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The course of true love never runs smooth, which is doubly true for fictional characters — they have to keep the audience entertained, after all. Poor Spider-Man, however, takes that idea to extremes, with a shockingly complicated love life, especially when it comes to Mary Jane Watson, his one-time (and, in multiple alternate realities, current) wife. If you thought that Marvel was done messing with the two of them — and the fans that ship them — guess again; things look set to get even stranger in the upcoming months.

Spidey and Mary Jane: The Way We Were (1966-2007)

In regular mainstream Marvel comic continuity, Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson met in 1966’s The Amazing Spider-Man #42. Initially introduced as simultaneously a potential love interest and spoiler for Peter’s other true love, Gwen Stacy, her rebellious nature and party girl attitude proved to be enough a hit with readers that, after Stacy was murdered by the Green Goblin, Mary Jane found herself becoming increasingly central to the Spider-Man mythos — especially when it was revealed in 1984’s The Amazing Spider-Man #257 that she knew that Peter was secretly Spider-Man. (She’d known for years, but kept it to herself, it was explained.) The two grew closer until, in 1987’s The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21, they were married and went on to live happily ever after.

Well, aside from that period where Peter discovers that he’s a clone of the real Peter Parker (he wasn’t; he’s the real deal), MJ gets pregnant but her baby was stillborn (except maybe it wasn’t, if a strain of fan conspiracy is to be believed), and then MJ was seemingly killed in a plane explosion (she wasn’t, it was a very extreme cover to kidnap her, instead). But who hasn’t gone through that kind of thing, right? Like I said, happily ever after.

Well, until the devil showed up.

The end of the Spider-Marriage: One More Day (2007)

2007’s ‘One More Day’ storyline remains controversial to a significant part of the Spider-Man fandom even now.. The upshot of the whole thing is that, when offered the chance to save the life of Peter Parker’s dying Aunt May by Mephisto, Mary Jane accepts — knowing that to say yes is to not only split the two of them up, but rewrite history so that they’d never been married at all. In reality, the undoing of Spider-Man’s marriage after 20 years was the choice of then-Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada, who believed that a married Spider-Man was unappealing to younger readers and cut down on the dramatic potential for the character.

“As a single character there was always that possibility that Peter could meet someone new,” he explained in a 2007 interview. “Now if you have him even consider a new relationship, he would become the most dislikable character in the history of comics, he’s a married man and he’s Peter Parker.”

And so, Spider-Man and Mary Jane’s relationship was over. But that didn’t last for long.

On-Again, Off-Again: The Mary Jane and Spider-Man situationship (2007-2021)

Over the past decade or so, comic book creators have repeatedly teased a reconciliation between the two characters, in no small part because a great number of fans who grew up with the characters married remain upset that the two aren’t together anymore. The two were somewhat estranged best friends and former lovers until 2013’s Superior Spider-Man era, where Mary Jane believed she was falling for Peter again, but it was actually Doctor Octopus’s mind in Peter Parker’s body. (He got over it.)

By 2018’s The Amazing Spider-Man #1, the two had officially rekindled their relationship, but that only lasted a year, and then the two split when she moved to Hollywood for her career; the two later reunited again in 2021, but then things got very complicated, and all because of someone called Paul.

Spider-Man, Mary Jane, and the third wheel: The Paul of it all (2022-2025)

The fifth volume of The Amazing Spider-Man comic book series ended with Mary Jane and Peter Parker reunited and rekindled… and as soon as the sixth volume started just a month later, the two were once again separated, and Mary Jane was seemingly married to an all-new character, called Paul. Oh, and the two of them apparently had kids, as well. The shift was intended to have fans wondering what had happened, and it certainly worked — although perhaps with a tone closer to “What the Hell” than “what an interesting status quo change, I want to know more.”

It would take a year before the mystery was explained, but the short version was that Spider-Man and Mary Jane had been kidnapped to an alternate dimension between the two volumes, where they met Paul; while Spider-Man had escaped, Mary Jane had not, and spent four years in the alternate dimension getting closer to Paul and adopting two children before returning to the regular Marvel Universe… where almost no time had passed. Although the two children were killed by a supervillain who happened to be Paul’s father — it’s comics, this sort of thing happens — Mary Jane and Paul remained together, despite it being very obvious to the reader that there was unresolved tension between MJ and Peter Parker.

Here’s the thing: there is a significant portion of the Spider-Man fanbase that hates Paul, mostly because he’s a character that was created specifically to keep Mary Jane and Spider-Man separated again immediately after the two had gotten back together. It’s not only the fans, though — Al Ewing, who writes All-New Venom, the series Mary Jane currently appears in, said in an interview in May 2025, “they should not be together. I’m saying it, Carlos [Gomez, All-New Venom artist] is saying it, we’re all saying it.”

If only Ewing and Gomez could do something about that. Oh, wait.

Spider-Man and Mary Jane back together? Not so fast (2025-)

For comic fans who read their comics in alphabetical order, August 6’s releases are an emotional rollercoaster.

In All-New Venom #9 — by the aforementioned Ewing and Gomez — Mary Jane finally tells Paul what fans have wanted to hear for years: she believes they should break up. It’s a scene that leaked on social media ahead of the release of the issue, prompting many to wonder if another reconciliation with Peter Parker was around the corner… until they read The Amazing Spider-Man #9 by Joe Kelly and Michael Dowling, in which Mary Jane approaches Peter Parker, and things do not go well.

Towards the end of the issue, Mary Jane approaches Peter — who has been hiding from friends and family throughout the issue — and tells him that she needs him, revealing that she’s the current Venom in the process. Peter’s response? To laugh humorlessly, before leaving her standing. “The way you were teeing this up, I thought you wanted to get back together,” he says. “You two deserve each other.” Cold.

That might be the point; the rest of the ASM issue underscores that Peter Parker is not acting like himself in the aftermath of being defeated by new villain Hellgate in the previous issue. He’s not just dodging friends and family — even Aunt May! — but also appears to have a new girlfriend, who we see him talking to on the phone, although we don’t know who she is. Curiously, Peter has a broken leg… which raises the question of who the Spider-Man is in the final page of the issue, jumping about seemingly unimpaired.

Let’s not forget that, starting in September’s The Amazing Spider-Man #11, Marvel has announced there will be two Spider-Men, with one on Earth and one in space — with Marvel’s announcement of the storyline stating, “Now there are two Spider-Men, but which is Peter Parker?! BOTH?” With this in mind, it seems very possible that MJ wasn’t dealing with the Peter she thought she was, if it was even Peter at all (Shades of the Superior Spider-Man plot from 2013!), but… who was she talking to…?

More to the point, what does this mean for the Spider-Man/Mary Jane Watson romance moving forward? Is there even a romance to return to at this point? The only answer to that is, obviously, that we’ll have to keep reading the comics to find out.

All-New Venom #9 and The Amazing Spider-Man #9 are both available now.

Marvel's most reliable superhero has proven he can do a whole lot more than just 'whatever a spider can.' Swing into Spidey's history with Popverse's 10 best Spider-Man comic books, our Spider-Man movie watch order, and if you want our opinions on the subject, read our articles ranking Spider-Man's actors and Spider-Man's girlfriends.