Should Spider-Man’s Greatest Multiverse Story Still Get Its Deserved Ending?

In recent years, the Spider-Verse has taken over both the silver screen and the pages of Marvel Comics, and for good reason. Apart from ushering in a seemingly endless number of new versions of fans’ favorite Wall-Crawlers, the Spider-Verse has also opened the door to some of the most astonishing Marvel stories of all time, not to mention updated takes on classic takes that fans have seen play out previously.

Of course, the concept of various versions of Spider-Man hailing from other realities isn’t anything new, at least not today. Back in 1998, however, the thought of a veritable army of Spider-Men coming together to tackle an interdimensional threat was unheard of, at least until precisely that took place during the final season of the Spider-Man animated series. While this culminated in one of the series’ best episodes, it also left things off with a cliffhanger that has since gone unresolved. Thankfully, there is no reason it can’t be solved nearly thirty years later, especially not when X-Men ’97 is just around the corner.

A Brief History of the Original Animated Spider-Man’s Mary Jane Watson

Spider-Man’s first animated series spun his romance with Mary Jane in entirely new directions

Much like the Mary Jane Watson of the primary Marvel Universe, the version of the character who appeared in the Spider-Man animated series became an indelible part of the Wall-Crawler’s life almost as soon as she was introduced. First appearing in 1995’s “Return of the Spider-Slayers,” which was only the fourth episode of the series’ first season, Mary Jane Watson’s debut recreated one of her most memorable comic book moments. Though it was the first of them, telling Peter Parker that he had “hit the jackpot” was far from the only iconic scene the show would recreate. While there were plenty of supervillains, nefarious plots, and otherwise ordinary struggles to come between them, Peter and Mary Jane established a firm foundation for their relationship.

Despite every obstacle, the two seemed to be utterly unshakable in their devotion to and love for one another. Even after the two split and Mary Jane accepted Harry Osborn’s marriage proposal, she and Peter still ended up coming back together and reconciling their issues. It wasn’t until the Green Goblin kidnapped Mary Jane and thrust her through a portal to an unknown dimension that any genuine threat to her relationship with Peter was posed.

Eight episodes later, Mary Jane returned to the series under mysterious circumstances which, though concerning, were initially eschewed in favor of speeding along her and Peter’s unsurprisingly action-packed wedding. In tying the knot, it seemed like the whirlwind romance between Peter and Mary Jane had finally reached a point where outside forces would only ever inconvenience them rather than shake up their entire lives. At least, that was the case until the heartbreaking revelation that Mary Jane’s life was never really hers in the first place.

Who Was Spider-Man’s Other Mary Jane – And What Happened to Her?

Mary Jane Watson’s most tragic story was never really hers

It was during what should have been a romantic honeymoon that Peter and Mary Jane were attacked by Morris Bench, better known as the villainous Hydro-Man, who was still violently obsessed with the latter. For the two-part story “The Return of Hydro-Man,” which took place in the fifth season’s seventh and eighth episodes, Peter and Mary Jane did everything they could to escape the villain’s wrath. Eventually, Mary Jane proved capable of fighting back on her own, as she had somehow developed identical powers to those wielded by Hydro-Man. As astonishing as this was, the truth behind the revelation shook Peter and Mary Jane’s world, and relationship, in the worst way imaginable.

Like the version of Hydro-Man who had been hounding the happy couple, the Mary Jane Watson whom Peter had married was a water-based clone of the original created by the villainous Miles Warren. Known better in the comics as the Jackal, Warren’s early experiments in the Spider-Man animated series produced a clone of Hydro-Man imbued with all the memories and experiences of the original. This Hydro-Man clone was the one who forced Warren to create a clone of Mary Jane, who was indeed still trapped in a limbo dimension after the Green Goblin’s attack.

While the Mary Jane clone was more than capable of defending herself and her beloved with her powers, she was ultimately fated to rapidly degrade and fade away, just like the rest of Warren’s water clones. By the time the Spider-Man animated series was brought to a close, the original Mary Jane still hadn’t been found. Fortunately, there was hope for her proper return, as the series ended with Madame Web promising to lead Peter on a journey throughout the multiverse to find and rescue the real Mary Jane no matter what far-off corner of reality she had been relegated to.

How X-Men ’97 Could Give 1994’s Spider-Man the Ending It Deserves

There is still hope for Spider-Man‘s original animated series on the silver screen

Although the saga of the 1994 animated Spider-Man series ended without ever reconciling the lost Mary Jane storyline, there are still multiple opportunities for it to be wrapped up in full, even without the series making a comeback of its own. The endless expanse of Sony’s Spider-Verse feature film franchise that is set to return with the upcoming Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse could easily find room for a brief cameo or Easter egg moment of reconciliation between the animated Peter and Mary Jane. This isn’t even to consider the possibility of their story being continued in the pages of the Spider-Verse comics, which have just returned with the latest volume of the hit anthology series, Edge of Spider-Verse. And, while either of those would be perfectly fitting pieces of media for said story to be wrapped up in, both are only tangentially related to its setting, whereas the impending release of X-Men ’97 is bringing audiences back to the very same world for the first time in years.

Officially announced in 2021 after more than two years of open discussion surrounding the project, X-Men ’97 is a continuation of the fan-favorite X-Men: The Animated Series. Though X-Men: The Animated Series debuted a couple of years before Spider-Man, the two shows were indeed set within the same universe, that being the reality of Earth-92131. Both shows played home to a host of guest stars from across the Marvel Universe, including each others’ starring cast on occasion. During their initial runs, this allowed Spider-Man to adapt classic comic book storylines such as Secret Wars without having to worry about reintroducing iconic characters.

In the modern era, it means that X-Men ’97 could wrap up Spider-Man‘s cliffhanger ending with little more than an offhanded remark or snapshot of Peter and Mary Jane. For how frequently both Spider-Man and X-Men: The Animated Series relied on guest stars and outside cameos, it is hard to imagine the same won’t be true of X-Men ’97, at least to some degree. And, assuming that turns out to be the case, there is be no cameo fans would like to see more than a Peter and Mary Jane who have officially been reunited, even if off-screen.