Sony’s Madame Web might’ve released in theaters on Valentine’s week, but Marvel Studios still went and stole the spotlight thanks to a triple whammy of revelations — the Fantastic Four cast and first-look trailers for both Deadpool & Wolverine and X-Men ’97. The Spider-Man-less Spider-Man spinoff movie might be on the outside looking in at all the fun Marvel’s having, but there is one small way it can begin to make up for all the crimes against cinema it commits.
Specifically, Madame Web bringing such an obscure character in Spidey lore back into people’s minds may just be the impetus Marvel needs to get going on what would surely be its next smash-hit animated series destined to leave the fandom swooning. Especially after X-Men ’97 came out the gate by sneaking in a reference to such a show in its trailer. Are you ready, webheads, for a Spider-Man: The Animated Series revival?
X-Men ’97 Easter egg reminds us it’s part of a shared universe
There’s so much to love about the X-Men ’97 trailer, from Gambit charging up Wolverine’s claws to Cyclops getting to declare the “To me, my X-Men!” battle cry. One of the more easily missed delights of the promo, though, is the glimpse at a copy of The Daily Bugle, which features references to Spider-Man and Eddie Brock. The Easter egg serves as a reminder that X-Men: The Animated Series shared a continuity with Spider-Man: The Animated Series, thanks to crossovers between the two concurrently running shows.
What this references does is to establish that S:TAS is still part of its canon and that the show now exists in the MCU multiverse too. This minor crossover is especially meaningful in the wake of Spider-Man 1994 getting snubbed by Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. That variant failing to appear in the animated sequel was particularly egregious as it was S:TAS that created the concept of the Spider-Verse in the first place. And the character at the center of it? One Cassandra Webb…
Madame Web was a key character in Spider-Man: The Animated Series
In a stroke of cosmic coincidence that can only be a product of the Web of Life and Destiny, Madame Web hit theaters the same week the X-Men ’97 trailer references Spidey ’94. While the Dakota Johnson movie marks the first time the heroine has appeared in live-action, the character’s first major screen adaptation came in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, as she played a major role in the series from seasons 3-5.
Voiced by none other than Joan Lee, the wife of Stan Lee, Madame Web was depicted as a multiversal being with powers on par with the Beyonder. She tested Spider-Men from across the multiverse to see which were tough enough to stop Spider-Carnage — a souped-up, super-dangerous variant of Carnage — from destroying reality.
In the truly bizarre S:TAS series finale, Peter Parker Prime succeeds in defeating Spider-Carnage and so Webb rewards him by taking him to meet the actual Stan Lee in another (i.e. our) universe before promising to help him find his missing girlfriend, Mary Jane. Sadly, this cliffhanger was never followed up on, as the sequel series Spider-Man Unlimited was shaky with its continuity. 30 years later, then, we’re still waiting to find out if Peter ever rescued MJ.
Here’s where X-Men ’97 comes in, though. Going by that Bugle paper, Peter apparently made his way back to his universe, as did Eddie Brock, so we can assume that he found Mary Jane and resumed his duties as a friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. So how about bringing what happens next to life, Disney?
Could Spider-Man ’98 really happen?
In the wake of the X-Men ’97 trailer’s release, a piece of fan art went viral imagining a follow-up series called Spider-Man ’98. Just like the X-Men show, this would presumably pick up right where S:TAS left off, as it concluded after five seasons’ worth of 65 episodes in 1998. As the poster reminds us, the show featured a range of characters who are more popular than ever these days, from Kingpin to Venom to Doctor Octopus, so the rewards of making such a revival are obvious.
But could this dream become a reality? Well, ’90s fans are still hardly believing X-Men ’97 is a real thing, so who knows? However, it’s worth mentioning that Marvel is already developing a different Spidey series called Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, based on a variant of Tom Holland’s wallcrawler. Would they be afraid to make a ’90s Spidey show as well in case it confused viewers? Not necessarily, as we’re living in a world where two trailers featuring two different X-Men universes are released in the same week!
With X-Men ’97 pioneering Marvel Studios’ new Marvel Animation banner, the latest MCU subdivision had better be put to good use. And what better way to start than to showing Madame Web how it’s done?
