Calling All Gaymers – Spider-Man 2 Features More LGBTQIA+ Love For The Discerning Web-Slinging Fans
Comic book companies and studios are far from shy when it comes to showing their solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community. Marvel features dozens of queer characters such as X-Men’s IceMan, gay couple Hulkling and Wiccan, Marvel’s first openly gay hero Northstar and even a web-slinging Spider-Man variation named Web-Weaver.
The release of the video game Spider-Man 2 demonstrates this eagerness for LGBTQIA+ diversity in the superhero sphere with inclusions of queer-friendly settings, characters and side-quests, reports Instinct.
A gay Spider-Man will go so hard
Cinematically, there hasn’t been a gay Spider-Man protagonist yet. But Spider-Man is an interesting character who traverses the multiverse with countless versions of themselves from different timelines and universes. Some are older, some younger, some are a different person completely, some are women and there are some that aren’t even human (Spider-Ham).
With those endless possibilities in play, it’s highly likely that seeing a queer Spider-Man protagonist will happen for the franchise. In the interim, we have the comics and the video games to supply the LGBTQIA+ love.
With the release of Spider-Man 2 on October 20, eager gamers noticed that there is plentiful queer-friendly design shown within. Aside from LGBTQIA+ street art and Pride flags being designed into the backgrounds, there are a slew of characters who identify under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella including the bisexual Black Cat and a non-binary scientist at the Emily-May Foundation.
Chief among the queer inclusion is the side-quest that players engage in where they are instructed to carry out tasks to help two gay characters fall in love. As Spider-Man, players help a queer teenager ask his boyfriend out to Homecoming.
Naturally, not everyone playing is an avid “gaymer” or ally, and there has been some negative reaction to the alleged “wokeness” of Spider-Man 2. But as one user on X puts it: “You guys love seeing someone swing around in a whole spandex costume and can’t handle the gayness? fucking cowards.”
