No Way Home Completes Marvel's Unforgivable Aunt May Insult (SPOILERS)

https://screenrant.com/spiderman-no-way-home-aunt-may-death-insult/

Since her debut, the MCU’s Aunt May has been a very passive figure. Though Spider-Man: Homecoming set up the potential for that to change, with her discovering Peter’s secret identity, next to nothing came of it. It had the potential to offer a fresh (more open) dynamic between Peter and May. Ultimately, however, the opportunity was squandered — with there being offered little more than a “Peter-Tingle” quip and Aunt May packing his suit. Signs of concern were few and far between (even after the tragedy of The Blip), there were no heartfelt speeches, and, generally, little sense of a lived existence or interiority outside of some brief allusions to her charity work.

Rosemary Harris’ version was only a supporting presence in the Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man movies. And yet she was gifted a much more deeply-rooted characterization. She told stories from her past. There was a sense of a life being lived and struggles being faced even when Peter wasn’t around. Viewers got to see her reckon with revelations and her own grief. She even got in on the action from the very beginning — attacked by both Green Goblin in Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina) in Spider-Man 2. Even Sally Field’s version offered a taste of that, with some secrets of her own, albeit equally muted in comparison.

The MCU’s interpretation of Aunt May went even further in the wrong direction. For the most part, her main function in Spider-Man: Homecoming was to fuel jokes regarding how attractive she was to everybody who encountered her. Though the Spider-Man: Far From Home (which also set up Secret Invasion) featured more of her altruism, the bulk of her story amounted to being the object of Happy Hogan’s (Jon Favreau) affections. In fact, he got a lot more screen time and more to do than Aunt May did. Essentially, he was filling an Uncle Ben-shaped void and serving a function that Aunt May could have actually been blessed with.

While it made sense that Marvel Studios didn’t want to retread the famous origin story, that didn’t mean it had to be erased altogether. The fact it didn’t seem to factor at all into Aunt May’s story diminished her sense of an inner life all the more. To have Aunt May defined by grief would have been a mistake. Still, even having it as a mere facet would have afforded her a more established personal history within the MCU Spider-Man movies. And that would have been better than reducing her simply to “hot and/or cool aunt” and Happy Hogan’s would-be girlfriend. As it stood, there was a lot of tell (like Peter saying how she would react to things) and no show. That was the case for two whole movies, and when the MCU finally began to rectify that mistake, they rapidly cut it short by effectively fridging her. In short, Aunt May’s death insultingly had more impact on the characters than her life was allowed to.