Spider-Man: No Way Home is finally here and with it comes something of an ending to the current trilogy, and perhaps also a brand new beginning for both the wall-crawler and Peter Parker. So what does the future hold for our current Spider-Man? Probably not a sex scene, at least not if Tom Holland and Zendaya have anything to say about it.
In the last MCU movie prior to No Way Home, Chloe Zhao’s Eternals, we got to see the most intimate scene between two characters in the entire Marvel franchise, a moment where, while nothing graphic was on the screen, they were clearly having sex. Yahoo! asked Tom Holland and Zendaya if we might ever see a sex scene between Peter and MJ in a future film, but they don’t really see that happening. Holland was unequivocal in his belief that would be a bad idea, saying…
I don't think it's appropriate for the Spider-Man franchise. We are still very much young kids. Should there be a future for this character maybe one day we will explore that. But at the moment, this is a film about celebrating friendships and young love. … No one wants to see Peter Parker having sex! That would be horrible.
While the actors who have played Peter Parker on the big screen have always been older, the character has usually been portrayed as a young man, as a student in high school or college. It’s said specifically in Spider-Man: No Way Home that Peter Parker is 17-years-old, and while that’s certainly not too young to realistically believe these characters could have sex, it’s still potentially… complicated.
But part of the issue, regardless of the character’s age, is also the relationship that audiences have with characters like Peter Parker. We can see a couple of the Eternals having sex and likely not think anything of it. Most of the audience watching the movie has literally never seen these characters before. But between movies and comic books audiences have had a relationship with Peter Parker, perhaps for decades. As Zendaya says, the way we tend to see Peter would not be conducive to seeing him have sex. As she puts it…
Peter Parker is like a little brother.
Many of us were kids when we first met Peter Parker, and then we probably saw ourselves in him. But then as we began to age, and he did not, we probably did start to see him as a little brother. And eventually your little brother has sex, but nobody wants to really think about that fact.
Eventually, if this Spider-Man franchise does continue, and there’s every reason to believe it will, Peter Parker will grow up and become a young adult. At that point, perhaps we’ll reach a point where it will be acknowledged that he’s having sex, but that doesn't mean we’ll see it on the screen. Spider-Man has always been a hero for younger audiences, and it seems unlikely Marvel would want to change that by making his life more mature.
