Mary Jane Watson

Mary Jane Watson's History

Mary Jane was the most popular girl in Midtown High School. She was friends with Liz Allen, Harry Osborn and Flash Thompson. Mary Jane had seemingly very little to complain about in her life. When the train taking her home was attacked by Electro, Mary Jane was rescued from a fatal fall by Spider-Man (her secret crush). After the incident, Mary began to reevaluate her life and obsessed over trying to see Spider-Man again. Her crush on Spider-Man fueled her desire ask the superhero to be her date for homecoming. At the same time, she struggled with various jobs in order to get enough money to buy "the perfect dress".

As homecoming drew near, Mary Jane attempted to fix the tenuous relationship between Liz and Flash. She tells Liz to stop belittling Flash and calling him stupid. MJ considers breaking up with Harry, who she'd been dating since before being rescued by Spider-Man, but as she reconsiders the idea, she learns of Flash's crush on her after discovering doodles of her name in his notebook. At the same time, Liz suspects Flash is cheating on her, putting Mary Jane in an awkward situation. MJ wrestles with whether or not she should tell Liz that Flash isn't cheating but that he has a crush on her. After a football game goes sour, Mary Jane continues to withhold the truth from Liz but confronts Flash about his feelings. She manages to convince Flash to stay with Liz, believing that Flash will give up on pursuing her romantically. However, unbeknownst to MJ, Liz witnesses the two hugging on his steps and suspects her best friend is having an affair with Flash.

For a time, Mary Jane is given the cold shoulder by Liz. Mary Jane confronts her and the two reconcile after Liz confesses she thought Mary Jane was seeing Flash behind her back. On the night of the homecoming, Mary Jane is crowned homecoming queen and Flash homecoming king. Flash takes this as a sign that they were meant to be together and a fight erupts between himself, Mary Jane, Harry, and Liz. When Mary Jane tries to convince Liz that nothing happened between Flash and herself, Liz slaps the crown being offered to her from MJ's hands and storms off. Mary Jane also runs from the school, retreating to the Coffee Bean. There she meets Peter Parker and the two talk for a while before he escorts her back home. Liz was waiting there for Mary Jane and apologizes for being so jealous of her friend.

After breaking up with Harry, Mary Jane continues to track Spider-Man across the city whenever she can find him, desperate to speak with him. At the same time she grows closer to Peter, who cautions her about chasing Spider-Man. Her friends believe her crush on Spider-Man is unhealthy and tell her so. Undaunted by the advice given by her friends, Mary Jane doesn't stop searching for Spider-Man until she encounters him again. She asks him out, but he rejects her, using much of the same logic offered by her friends. Later, MJ sees Spider-Man fighting crime again, but this time, teaming up with Firestar and gets quite jealous assuming that he had chosen a super-powered red-head over her.

When Mary Jane finds out Flash is bullying Peter, she warns Flash to stop and is largely ignored by him. To complicate matters further, Peter's makes his affection for Mary Jane apparent after he, as Spider-Man, agrees to take her out, hoping that she will choose him over his superhero alter-ego. Mary Jane brushes Peter's feelings for her off as "silly", thinking she really loves Spider-Man. While she achieves her dream of going out with Spider-Man on a date, she realizes that she may have feelings for Peter, after all, when as she continually thinks about him while on her date with Spider-Man. Unfortunately, the moment she decides to tell Peter how she feels about him, he had met and then started dating Gwen Stacy after being assigned to show her around by the school office.

Mary Jane reluctantly befriends Gwen who had just transferred to Midtown High and looks to MJ as a friend since Peter spoke highly of her. While dating, Gwen starts to question Peter's disappearances, odd behavior, and poor excuses for constantly running off and being late. She asks MJ if Peter is being strange and if she knows what's going on with him. Mary Jane brushes her off and doesn't want to discuss Peter with her saying that he has always been that way. When Gwen has finally had enough and tells Peter that she was leaving him if he couldn't be honest with her, he decides to tell her that he is Spider-Man. Gwen finally understands and her and Peter's relationship grows stronger. When Mary Jane finds out that Peter had shared some sort of big secret with Gwen, she becomes hurt that he didn't feel he could have shared that same secret with her and her jealousy grows.

Hurt by Peter's and Gwen's relationship, Mary Jane buries her feelings behind the facade of a flirtatious party girl. Her and Peter become distant but she manages to repair her friendship with Flash who starts to date Liz again. Putting her feelings for Peter aside, Mary Jane tries to date Harry once again only to be thwarted by Felicia Hardy who competes for Harry's affections. She eventually ends up back with Harry but ends things with him for the final time after Harry realizes she loves Peter. Gwen Stacy meanwhile ends her relationship with Peter when she realizes he loves Mary Jane. When MJ sees Peter again for the first time after both had become single again, the two renew their friendship but still do not tell each other how they really feel.

Mary Jane's friendship with Harry is broken, but her relationship with Liz, Flash, and Peter remains as strong as ever, and she and Gwen gradually repair their friendship as well. In the meantime, Mary Jane continues to pursue becoming a better actor. She starts a trend called "Limo Girl" after arriving late to Acting 101 and performing and acting out an excuse as why she was late. Everyone starts to call her "Limo Girl", which begins to bother Mary Jane after a while. She lands a lead role in the play, beating out a girl named Zoe, someone she was on friendly terms with before casting was finalized. During rehearsals, her teacher demands that she perform with the same passion and style that she used when she created Limo Girl. Frustrated, Mary Jane quits the play.

Spider-Man and Mary Jane begin to see each other whenever the wall-crawler gets the chance to visit her. Mary Jane often confides in Spider-Man about her troubles with the same openness she shows with Peter while not mentioning his name and Peter (as Spider-Man) just assumes she is referring to Harry instead of him. After Mary Jane lands a role in the play, someone starts a smear campaign website, calling her the "diva dork of Midtown High". She initially assumes Harry is the one behind it, though he tells her he's not angry at her about anything despite their history. She is further proven wrong when Harry helps her investigate and tells her the IP address is linked directly to the school and in an area prohibited to students. Mary Jane asks him what happened to their friendship and Harry says she "forgot he was alive" when she became friends with Peter. Despite MJ's renewed desire to fix things between them, Harry doesn't want to be "just friends" with her. However, they do work together to discover that it was Zoe who created the hurtful website.

Mary Jane confronts Zoe about why she created the website. Zoe said that she believes that Mary put herself above everyone else and thought herself to be so perfect, so she used the website to tear her down. Despite the suspect legality of the website, Mary Jane didn't hold a grudge against Zoe and promised to keep the incident between the two of them. At the end of the day, Peter visits her house and the two of them eat pizza on her front stairs, promising each other that their relationship would last forever.