/Maybe.” Through the lens of soulmates, I examined their complex bond, concluding, “No matter what stage in their relationship you’re looking at, Mary Jane Watson and Peter Parker reflect all that is beautiful and broken about romantic love. They give us the highs and lows of trying to follow our heart. Are they Soul Mates? Are Soul Mates even real? Who knows? Will they find each other again in the end? I don’t know that either. But I choose to believe they will. My favorite comic couple can’t be apart forever :). More importantly than that though, I believe they’ll find each other again because I’m a hopeful romantic and because there’s nothing I believe in more than love.”
Given my history and pronouncements, one might assume my answer to the initial question – should Mary Jane even be with Peter? – would be a resounding yes.
Yet, I find myself questioning that very assumption.
The current narrative arc by Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr. reintroduces Benjamin Rabin, a mathematician turned zealot, originally featured in Amazing Spider-Man #555-557. In that memorable storyline, Wayep, an ancient Mayan God of Death, sought to exploit Rabin to unleash global destruction. Now, Rabin resurfaces, intent on resurrecting Wayep. Charged with divine energy, Rabin invades Mary Jane’s apartment, moments after she and Peter have agreed to move in together, triggering a violent confrontation. Rabin marks Peter “for vengeance” and Mary Jane “for sacrifice,” banishing them to a desolate, post-apocalyptic dimension. Here, they encounter Paul, who rescues them from a monstrous creature. Paul reveals Rabin sent him to this world long ago, tasked with informing Wayep that Earth is ripe for devastation. Peter, ever the hero, aids Paul in completing his dimension-hopping device. The plan is for Mary Jane to return and enlist the Fantastic Four, but in a surprising twist, she sends Peter back instead, prioritizing his life and the safety of their world.
Peter’s return is met with frantic urgency as he learns time operates differently across dimensions. Weeks have passed for them, while only hours have elapsed in their world. The Fantastic Four and Captain America demand explanations, but Peter, driven by desperation, turns to an unlikely ally: Norman Osborn, who has been seeking redemption since his sins were purged. Peter “borrows” a mini-fusion reactor from the Fantastic Four, quantum cables from Tony Stark, and Felicia Hardy (Black Cat) procures a plank-drive from Moon Girl. Fueled by adrenaline and desperation, they work tirelessly to repair the dimension-jumping device. When Peter finally returns to the hellish dimension, his arrival distracts Rabin, allowing Paul to deliver a fatal stab from behind. Peter turns to Mary Jane, seeking a loving embrace, but she recoils. “You’ve…you’ve been gone a long time…a lot has changed,” she whispers, introducing Peter to Stephanie and Owen.
Back in their reality, Mary Jane reveals the devastating truth: almost four years have passed. Life has moved on. She has no intention of leaving Paul or the family they have built with Owen and Stephanie. Peter is understandably consumed by rage – at himself, at fate, at everyone.
A quick glance across the internet – social media, YouTube, blogs – confirms widespread fan outrage. This sentiment is not new. Since “One More Day” in 2007, fans have voiced their desire for Peter and MJ’s reunion, ranging from wistful pleas to angry demands. Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr.’s initial issue reignited this frustration, which has only intensified over the past year. (Of course, some readers appreciate the current direction!) As my opening remarks indicate, I understand the longing for Peter and Mary Jane. I, too, cherished their relationship.
But when I saw that final page of Amazing Spider-Man #1, revealing Mary Jane’s life with Paul and witnessing Stephanie and Owen embrace her, my initial reaction was not anger or disappointment. It was relief. I felt genuine happiness for Mary Jane. It felt like she had finally found the life, the relationship, the family, and the love she truly deserved – the kind of life Peter could never provide. Despite my deep-seated love for Mary Jane and Peter as a couple, I’ve come to realize: they simply don’t work. While I believe Wells and Romita’s current storyline, with Peter grappling with loss and Mary Jane embracing a healthy, fulfilling relationship, is the most compelling chapter in their history, my statement goes beyond narrative intrigue. Their relationship is fundamentally unhealthy, deeply imbalanced, and consistently detrimental to Mary Jane’s well-being.
My perspective stems from over five years immersed in researching Peter’s romantic entanglements, a project spanning sixteen articles and counting. For each installment, I meticulously reread every issue featuring the woman in question, focusing on their interactions, flirtations, and romantic developments. The most startling revelation of this deep dive? Peter Parker is, consistently, a deeply flawed romantic partner. Not because he is malicious or abusive, but because his unresolved trauma prevents him from fully embracing love and healthy relationships. This trauma casts a long shadow over all his romantic connections.
As I’ve previously mentioned, my therapist, Katherine, has incorporated Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy into our sessions since 2020. IFS, developed by Richard C. Schwartz in the early 1980s, has profoundly impacted my personal growth and healing. In his book, You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships, Dr. Schwartz explains IFS as a method of “helping people heal by listening inside themselves in a new way to different ‘parts’ – feelings or thoughts – and, in the process, unburdening themselves of extreme beliefs, emotions, sensations, and urges that constrain their lives. As they unburden, people have more access to Self, our most precious human resource, and are better able to lead their lives from that centered, confident, compassionate place.”[1] The Self is defined as “an essence of calm, clarity, compassion, and connectedness.”[2] It embodies marvel, love, acceptance, and compassion, especially in the face of suffering.
Schwartz’s central argument challenges the cultural myth of needing a partner to complete us, asserting that this very notion fuels most relationship problems. True fulfillment comes from accessing our Self and learning to love and heal our internal “parts” independently. Partners can offer love and support, but the core work of healing and self-love is an individual journey. Only then can we enter into relationships capable of loving others authentically and receiving love in return.
Within us reside “exiles” – parts holding our vulnerabilities. “Everyone is born with vulnerable parts. Most of us, however, learn early – through interactions with caretakers or through traumatic experiences – that being vulnerable is not safe. As a consequence, we lock those childlike parts away inside and make them the inner exiles of our personalities.”[3]
Peter Parker’s life is a tapestry woven with traumatic threads. Orphaned at a young age, raised by loving but aging Aunt May and Uncle Ben, Peter endured bullying and social isolation throughout his formative years. The early Amazing Spider-Man comics poignantly depict his profound loneliness. Gaining spider-powers, a potentially traumatic event in itself, is quickly followed by the murder of Uncle Ben, a tragedy fueled by Peter’s initial selfish choices. Years later, Gwen Stacy, his first great love, is brutally murdered by Norman Osborn/Green Goblin, after Osborn discovers Peter’s secret identity.
This relentless barrage of trauma would inevitably create a multitude of exiled parts within Peter, each carrying “burdens.”
These foreign feelings or beliefs (sometimes described as energies) are what I call burdens. It turns out that burdens are powerful organizers of a part’s experience and activity – almost in the same way that a virus organizes a computer.
It’s important to note here that these burdens are the product of a person’s direct experience – the sense of worthlessness that comes into a child when a parent abuses them; the terror that attaches to parts during a car accident; the belief that no one can be trusted that enters young parts when we are betrayed or abandoned as children. When we are young, we have little discernment regarding the validity of these emotions and beliefs and, consequently, they get lodged in the bodies of our young parts and become powerful (albeit unconscious) organizers of our lives thereafter. These we call personal burdens.[4]
These burden-laden exiles are the core impediment to Peter forming a healthy, reciprocal relationship with Mary Jane. It’s not a matter of Peter’s desire or conscious choice; it’s that his unresolved trauma fundamentally hinders his capacity for healthy love and care. Until he acknowledges, embraces, and heals these exiled parts, unburdening them from their pain, he cannot fully love and support Mary Jane in the way she deserves.
Our exiles profoundly influence our behavior, especially in intimate relationships. Dr. Schwartz explains:
In addition, when exiles are not triggered and instead exist in us in a chronic background ache, they still powerfully, though unconsciously, influence many aspects of our lives, including our choice of intimate partner, our ability to be patient during the search for that partner, and the degree to which we cling to, try to control, protect ourselves from, are hurt by, and are dissatisfied with that partner. In other words, our exiles and their protectors determine everything about our success and failure with intimacy. Your exiles suffered a double whammy. First they were rejected, abandoned, or shamed by someone you relied on to love you, and then you rejected, shamed, and abandoned them. As a result, they are often desperate to be loved yet also desperately afraid that they will lose any love they get or are convinced they don’t deserve any. As I said earlier, in their exiled state they seem less like buried treasure than toxic waste which will contaminate everything if you let it out. While in that state, these exiles can wreak havoc on your relationships.[5]
Looking at Peter and Mary Jane’s history, the havoc wrought by Peter’s exiles is undeniable. Marvel’s controversial “One More Day” storyline, where Mephisto erased their marriage, becomes tragically understandable when viewed through this lens. Mary Jane’s decision to divorce Peter in that storyline, driven by his overwhelming immersion in his Spider-Man persona and his emotional unavailability, was, in fact, the healthier choice for her. Re-examining their relationship as an adult, I see a recurring pattern: Peter consistently shuts Mary Jane out, disregards her emotions, expects her to shoulder his emotional burdens, and isolates her – physically and emotionally – by prioritizing his responsibilities as Spider-Man, a pattern itself rooted in his trauma avoidance.
Perhaps the most insightful analysis of Spider-Man comes from Ben Saunders’ Do the Gods Wear Capes?: Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes:
To put it another way, if we look at what Peter is repeatedly made to do by his creators, rather than what he is sometimes made to say [“With great power, comes great responsibility”], then both his feelings of guilt and his crime-fighting can seem to have an obsessive-compulsive quality about them. His expressions of self-loathing and guilt with regard to Ben’s death start to appear more neurotic than heroic. For example, his constant cry – “It’s all my fault!” – simply doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. He didn’t actually shoot his uncle, after all, a burglar did, and yet he seems compelled to take on more responsibility than belongs to him. He is getting something from all that delicious guilt…Time and again he resolves to stop. But, like an alcoholic returning to the bottle, or more accurately, like a co-dependent, resentfully but perpetually riding to the rescue, he always finds himself donning his Spider-Man costume again.[6]
…Bruce Wayne does not go through nearly as many bouts of agonized indecision in relation to his Batman identity, after all; nor does the Green Lantern constantly wonder whether the universe needs him to police it; Wonder Woman never seriously considers abandoning humanity and returning to Paradise Island; and so on. Only Spider-Man is so driven to renounce his heroic identity, and then take it up again, in an endlessly repetitive cycle. And that cycle, I am suggesting, is inherent in the particular mechanism of trauma and guilt that shape and drive his story.[7]
….But when Gwen dies, despite and perhaps even because of his best efforts, the relationship between guilt and responsibility central to Peter Parker’s self-understanding is exposed as a self-protective fiction – keeping at bay the awareness that we live in an unpredictable universe where Bad Things happen that no one can prevent. Thus, Peter and his readers were forced to face the possibility that, in taking up the mantle of “hero,” he had only replaced one self-serving fantasy (that his powers set him apart from involvement with ordinary humanity) with another (that his powers allow him to always save others from harm). With Gwen’s death, the true cause of Peter’s neurotic guilt over Ben’s murder was inadvertently revealed. His exaggerated sense of responsibility served not only to compensate for Ben’s loss, but also (and perhaps more important) to sustain a comforting illusion of safety and control in a profoundly uncertain world.[8]
Peter Parker/Spider-Man is the fictional character I have loved longest. He is inextricably linked to my life, his stories shaping me in profound ways. My heart aches for Peter, burdened by such immense trauma.
However, until Peter follows Cindy Moon/Silk’s example and commits to therapy, he will remain a toxic partner for Mary Jane. Spider-Man, his coping mechanism and trauma avoidance strategy, will always eclipse Mary Jane in his priorities. I cherish Mary Jane too deeply to wish that life upon her, nostalgia notwithstanding. I want her happiness above all else, and she has found happiness with Paul, Owen, and Stephanie. This joy was palpable on the final page of Amazing Spider-Man #1, filling me with relief and joy as I saw the children embrace her. These feelings were reinforced as I read Amazing Spider-Man #25, witnessing Mary Jane and Paul’s growing intimacy, their shared journey in finding the children, and the blossoming love as they built their family in the face of unimaginable adversity. In a post-apocalyptic hellscape, Mary Jane found the most genuinely symbiotic relationship of her life. Together, they forged a family.
When Owen tentatively offered Mary Jane a hug, saying, “You can hug me sometimes if you want,” my heart swelled with happiness for them. It was one of the most heartwarming and beautiful moments I’ve encountered in nearly four decades of reading Spider-Man comics.
Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr.’s current narrative is, in my view, the most nuanced and compelling exploration of Mary Jane and Peter’s characters. Firstly, as an empath, I gravitate towards stories that prioritize character happiness, and Mary Jane is undeniably happy with Paul and the children. Peter, admittedly, is not, but his unhappiness serves to underscore the very point: he needs profound personal healing. Secondly, in contrast to the “Brand New Day” era, which presented a single Peter navigating a string of potential romances alongside a perpetual “will they/won’t they” dynamic with MJ, this storyline presents a starkly different reality. Mary Jane, while separated from Peter, has discovered something “beautiful, real, and nourishing” with Paul and her children. The authenticity and health of the relationship Wells has crafted, and the intimacy Romita captures in their interactions, make it impossible to root against.
Therefore, even if Peter were to heed Cindy’s advice and seek therapy, embarking on the arduous journey of unburdening his exiled parts, I no longer desire a reunion with Mary Jane. She has Paul and her children, and as a devoted reader of her character since childhood, her happiness is paramount. Besides, Peter is now with Felicia! The Black Cat, who is less likely to become an emotional caretaker for Peter’s unresolved issues, is arguably a more suitable match for him in his current state. While Rabin’s lingering god-like threat casts a shadow over their future (and the “marked for sacrifice” plot point is concerning), regardless of the narrative’s ultimate resolution, Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr.’s Amazing Spider-Man run has fundamentally shifted my perspective. I no longer believe, or even wish, for Mary Jane and Peter to reunite in the end.
My faith in the power of loving connection remains unwavering. I believe such a love, rooted in Self-awareness and acceptance, can empower Peter to unburden his exiles, heal his trauma, move beyond Spider-Man as a maladaptive coping mechanism, and ultimately cultivate healthy, fulfilling relationships, both with himself and, potentially, a romantic partner. However, I doubt we will ever witness this transformation in Peter. It simply isn’t in his character’s nature or narrative purpose. But I am eternally grateful to Zeb Wells and John Romita Jr. for granting Mary Jane this profound happiness with her chosen family. No amount of nostalgia could ever make me wish to see her relinquish it.
[1] Richard C. Schwartz, You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting For: Applying Internal Family Systems Model to Intimate Relationships. (Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True, 2023), vii.
[2] Robert C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma & Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model, (Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True, 2021), 1.
[3] Schwartz, You Are the One, 37.
[4] Schwartz, No Bad Parts, 18.
[5] Schwartz, You Are the One, 46.
[6] Ben Saunders, Do the Gods Wear Capes?: Spirituality, Religion, and Superheroes, (New York: Continuum, 2011), 79.
[7] Ibid., 80.
[8] Ibid., 85-7.
