Marvel's Spider-Gwen: Bryce Dallas Howard Discovers Gwen Stacy's Alter-Ego

Gwen Stacy is no longer just Peter Parker’s greatest heartbreak. In one of the many alternate realities of the Marvel Universe, Gwen Stacy becomes her own web-slinging crime fighter in the pages of Spider-Gwen.

At the press junket for the Blu-ray and DVD release of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Bryce Dallas Howard, who played Gwen Stacy in 2007’s Spider-Man 3, discovered her superhero identity for the first time.

When Inverse asked Howard if she was looking forward to Gwen Stacy’s appearance in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (voiced by Hailee Steinfeld) this December, Howard replied: “Dude, I didn’t even know!”

She continued: “That’s great. When a character is a beloved character and many different actors get to play that character, you get to see another aspect of the character come out.”

Howard also revealed that she was with Emma Stone when she learned she got the role of Gwen Stacy for Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man in 2012.

Famously, the former girlfriend of Spider-Man/Peter Parker who died at the hands of the Green Goblin, a new version of Gwen Stacy from an alternate universe debuted in 2014’s Spider-Verse from Dan Slott. She later starred in her own series, Spider-Gwen, from Jason Latour and illustrator Robbi Rodriguez.

Much like Peter Parker most people are familiar with, a radioactive spider bites Gwen Stacy, a Midtown High student and drummer for a punk band that gives Gwen superpowers. With her own costume, Gwen adopts the name “Spider-Woman” (though she’s also gone by “White Widow” and “Ghost Spider”).

“I was initially a little hesitant,” Latour told ComicsAlliance in 2014. “But in thinking it over … It was really clear that Gwen’s re-emergence in other media had already given her a new life, and that her death and the way it seemed to rub a lot of her newer fans raw was meaningful. It just seemed like there would be a lot of catharsis in Gwen as the hero, instead of the victim. Comics as a culture just seemed ready for it, maybe even owed it.”

At the junket, Howard tells Inverse that Spider-Gwen has her approval.

“What makes sense now is that Gwen Stacy, over ten years ago, people know her most for ‘The Death of Gwen Stacy.’ It was more about her death than who she was in her day to day life. When I was playing her, she was a crush of Spider-Man. And so for now to be taking on a life of her own and being able to hear more of her story, that’s really exciting.”

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD.