The Spider-Man Arc That’s Too Unhinged For The MCU

For a character that’s been around since the ‘50s, Spider-Man has a pretty complicated history. It’s also one where Peter continuously suffers, and very few good things in his life stay good. His parents come back? Turns out they’re actually androids. MJ and Peter are in a happy relationship? Mephisto swoops in and forces them to divorce. There was even a decade or so of storylines where Peter was harassed by multiple clones of him just because Peter’s biology teacher was a psychopath.

All of those are terrible story arcs, but there’s one infamous arc that stands above them all, so bad that it was retconned out of continuity. Sure, Peter has suffered a lot, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) keeps the series tradition alive of making Peter’s life miserable, but nothing compares to the suffering he experienced in ‘Sins Past,’ an arc so wild, so unhinged, so icky that we will, thankfully, never see it in the MCU or any Marvel continuity, ever again.

What Is ‘Spider-Man: Sins Past’ About?

Released over the course of six issues in 2004, ‘Sins Past’ starts with an intriguing premise. Twin assassins hunt Peter, but after he rips the mask off one of them, he discovers that one killer is seemingly Gwen Stacy, his college love interest who was killed by the Green Goblin/Norman Osborn.

As far as premises are concerned, it’s definitely eyebrow-raising, but it is at least an interesting hook for a story. Gwen Stacy is one of Peter’s most iconic supporting characters, and her death served as one of the most important moments in the character’s history, so much so that her death became one of the most important parts of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014). Watching her seemingly return from the dead raises questions, but so far nothing unusual for a superhero comic.

But things get more complex as Peter receives a long-lost letter from Gwen telling him about a mistake she made that she was going to tell Peter before she was killed. Not only that, but the Gwen look-alike isn’t actually Gwen Stacy, but rather her daughter, Sarah, and the other assassin is her twin brother Gabriel, both of whom claim that Peter is their father, which Peter is taken aback by since he and Gwen were never intimate. So what’s actually going on here? You’ll regret asking.

What Makes ‘Spider-Man: Sins Past’ Such a Controversial Story

The first few issues of ‘Sins Past’ build up the mystery as to what’s going on with these two assassins and how they connect to Peter and Gwen’s past. While fans at the time thought this could be a continuation of the Clone Saga and that these were just clones sent to torment Peter, the truth was somehow even worse.

It’s eventually revealed that Gwen was indeed the mother of Sarah and Gabriel, but that Peter, obviously, was not the father. He even did a DNA test to prove it. So who was? Norman Osborn, of course! See, while Gwen was dating Peter, she went to see Norman while he was in Europe. While there, the two had a one-night stand, and Gwen got pregnant with twins. Because of that, Gwen threatened to reveal to the press that she had the illegitimate children of Norman Osborn, and that’s what compelled him to kill her on the bridge in The Amazing Spider-Man #121. It wasn’t really to torment Peter Parker for becoming Spider-Man, but actually because he didn’t want bad PR!

Now you would think that it couldn’t get worse, but somehow, it does! Apparently, Gwen told Mary Jane about this, and she just kept it a secret from Peter for years because she promised Gwen not to tell him. So all that agony that Peter endured believing that he was responsible for Gwen’s death? MJ could have told him that it wasn’t true, but she didn’t. And let’s not even get into Norman. Sure, Norman definitely seems like the kind of guy that would impregnate someone less than half his age and who’s best friends with his son, but thanks to Norman’s physiology, Sarah and Gabriel were born with Goblin DNA, which caused them to age super fast. So he adopted them, trained them to be assassins, and convinced them that Peter was a deadbeat dad who killed their mom, hence their desire to kill him.

Why Will We Never See ‘Sins Past’ in the MCU

Needless to say, people hated ‘Sins Past.’ It was reviled upon release, and it didn’t take long for it to be quickly ignored, and it’s not hard to see why.

First, having Gwen Stacy become the mother of twins after a one-night stand with Norman Osborn of all people is one of the textbook definitions of character assassination. It’s hard to decide what’s worse: Gwen cheating on Peter, Gwen being with Norman freaking Osborn, or Gwen giving birth to twins and just not telling anyone about it. Gwen was never meant to be this morally complicated figure, just a nice girl who was tragically killed in an effort to punish Peter. MJ was retroactively made into a liar who did nothing to absolve Peter’s guilt. Norman having an affair with Gwen is all kinds of ew, made even worse by an artist’s rendering of his face in the middle of doing the deed, and Peter’s torment is just cartoonishly over-the-top. 

Could ‘Sins Past’ appear in the MCU? No chance. First, outside of Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin popping in from Spider-Man (2002) during Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), there’s no Green Goblin in the MCU, and for that matter, no Gwen Stacy. If Kevin Feige had the demented idea of adapting ‘Sins Past,’ then both characters would have to be introduced, and it would take at least two films to fully establish it. Also, it’s just gross! No one wants to see Gwen Stacy and the Green Goblin give birth to super assassins just to torment Spider-Man. It’s one of those ideas that just sounds awful on paper and is so unhinged and weird that it will never appear in the MCU ever.