Parallel Spider-Men: Peter, Spidey, and the Balance Between

I grew up with Tobey and honestly I didn’t see Andrew as spider-man, but it took a while. It took a very long time, last week I saw every live action Spidey movie ever made, and I’ve gotta say Andrew Garfield really is the best Spider-Man, and his Peter Parker although not comic accurate is just colourful as hell, so punk, he was so rebel coded he went opposite of what Peter was supposed to be, you could really see Spidey bleeding through Peter, cause after he acquired his powers he also became this super confident person finally unleashing his quippy outgoing charismatic alter ego, it’s almost like he deleted his primary Peter Parker personality. He’s just Spider Man the whole time. So best Spider-Man of all time I’ve come to conclude. 

Tobey was awesome too, he was the first guy to ever play our beloved Webhead, there’d be no live action Marvel super hero movies if not for Tobey. He is Peter Parker, and when he wears his suit he’s still Peter Parker with the moves of a Human Spider. But he’s almost bipolar in a way that he’s got his good side and his dark side, and Raimi gave us peaks into this in the first two movies, and in the third one we got a chance to see him completely embrace this dark alter ego, thanks to the Venom Symbiote. The important thing here is how Peter differentiates between what is right and wrong and even when he unintentionally does wrong he tries making right and learning from the wrongs and being better. So Tobey’s Peter Parker is a very relatable character at least for me. 

Tom Holland found balance, He’s Peter Parker and he’s Spider-Man. Somehow he’s found the proper balance, and this balance has brought me to infer that he is the best Peter Parker/Spider-Man. I also know exactly how he found balance and I’m coming to that. It finally makes sense why there ever had to be three different live action portrayals of Spider-Man. Like if I was me, which I am and if other mes exist in parallel universes, I’d want them to be me and more, me and less, not me but me, very me but differently. And I have a whole theory as to how all these Spider-Men literally became who they ultimately had to become. 

The Web Fluid and the Web Shooters are a huge influencing factor, in my opinion. I’ve given a lot of thought about this, the web shooters are literally why each of the three spider men are who they are. Tobey never had to manufacture web, he already organically produced them, thus preventing him from creating what could have been his two  greatest inventions. 

Andrew from the other universe was bitten by a spider that failed to give him the ability to produce his own web, so what does god do, or in other words the writers at marvel, they enable Peter Parker to create his two greatest inventions. He had to become Spider-Man one way or another as Spider-Man does all a spider can, and the only way for this Peter Parker to manifest into Spiderman was to create what he lacked organically. This organic lack, enabled him to use his super brain to create what was needed to complete him thus giving him an enormous ego boost enabling him to delete his primary Peter Parker personality, completely morphing and evolving into his Spider-Man one. This is why he’s the best Spider-Man, he’s a self made Spidey.

Tobey didn’t have to do this, even though he could have as he possesses the brain of Peter Parker, his spider gave him the gift of organic web. He never experienced any ego boost that he’d have derived if otherwise had happened, and even though acquiring spider powers was as big as an ego boost in itself, he was still Peter Parker operating as Spider-Man because he believed all his abilities came from a spider and by doing so he stayed a humble Spider-Man, preserving his humility.

Now Tom never had to delete his Peter personality and upgrade to a spider one. He knows he’s a genius because he invented his web fluid and his web shooters, but associating with Tony Stark humbled him, enabling him to find balance between his Peter Parker and Spider Man personalities. He knew he wasn’t the only special person in his reality but he also knew he was indeed special, this led to balance. If not for Tony Stark, Tom’s Spider-Man wouldn't have found the proper balance.

Maybe Spider-Man isn’t one person. Maybe he’s a spectrum. In the end, maybe Spider-Man was never meant to be just one thing. Maybe he was always meant to exist in fragments—Peter, Spidey, and that space in between. Three different versions, all valid, all complete in their own way. And honestly, that’s why it works. Because if there are versions of me out there—some more confident, some more grounded, some perfectly balanced—I wouldn’t want them to all be the same. I’d want them to be me, but in different ways.