Zendaya to play this love interest in Spider-Man Homecoming

August 18, 2016August 18, 2016 Jeffrey Lyles 4 Comments Spider-Man, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Tom Holland, Zendaya

Zendaya is in fact playing who fans predicted all along

Zendaya was announced as a cast member of Spider-Man: Homecoming early on. And now we’re finally getting some news on which longtime character she’ll be playing. And hoo-boy. A certain demographic is going to be readying their pitchforks at this news.

The Wrap reports that Zendaya will be playing Mary Jane Watson. So Tom Holland’s Peter Parker will have his classic love interest in this reboot.

Right from the start Marvel Studios has not cared about conventional casting for the big screen interpretations of classic Marvel characters. That hasn’t set well with the small-brained demographic who wish other aspects of society were like the ‘good old days’ of the 60s as well. I love Marvel’s continued out of the box thinking here.

Homecoming is changing up several traditional roles. Tony Revolori is playing Flash Thompson, Laura Herrier is playing Liz Allan and Jacob Batalon is playing Ned Leeds. This actually makes a lot more sense considering Peter Parker wouldn’t be able to make it into the top notch prep schools and would be in a more ethnically diverse high school.

liz-allan flash thompson peter parker spider-man marvel comics — Credit: Marvel Comics

My only caveat is hopefully Zendaya is down to dye her hair red as that’s a trademark element of Mary Jane that shouldn’t be shelved. That’s far more Mary Jane’s defining trait than her race. But clearly Zendaya should start beefing up her spam folder for certain buzz words and having a heavy ban hammer working on Twitter.

Not that this is as essential, but I’d like for MJ to not be Peter’s best friend at least to start and be more the unapproachable hot girl that keeps Peter nervous. That’d help make this take on Peter/Spider-Man even more relatable.

As you might remember, Shailene Woodley was cast to play the role in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in the Andrew Garfield series. Kristen Dunst famously played MJ in the Sam Raimi trilogy. Given that Dunst is the measuring stick I don’t think Zendaya has as much to overcome as say Jared Leto in playing The Joker.