Who are Peter Parker’s real parents in the comics world?
This scene in Civil War
Peter Parker’s parents
It made us wonder if MCU versions of Peter Parker’s parents weren’t actually his parents. The way Tony and May act in that scene suggests there’s a history, and we wonder if Peter was actually May’s kid from a past fling with Tony and her married sister just adopted him to save scandal or some other reason. It would explain Tony’s paternal attitude towards Peter more.
They do nothing with the two of them, so I guess they do not. But it’s an interesting hypothetical.
In the MCU, the story of Peter Parker’s parents and Uncle Ben is irrelevant to Peter Parker’s story. We think this is part of the whole not doing an origin story thing (or rather, the whole trilogy being an origin story of sorts – not for Spiderman’s powers but of Peter Parker as a hero). We don’t see the infamous radioactive spider bite either. Things about Peter’s background are mentioned briefly in passing (like May saying, ‘since Ben died… or Ned asking about the spider bite), but it’s primarily assumed that even non-comic fans are aware of the main beats of Peter’s background, so it does not bother to revisit them like they do every single time a new Batman movie comes out.
We first meet Peter very young. Like 15, almost 16. If his parents died more than 10 to 15 years ago, it’s possible he barely remembers them now. Or has at least come to terms with it since. Maybe with the help of lots of kid psychiatric experts. Ditto Ben. Ben could even have died before Peter was born. This isn’t like Tony losing his parents at the age of 18. The significant, meaningful relationship in Peter’s life, apart from Stark and maybe Happy, in May. It’s her death he experiences as a teen that drives him to vengeance.
Finally… this is a trick writers often use, especially in big multi-writer projects. They keep many details vague to allow later writers to use them without too many restrictions. Spiderman 4 could touch on the fates of the Parkers. Having lost all his family, maybe Peter looks to see what happened to his parents. Maybe there’s a weird note on his file about them that Ms Marvel (who you recall has been merrily abusing data protection laws with SHIELD data left, correct, and centre) points out to him when she tries to recruit Spiderman to her New Avengers team.
OK… there’s a slight problem with Peter’s name no longer being in those records… but it’s still possible he may decide to go looking, or it may come looking for him. However, we want a scene similar to Ms. Marvel meeting Spider-Man that we see in the comics…
Of course, the writers could also decide we had enough of the Parkers in the Garfield films to avoid it.
