65% Of Fans Want This Character To Team Up With Spider-Man In The MCU

If you're a Marvel fan, then February 2015 was one of the greatest months of your life. That's when it was announced that Sony Pictures, which had long held the film rights to Spider-Man, had reached a deal with Marvel Studios to effectively share custody of the wall-crawler. Sony would continue to produce solo Spidey flicks which would be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while Marvel would be free to use ol' web-head in a number of team-up flicks, beginning with 2016's Captain America: Civil War.

While the deal has proven itself to be a no-brainer in the years since, it seemed like a small miracle back then. After producing two great early superhero films with 2002's Spider-Man and 2004's Spider-Man 2, Sony had continually run into walls trying to keep up with that success. 2007's Spider-Man 3, while it did well at the box office, was not well-received by the fandom, and a reboot film — titled The Amazing Spider-Man and released the same year Marvel Studios dropped The Avengers — struggled to find a purpose.

When that flick's 2014 sequel fizzled, the Sony-Marvel partnership was born, and ever since, fans have rejoiced in Tom Holland's wide-eyed, earnest portrayal of Peter Parker, and in the fact that Spidey finally gets to play in the big sandbox with all of his superpowered peers. Many of those fans, though, have wondered if the wall-crawler will ever get a true team-up movie. After all, he was the star of the iconic Marvel Team-Up comic series of the seventies and eighties, which paired him with pretty much every hero in the Marvel universe at some point or another. 

Looper decided to ask our readers: Who would you most like to see Spider-Man team up with in the MCU? Here's what you voted for.

We put this question to 251,000 fans from around the world, and an unbelievable 65 percent of those offered up the same response: Deadpool, the fourth wall-breaking Merc with a Mouth, who Kevin Feige says will be the only character from the Fox-produced X-Men series to be ported over, intact, to the MCU. Ryan Reynolds, the actor who inhabits the role, was among the first to take to Twitter to express his enthusiasm when Fox was absorbed by Marvel's parent company Disney in 2019 — and recently, it was announced that not only will Reynolds star in Deadpool 3 for Marvel Studios, but the flick will be the first (and perhaps only) entry into the MCU to carry an R rating, just like the first two entries.

Spidey and Deadpool have a well-documented and awesome partnership in the comics. The pair even had a shared title that ran for 50 issues beginning in 2016. Of course, it's easy to see a logistical issue or two that might present problems for such a team-up on the big screen — not the least of which being the fact that so far, Spidey's solo MCU outings have proven to be among the more family-friendly entries in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, while the Deadpool flicks are... well, the exact opposite of that. We submit, though, that it would be hilarious to see Reynolds' self-aware Deadpool mightily attempting to censor himself long enough to make it through an entire PG-13 rated feature, just for the privilege of going on an adventure with his best buddy from the comics, Spider-Man — while Holland's Peter Parker tries just as hard to figure out who this weirdo is, and why he wants to be friends so badly.

Next up, with 14 percent of the vote, our respondents named a superhero team which Spidey hasn't had occasion to cross paths with in the comics all too often: the X-Men, who will eventually be recast and integrated into the MCU. Canonically, there's a pretty good reason why Spidey has traditionally not run in mutant circles: he's a mutate, meaning that his mutation was the result of some outside influence, and not the infamous X-gene. The wall-crawler did hook up with Professor X's squad for one six-issue limited series, Spider-Man and the X-Men, in 2014 — but other than that, Spidey's interactions with Wolverine, Cyclops, and the bunch have been relatively rare.

Coming in third, with just nine percent of the vote, another superhero team which Holland's Spider-Man has had just one rather unpleasant interaction with: the Guardians of the Galaxy, whose wise-cracking leader Peter Quill greeted Spidey during their first meeting in Avengers: Infinity War by getting him in a headlock and putting a gun to his head. (Quill cooled off fairly quickly once he learned that the web-slinger, along with Iron Man and Doctor Strange, were there to help in the fight against Thanos.) While the Guardians are currently tending to their intergalactic business (accompanied by Thor), we've got to admit that Spider-Man joining up with them — with all their, shall we say, unique personalities — has the potential to produce some of the biggest laughs the MCU has yet seen. How would Drax deal with the logical impossibility of a Spider-Man? Would the webslinger give in to the temptation to seriously mislead Quill about events on Earth since the latter's departure as a child? What kind of affectionately demeaning nickname would Rocket come up with for Spidey? 

Finally, also bringing in nine percent of the vote: Scott Lang, the (sometimes) diminutive hero known as Ant-Man. While the two have yet to become pals in the MCU, it's pretty easy to see their irreverent personalities playing quite well off each other. Heck, they could make a movie with the pair sitting around talking about old sci-fi flicks, and we'd watch it. For that matter, a one-off comic from 1990 gave us an interesting blueprint for a Spidey and Ant-Man adventure. When Lang and Parker both suit up, independently of each other, to stop a theft at a science exhibit they're attending, Lang inadvertently shrinks ol' web-head down to itty-bitty size. The two are able to foil the caper — but Spidey continues to shrink, and subsequently goes on an adventure throughout the Microverse.

Meanwhile, among the three percent of respondents who chose "Other," there were also a few excellent suggestions. First and foremost among those: Daredevil, whom Spidey has long regarded as a trusted ally in the comics. Of course, at this point, it's not clear whether ol' Hornhead — whose Netflix series was only loosely connected to the MCU — will be a part of the festivities now that his rights are fully back with Marvel Studios. We, along with pretty much everyone else, are rooting for that show's star Charlie Cox to pick up the cowl again — but as great as his characterization is, we're not sure it would mesh terribly well with Holland's Spidey.

Also appearing in the comments: Tom Hardy's Venom, Falcon and Winter Soldier (whose tag team brawl with Spidey in Civil War was absolutely epic), and Miles Morales (whose existence in the MCU was confirmed by a Spider-Man: Homecoming mention). Hey, we're pretty sure Holland is down to play Spidey indefinitely — let's see just how many of these we can make happen, Marvel!