Sony have come very close to featuring Black Cat in their various Spider-Man movies over the years, but so far, they’ve never actually managed to keep a series alive long enough to make it happen.
Ever since first appearing in 1979, Felicia Hardy’s costumed alter ego has become a frequent ally and regular enemy of the friendly neighborhood superhero, not to mention an occasional love interest. Anne Hathaway was cast in the role when Sam Raimi was developing Spider-Man 4 before he ended up walking away from the project entirely, while Rogue One‘s Academy Award nominated star Felicity Jones played the character in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 with the intention of establishing her as Black Cat in future installments, until Sony’s second series also met a premature end.
A feature-length Silver & Black was in development at one stage as well with The Old Guard‘s Gina Prince-Blythewood attached to direct, but the last we heard, it was being refitted as a TV show. However, tipster Mikey Sutton is now claiming that Felicia could be set for her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in the wall-crawler’s fourth solo outing, which is expected to form the beginning of another trilogy that follows Tom Holland’s Peter Parker during his college years.
According to Sutton, the MCU’s Black Cat will stick close to the personality template set by her comic book counterpart, with student Felicia Hardy showing absolutely no interest in geeky science enthusiast Peter, but she’ll be completely smitten with Spider-Man. And while it remains to be seen how accurate this intel is, not only does the dynamic have a well established precedent and history in the pages of Marvel Comics, but it also presents exactly the sort of romantic subplot we’ve yet to see in any of the web-slinging blockbusters so far.