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Marvel And Sony Discuss The Twist Behind Zendaya’s Spider-Man: Homecoming Character


Warning: This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Homecoming.

Marvel casted Zendaya as one of the side characters in Tom Holland's first Marvel feature film, and while everyone knew that she was playing one of Peter Parker's highschool classmates, no one expected that she'd be romantically interested in the character, least of all nicknamed after one of Spider-Man's biggest love interests.

At the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming, Zendaya's Michelle becomes Peter's academic decathlon team's new leader after being asked to be called by her friends "MJ" – initials which also belonged to Mary Jane Watson.

Now in an interview with IGN, Marvel President Kevin Feige and Sony producer Amy Pascal discuss Zendaya's part in Homecoming and the whole "MJ" twist.

"We never even looked at it as a big reveal necessarily but more of just a fun homage to his past adventures and his past love. She's not Mary Jane Watson. She never was Mary Jane Watson. She was always this new high school character, Michelle, who we know there's an "M" in Michelle and an "M" in Mary. [laughs] So we're so clever and we thought, "Wouldn't it be neat if her initials were MJ?" And then I think it leaked that she would be playing MJ and then it became a whole headache for Zendaya to have to navigate," Feige revealed. "It was never a big, "Oh my God, it's a big reveal!" There are big reveals in the movie. That's not one of them."

"She is not going to end as being Mary Jane Watson," Pascal decided to add to Feige's explanation.

"She's not Mary-Jane Watson," Feige said before tacking on, "Is she going to date Peter? Are they going to fall in love? She seems to be intrigued with him. There's a nice chemistry there. Who knows what will happen in the future films?"

While Michelle definitely isn't Mary Jane, Feige's comments do seem to suggest that Michelle actually might share some romance with Peter in future Spider-Man films. Michelle is an interesting character and it would be neat to see how a romance would play out between the new decathlon team leader and Peter.

Spider-Man: Homecoming is currently screening in cinemas.

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