‘This Peter deserves all the bullying on Earth’: Marvel’s new Spider-Man actor outs himself as the reverse-Tom Holland with anti-‘woke’ comments

Stan Lee memorably once said that the “greatest thing about Spider-Man is that anyone could be under the costume.” He also stressed that Marvel’s stories “have room for everyone, regardless of their race, gender or color of their skin… The only things we don’t have room for are hatred, intolerance, and bigotry.” This is all to say that Spider-Man is one of the “wokest” of all pop culture heroes, which is perhaps why some comments from Marvel’s latest Spidey star have caused such backlash.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man voice actor Hudson Thames — who is stepping into the shoes of Tom Holland for this MCU-adjacent animated series — managed to singlehandedly change the tide of goodwill towards the new show with one far too candid sentence. In an interview, Thames threatened to flush his reputation down the river when he itted that he once feared the series would be “annoying and woke” due to its diverse cast of characters.

When asked if he was excited to be part of a fresh take on Spider-Man, which paired Peter with the likes of Nico Minoru (an Asian-American out lesbian), Lonnie Lincoln (an African-American teen who deals with everyday racism in the show), and Norman Osborn (here portrayed as Black, voiced by Colman Domingo), Thames had something shocking to say.

“I thought it was awesome. I mean, my biggest fear was that it was gonna be annoying and woke, and it wasn’t, and I was like, ‘Yes, this is great, it’s so well written,’ like it feels real,” the 30-year-old actor said. “I’m the oldest of five boys, so I feel like I kind of know what’s happening in their lives and in high school, and it felt like it was doing that justice.”

Needless to say, Spider-Man fans haven’t been this furious since Gwen Stacy died. Given that Thames’ concerns over how “woke” his show would clash with virtually everything the wallcrawler has stood for 60 years, the fandom is now treating him with all the vitriol of J. Jonah Jameson on a bad day.

The darkly comic memes are also swinging in. Fans seem to think that this friendly neighborhood Spider-Man wouldn’t necessarily be friendly to the whole neighborhood.

Unfortunately for Thames, there’s now a growing population wishing for Marvel to replace him on future seasons — the series is already renewed through season 3. The top picks are long-term favorite Spidey voice actors Yuri Lowenthal (the Insomniac games) and Josh Keaton (Spectacular Spider-Man).

For once, fans are eager to see a Spider-Man actor get what you might call the Andrew Garfield treatment.

I guess we’ve seen every other kind of Spider-Man out there in the multiverse already…

Thames’ comments might have done their best to tank the fans’ interest in this series, but one fan had a more fair-minded take on this here controversy, encouraging others to to the creatives who worked hard on this show and who have absolutely nothing to do with Thames running off his mouth.

Showrunner Jeff Trammell, for instance, had a much more positive interpretation of the show’s increased diversity, stressing that Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is “flush with representation that accurately portrays the many different cultures in one of the biggest cities on Earth.” Not “annoying and woke,” then, but simply an honest and authentic depiction of both New York and the world of Spider-Man. In the words of Stan Lee, ’nuff said.