Andrew Garfield has not abandoned an idea he floated more than a decade ago: Spider-Man does not have to fit one identity and can be gay. The former Peter Parker recently returned to that conversation and made his position clear: anyone should be able to see themselves beneath the famous red-and-blue mask.
Andrew Garfield still believes Spider-Man could be gay
Andrew Garfield revisited his 2013 comments during an interview with Entertainment Weekly ahead of his upcoming historical drama The Uprising. Back then, he challenged the idea that Peter Parker could only pursue women, asking why the character “can’t be gay” or “be into boys.” Garfield now calls that stance an “exercise in rebellion” but says his underlying belief remains unchanged.
For Garfield, Spider-Man’s appeal actually strengthens the argument. He described the character as someone audiences can project themselves onto without being limited by “skin color,” “gender” or “sexuality.”
Garfield later took the idea in an even more unexpected direction. During a 2013 discussion, he joked about reimagining Mary Jane Watson as a male character and wondered why Peter Parker couldn’t also be written as someone questioning his sexuality.
“What if MJ is a dude? Why can’t we discover that Peter is exploring his sexuality?” he wondered. Garfield also named Michael B. Jordan as someone he would have loved to see take on such an interpretation, praising the actor’s charisma and talent.
Marvel has since shown that Spider-Man’s identity can stretch beyond Peter Parker. In 2022, the company introduced Web-Weaver, a gay Spider-Man named Cooper Coen, in Edge of the Spider-Verse #5. The character gains spider abilities and develops into a capable superhero after starting out as a fashion student.
Spider-Man’s cinematic history has yet to take that particular swing. Across the live-action films, Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland have all portrayed versions of Peter Parker whose romantic stories centered on women.
Meanwhile, Sony’s animated Spider-Verse franchise has blown the doors wide open by introducing audiences to multiple incarnations of the web-slinger. That multiverse approach has already proved that Peter Parker doesn’t have to look or behave exactly the same in every universe.
