Zendaya Looks like Spider-Woman

When Zendaya was announced as a "key role" in SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING, I wanted to see if I could guess which character she would be playing. Michelle Gonzales didn't sound right, although the first reports said that Zendaya would be playing a character named Michelle.


I narrowed my suspicions down to Spider-Woman for the reasons I'll give below, in no particular order:

Zendaya's Height = Spider-Woman's Height

This is kind of flimsy evidence on its own, but take a look at Jessica Drew's bio here. The character Jessica Drew is described as 5'10". Zendaya makes a tall Mary Jane Watson since she's also 5'10". Mary Jane Watson is 5'8".


You could say that Tom Holland is 2 inches shorter than Zendaya and Peter Parker according to canon. I'll give you that and move on to the next point.

Zendaya's Natural Hair Color = Spider-Woman's Hair Color

Much protest was made over Zendaya not being right to play Mary Jane Watson since MJW is an iconic redhead. Some people are saying that Zendaya could dye her hair, but I think that that misses the point for those of us who aren't coming from a racist point of view. Dyed red hair doesn't make an actress right to play Mary Jane, otherwise it would've worked for Shailene Woodley.


Some people aren't aware that the pictures of Zendaya on the set of SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING look like this:

Image copied from JustJaredJr.com ; I don't own the rights to this picture!

But some people are speculating that Zendaya gets a makeover in the film, at which point her hair might be dyed red, or Zendaya could wear a wig since she is known for playing with her look.


I think that's a lot of trouble to go to in making Zendaya an acceptable Mary Jane, considering that Laura Harrier gets to play a natural black Liz Allan with no "fixes". The fact that people are suggesting that Zendaya could dye her hair is proof that we all know deep down, Mary Jane isn't Mary Jane without her personality and red hair.

Zendaya's natural hair color is brown, as shown in the picture above. As far as I know, she has never dyed her real hair. Here's Jessica Drew drawn in Ultimate Spider-Woman below, compared to Zendaya on K.C. Undercover:

Image copied from Pinterest.com; I don't own the rights to this picture!

Image copied from Pinterest.com; I don't own the rights to this picture!

Spider-Woman is traditionally a white character (Jessica Drew), but I think that there's a good possibility that her origin story would be retconned if Zendaya was actually playing her.

In the next few posts, I'm going to talk about the name "Michelle", and why the Marvel Cinematic Universe could be giving us Spider-Woman. What do you think so far?


Sincerely,


A Comic Girl