One of the smartest things Kevin Feige and his team did when rebooting Spider-Man and introducing him into the Marvel Cinematic Universe was leaving Uncle Ben out of it. After all, you’d have to travel pretty far to find someone who didn’t know the web-slinger’s origin story, and it would have eaten up valuable screen time to see Ben get mugged and gunned down in the street for a third time.
Besides, Tony Stark ultimately filled the role of Peter Parker’s mentor and father figure who had a huge impact on his life before meeting his end, and there’ve been several references made to Uncle Ben anyway to establish that his death had a profound impact on both Peter and Aunt May long before we first met them in Captain America: Civil War.
That being said, no self-respecting superhero franchise is complete without a relentless wave of tragedy plaguing the title character, with tipster Mikey Sutton now reporting that a future Spider-Man movie will kill off Aunt May around the same time her nephew heads to college, which Sutton hints could be as soon as December’s Far From Home.
Marisa Tomei’s spin on Spidey’s guardian has won her plenty of fans, and it’s been a far cry from the kindly old lady we’ve been used to seeing after Rosemary Harris and Sally Field filled the role in the first five Spider-Man outings. She’s also got a slow-burning subplot with Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan on the go, with the Iron Man director rumored to be returning for the MCU’s threequel very recently. As such, it could all end up tying together in tragic fashion.
