Is Gwen Stacy South African? Ethnicity Explained

Gwen Stacy is one of the most known characters associated with Spider-Man ever created. We know that the death of Uncle Ben was the trigger that inspired Peter Parker to devote his life to crimefighting as a Web crawler. But also, apart from Uncle Ben’s, the death of Gwen Stacy is the second death that deeply affected Spider-Man. The character of Gwen Stacy was adapted twice in live-action, and the ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise featured an alternate version of Gwen Stacy that became Spider-Woman. When the ‘Spider-Verse’ Gwen first met the protagonist, Miles Morales, she told him she was South African. But is she really? Let’s find out.

In 2018’s ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,’ when Gwen meets Miles Morales, she doesn’t want to reveal her true identity, so in all quick thinking, she says that she’s from South Africa and that she doesn’t have an accent because she was raised in New York. However, based on what we know from the source material, Gwen was actually born on Earth-65 in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in central Queens, New York, USA. In Marvel Comics, Gwen Stacy is always depicted as American, and there are no indications that she or anyone from her family is from South Africa.

Apart from the original Gwen Stacy from Marvel Comics’ mainstream universe, aka Earth-616, Gwen Stacy from Earth-65 is arguably one of the most popular variants of the character since she was first introduced during the 2014-15 ‘Spider-Verse’ event in the comics, especially after she was adapted into the ‘Spider-Verse’ animated franchise in 2018. We recently watched her in the sequel, ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,’ and apart from the upcoming threequel, there’s also a ‘Spider-Woman’ spin-off movie in development.

Why did Gwen say she was South African to Miles?

Sony’s animated ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise used the concept of the Multiverse as no one did before to create one of the most acclaimed superhero movies in recent history. And although the Multiverse is at the center of its premise, the movie actually starts rather grounded, as we meet our protagonist Miles Morales as he’s preparing to go to prep school. Many fans praised how this franchise took the story to the Multiverse level but didn’t forget to make it more about the characters as well.

At the school, Miles meets the mysterious blonde girl with whom he gets into an awkward conversation. Gwen starts to tell him her real name, but she quickly changes it to “Gwanda.”

Fun fact, Gwanda is the name of the city in Zimbabwe, the country that borders South Africa. Trying to keep her real identity a secret, Gwen tells him that she’s from South Africa, only that she doesn’t have an accent because she was raised here, in New York. During that whole conversation, Miles’ powers of sticky fingers go horribly wrong, which leaves Gwen without some hair on the right side of her head.

That was at the beginning when the movie depicted Gwen as some regular schoolgirl, but the interesting stuff about her starts happening about an hour into the movie when she’s revealed as Spider-Woman from another dimension. She teams up with Miles, Peter B. Parker/Spider-Man from Earth-616, and other Spider-variants that were accidentally transported to Miles’ universe.

The Spider-team used Kingpin’s collider to send the guests back to their respective homes, and Miles later defeated Kingpin and destroyed the collider to save New York.

This year’s sequel, ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,’ brought Miles and Gwen back. After she returned to her own Earth, during the fight against some other dimension’s Vulture, she encountered Miguel O’Hara, aka Spider-Man 2099, who gave her a Dimensional Travel Watch, which allowed her to travel between parallel universes freely and without glitching while she’s outside of her own dimension.

‘Across the Spider-Verse’ depicted more backstory of Gwen’s character, making her the franchise’s second protagonist, along with Miles. The fans familiar with the source material already know Gwen’s backstory in detail, and the movie did a really good job adapting her story for the big screen.

As we saw in the movie, Earth-65’s Peter Parker experimented on himself to become the Lizard, after which he started mindlessly rampaging. Gwen arrived to stop him, but the fight ended with Peter’s death. Since there was no evidence of Peter’s transformation, Gwen was blamed for his death, and her father, not knowing who Spider-Woman really was, started a hunt for her.

That’s Gwen’s canon event, so to speak, and it remains to be seen how her story will continue in ‘Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse’ and her own spin-off movie, which is also in development.

After being introduced in the source material, Spider-Gwen quickly became a prominent character with her own title, and it looks like history is repeating itself with animated movies. We don’t know what her spin-off will be about, but we can presume it will adapt one of her standalone comic book series storylines. There are plenty of ideas, from Gwen becoming Gwenom to her teaming up with other Spider-Women from across the Multiverse.

Hailee Steinfeld, who also portrays the live-action Kate Bishop in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is voice acting Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman in two previous ‘Spider-Verse’ movies, and she’s set to return in the upcoming prequel and the spin-off movie.

How do you like Spider-Gwen in the ‘Spider-Verse’ franchise? Is she among your favorite characters? Are you excited to see her again in future projects? Let us know in the comments.

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