Everyone loves to hate on Mary Jane Watson. If you spend five minutes on a Marvel subreddit or a YouTube comment section, you’ll see the same complaints. She’s "toxic." She’s a "professional damsel." She’s the reason Peter Parker can't have nice things.
But honestly? Mary Jane Spider-Man 3 is a lot more complicated than the memes suggest.
By the time the third movie rolled around in 2007, Kirsten Dunst was playing a character who was basically a walking open wound. We see Peter getting the key to the city and a parade in his honor, but MJ is literally losing everything. Her Broadway career is dead. She’s waitressing at a jazz club. Her boyfriend is so high on his own Spider-Man supply that he isn’t even listening when she tries to tell him she’s drowning.
If you look at the trilogy as a whole, this movie is the breaking point. It’s messy. It’s painful. And yeah, it’s kinda realistic for two 21-year-olds who have no idea how to handle trauma.
The Downward Spiral of MJ’s Career
In the first two movies, Mary Jane is striving. She wants to be an actress to escape her abusive home life. By the start of the third film, she’s made it. She’s singing on Broadway!
Then, the reviews hit.
The critics aren't just mean; they're brutal. She gets fired. This isn't just a "bad day at work." For MJ, acting was her ticket out of the cycle of poverty and abuse she grew up with. When that dream dies, she feels like she’s back in her father’s house—unimportant and invisible.
Meanwhile, Peter is basking in the glow of being New York’s hero. He’s becoming arrogant. He thinks he can solve MJ’s problems with "words of encouragement" that sound like they came off a cheap motivational poster.
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He doesn't listen. He just fixes. And you can't "fix" a shattered dream with a quick quip while you're swinging through Manhattan.
Why the Gwen Stacy Kiss Was the Last Straw
Let’s talk about the festival.
Peter, as Spider-Man, does the upside-down kiss with Gwen Stacy. You know, the kiss. The one he and MJ shared in the rain three years prior. To Peter, it’s just showmanship. To MJ, it’s a total betrayal of their most intimate moment.
Is she being "jealous"? Maybe. But imagine your partner reenacting your most special romantic memory with a coworker in front of thousands of people. You’d probably be pretty pissed too.
The communication breakdown here is massive. MJ is struggling with:
- Imposter Syndrome: She feels like a failure because of her Broadway firing.
- Emotional Neglect: Her partner is physically there but emotionally miles away.
- A Lack of Agency: She’s constantly the one being saved, never the one doing the saving.
The Harry Osborn Entanglement
A lot of people point to MJ kissing Harry as the moment she became "the villain."
It was a mistake. She knows it’s a mistake the second it happens. But look at why it happened. Harry was the only person actually listening to her. He was there when she was crying about her career. He made her feel seen when Peter was busy being a celebrity.
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Then, Harry gets his memory back and decides to use MJ as a weapon. He blackmails her. He tells her he’ll kill Peter unless she breaks up with him and tells him she’s in love with someone else.
Why didn't she just tell Peter?
This is a classic "movie logic" gripe. "She knows he's Spider-Man! He can handle Harry!"
Sure, we know that. But MJ has spent three movies watching the people she loves get hurt because of Peter’s secret. She’s terrified. She isn't a superhero; she's a girl from a broken home who is trying to prevent a murder. She makes the wrong choice because she's scared. It’s human.
The Symbiote and the Jazz Club Incident
When the black suit takes over Peter, things go from bad to "oh no."
The jazz club scene is one of the cringiest moments in cinema history, but for MJ, it’s horrifying. Peter brings Gwen to her workplace specifically to humiliate her. He dances like a maniac, makes a scene, and then—in a moment people often forget—he accidentally hits her.
That is the absolute rock bottom for their relationship.
It’s the moment Peter realizes he’s lost himself. But for MJ, it’s a reminder of the violence she tried to escape as a kid. It’s why the ending of the movie feels so somber. There’s no big heroic kiss on a web. There’s just two people in a dim room, exhausted, trying to see if there’s anything left to save.
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Was MJ a "Damsel in Distress" Again?
Sam Raimi actually didn't want MJ to be kidnapped in the finale. He thought it was getting repetitive. But the studio (and the script's final version) pushed for it.
So, MJ ends up in a taxi cab suspended in a giant web. Again.
It’s a valid criticism. The writers often treated her more like a trophy to be won or a prize to be rescued than a character with her own story. Kirsten Dunst has even mentioned in interviews that the "blue screen" scenes were her least favorite part of the job. She wanted to do the character work, not just scream from a scaffolding.
Moving Beyond the Hate
Despite the flaws in the writing, MJ is the emotional anchor of the trilogy. Without her, Peter has nothing to fight for. She represents the "normal life" he can never quite have.
In Spider-Man: No Way Home, we finally get an update. Tobey Maguire’s Peter mentions that they "made it work." It took a long time, but they figured it out.
That tells us that the mess we saw in Mary Jane Spider-Man 3 wasn't the end of their story. It was the "ugly middle" that every long-term relationship goes through—just with more supervillains and falling cranes.
How to Re-evaluate MJ in Your Next Rewatch
If you’re planning to watch the Raimi trilogy again, try to look at it through her eyes instead of Peter’s.
- Watch her reactions in the background: MJ’s face during the "Spider-Man Day" ceremony says everything about her mental state.
- Acknowledge the trauma: Remember that she is dealing with the aftermath of an abusive father and a failed career simultaneously.
- Notice the lack of support: Count how many times Peter actually asks her "How are you?" without making it about himself.
- Look for the growth: By the end, she is the one who initiates the reconciliation, showing a level of maturity that Peter is only just starting to grasp.
Next time you see a meme about MJ being "the worst," remember that she was a 21-year-old girl trying to survive in a world where her boyfriend was a god and her best friend was a ghost. She did the best she could with the hand she was dealt.