Amazing Spider-Man 2's "Peter & Gwen" Featurette Sets Up a Different Kind of Stakes

Spider-Man is in love--and everybody in New York is going to know it, after a big, rom-com-y moment at the end of Sony Pictures' newest piece of promotion for The Amazing Spider-Man 2: a featurette that focuses on the relationship between Peter Parker and Gwen Stacy. Spoilers ahead for 40-year-old comics and, potentially but not certainly, The Amazing Spider-Man 2. We finally get some context for the whole "traffic jam" joke that's been in every trailer here, including what it was Peter was late for...and some very down-to-earth stakes-setting: It isn't about whether or not Gwen will reprise her role from The Amazing Spider-Man #121, but whether their relationship can weather a move to London by Emma Stone's character so that she can follow her Oxford dreams.

In the comics, Spider-Man ends up haunted by Gwen's death because, after returning from a semester abroad, she's caught in a deadly battle between the hero and the Green Goblin. Are they really setting up the same here--a death for Gwen in The Amazing Spider-Man 3? It would explain why Mary Jane Watson was written out of this movie, perhaps. What seems more likely is that he'll face a different kind of guilt: what's what she's wearing as she gets out of the taxi? The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be in theaters on May 2.