All 10 Times Marvel Brought Back Gwen Stacy (& Why Only Spider-Gwen Stuck)

Spider-Man is Marvel’s number one superhero, and Gwen Stacy is one of the most important aspects of his lore. Much like Uncle Ben, her death is an iconic and essential step on his journey to becoming the man that he is today. Gwen was the first girl Peter truly loved, and so when she died, it pushed him to a dark place that he had never been in before. Gwen’s death was the catalyst that ended Norman Osborn for decades, pushed Harry over the edge to become the second Green Goblin, and set Peter and MJ on the path to be Marvel’s best couple. Her death is the official end of the Silver Age of comics, signalling darker days ahead for the entire industry.

Naturally, with her death being so pivotal and her life being such a major part of Peter’s life, it only makes sense that Marvel would want to bring her back at some point. In fact, Marvel has resurrected or revisited Gwen no less than ten times over the years. Of course, despite how much people love Gwen, only one of them actually stuck, that being Spider-Gwen, or Ghost-Spider. Today, we’re going to examine all of the attempts to revisit Gwen Stacy after her death(s), and see what worked, what didn’t, and why Gwen’s death is one of the few that stuck. We’ll be going in mostly chronological order, but saving Ghost-Spider for last. With that all said, let’s swing right into it.

1) Joyce Delaney — The 1st Clone

Introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #142. 

Not long after Gwen’s death, she seemingly returned out of nowhere. It was quickly revealed that she was a clone created by the Jackal in the first and much better “Original Clone Saga.” After the truth of her origin came out, Gwen disappeared, marrying a clone of the Jackal, Warren Miles, and living a happy life away from the Spider-drama. She would appear sporadically, always when clone shenanigans cropped up. Besides a quickly ignored retcon about her not being a clone at all, she didn’t have much impact on the Spider-mythos. After her husband’s death, she took the name Joyce Delaney and lived in London until she was killed.

Joyce was an interesting character on some levels. She was the first clone in Spider-Man’s history, which made her unique. Her and Peter’s decision to stay apart spoke volumes about how far he had come from mourning Gwen’s death, and Joyce acted like an epilogue to their relationship in that regard. She was closure. Of course, being closure personified makes making new stories centered on you pretty hard. Her occasional appearances only rehashed old ground, and by the time she died, most people had forgotten she existed. If she were the only time Gwen had been brought back, Joyce would be very interesting, but the rest of this list more than waters her down. 

2) Imperfect Clones

Introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #399. 

The Jackal, of course, was never content with one try at cloning his obsession/love or complicating Spider-Man’s life. These clones were brought about in the midst of the clone saga, where Jackal tried to convince Peter that he was a clone and that the first of these clones was the original Gwen. She degenerated almost immediately, and the Jackal revealed that he had a small army of imperfect clones, as he had yet to recapture the genius that created Joyce. The villain decided these clones were failures and set off a self-destruct in them all, eliminating them in an instant.

There’s really not much to say about these Gwens. They were clearly brought into the picture for shock value and a cliffhanger, which can be said for about eighty percent of the “Clone Saga.” They existed for all of a couple of issues before fading away forever, and barely even left much of an impact on Spider-Man’s psyche. This started Marvel’s trend of not just unearthing Gwen, but pillaging her grave like she was an ancient pharaoh every few years. This was truly the beginning of the “Gwen Age” of Marvel, which we are still definitely living in today.

3) House of M

Introduced in House of M #1.

This even saw a mentally-unstable Scarlet Witch rewrite reality, giving everyone everything they had ever wanted. For Peter, that meant Gwen had never died, and the two of them started a family together. She eventually worked with her father to figure out what was wrong with Peter when he regained his memories of Earth-616, and it was revealed that he was a human, not a mutant. Eventually, Spider-Man faked his death, and his family moved to be together in the country under a new name. Of course, this “revival” of Gwen Stacy was never meant to be permanent. 

This was the first time that the true Gwen returned from the dead, and it introduced the idea that Peter wanted to be with Gwen more than MJ, which had always been disproven up to this point. This story was meant to break Spider-Man’s heart in a way that nothing had before, as not only did he lose Gwen again, but he knew exactly how happy they would have been together, and he lost their son. This set the stage for every returned Gwen from this point onward, and they would happen much more frequently than the nine years between our second and third entrants.

4) Abby-L — The Original Clone

Introduced in Spider-Island: Deadly Foes #1.

While Joyce was the first successful Gwen Stacey clone, Jackal didn’t get everything right on the first try. He went through countless iterations and attempts, and Abby-L was the first one that could be called alive. Still, she was an imperfect clone, suffering from the Carion Virus, and hated her existence. She saw clones as an abomination, thinking they were all soulless husks, and swore to destroy the Jackal if he made any other Gwen clones. When she found out that was his favorite pastime, she killed Joyce and tried to do the same to the Jackal, only to be stopped by Kaine. She died when the Jackal’s lab exploded.

There’s not much to say about Abby-L, given that she died in the same issue she was introduced. She was another attempt at shock value, and given her deformed look and mental state, she hardly filled the role she was created for, which is the point. The most Abby-L contributed is killing Joyce, which only removed the most successful Gwen clone from existence, well after she’d lost whatever small relevance she had. She was a new take on a Gwen clone and an interesting look into how Jackal’s process worked, but nothing beyond that.

5) Spider-Girl, Gwen Warren

Introduced in Avenging Spider-Man #16.

This clone was created when Jackal stumbled upon one of Mister Sinister’s abandoned bases. He spliced Gwen’s DNA with Spider-Queen’s and Cyclops’s, which let her transform into a giant spider and shoot concussive beams from all eight of her eyes. She was stopped by the combined might of the Superior Spider-Man and the X-Men, who took her into the Jean School For Higher Learning when it was discovered she was literally born yesterday and had the mentality of a newborn. She vanished for several years, apparently flunking out of school, according to a statement by Tom Brevoort, but showed back up in the Krakoan era. 

This is definitely the strangest Gwen reiteration. If we remove Gwen’s DNA, nothing about this character changes, as she can still transform into a spider and shoot eyeblasts. Given that Peter has never even interacted with her, frankly, she’s more of a Cyclops character, just based on having his DNA. There’s some story that can be told about a new version of Gwen being raised completely differently and being her own person, but while it could be interesting, it would likely feel repetitive and overly confusing in this day and age. There’s potential here, but this character is probably better off forgetting her connection to Gwen Stacy. 

6) Gwen Stacy 2 — The Other Perfect Clone

Introduced in Superior Spider-Man Team-Up #2.

This was Jackal’s second successful Gwen Stacy clone, which he made around the same time he created Kaine. Instead of being her own person, as Joyce had become, this Gwen remained eternally loyal to Jackal. She helped the villain in his quest to recapture Kaine and Spider-Man, hoping to obtain fresh DNA samples from both of them. Unfortunately for everyone, Doc Ock was still in possession of Peter’s body at the time, and he pulled no punches and had no connection to Gwen. Much like her clone-sister, this Gwen died when Jackal’s base blew up, leaving no trace of her.

This Gwen is another strange one, but for her place, not her identity. This Gwen is seemingly another perfect clone with all of Gwen’s memories and feelings, but isn’t capable of going against Jackal. She really doesn’t have a character, as she showed up, kidnapped the Spider-brothers, told Kaine she was sorry about it, then died. This attempt felt more like Marvel was running through the motions than anything else, and definitely didn’t actually provide anything other than her name and appearance.

7) New U Ressurection

Introduced in Clone Conspiracy #1.

“Clone Conspiracy” saw the original Spider-Man clone, Ben Reilly, return and bring most of Marvel’s dead characters back in perfect clone bodies, calling it a true resurrection. This was the first time in years that Gwen was allowed to act like a character with her own agency. She ultimately forgave Peter for her father’s death and absolved him of any involvement in her own, which was a massive weight off her shoulders. She tried to convince him to join Ben’s plan to revive everyone as clones, but when Ben decided to replace everyone in the world with clones, she sacrificed herself to buy Spider-Man time to save the day.

This was the most interesting Gwen had been in decades, between her forgiving Spider-Man and sacrificing herself like a hero, destroying the Goblins that once took her life. Of course, she was reborn with the intent to die. Her arc wouldn’t have hit half as hard if she survived to tell about it, especially when she accepted her death half because her alternate reality version, Spider-Woman, was a hero. This was Gwen’s swan song, and much like with Joyce, this should have been the close to her and Peter’s relationship and the last time she came back. Of course, it’s never that simple.

8) Progenitor’s Judgement

Introduced in Amazing Spider-Man (2022) #10.

The AXE: Judgement Day event saw the revived Celestial, the Progenitor, judge all of humanity. To Peter, it appeared as Gwen Stacy, watching how he lived since she died. Through Gwen’s perspective, the Progenitor judged the man Peter had become. With the ghostly apparition of his dead love always over his shoulder, Peter lived like he always had, but said the things he never did. He told Jonah he’d long forgiven him, let Miles know how proud he was that they were both Spider-Man, and explained why he was giving Norman a second chance. In the end, Peter passed judgment, and his reward was a moment with the revived Gwen. They expressed how much they missed each other before she faded away again.

This was another moment where Marvel revived Gwen to give Peter a heartfelt moment, but it did not hit nearly as hard as some of the others. Mostly because, by this point, Gwen had come back a lot. It felt more like Marvel was retreading by dragging her out of her grave to remind Peter to be miserable about missing her, even though he moved on decades ago. This was another reinforcement that Gwen was his one true love and that he never stopped being in love with her, which goes against a lot of his development since losing he. Peter never stopped loving Gwen, but he learned to stop being in love with her, and this goes against that just to make him sad.

9) Gwenpool — Weapon X-31

Introduced in Gwenpool (2025) #1.

Gwenpool has no relation to Gwen Stacy, but is always compared to her, given her look and name. That spawned this meta-conflated story, where the ashes of the New U Gwen were taken and grown into a new, edgy clone by the Great Architect. She was reimagined as an assassin with a Deadpool-level healing factor and three-foot-long adamantine claws, capturing everyone’s first thought when they hear Gwenpool. She killed the original Gwenpool, but was convinced to walk away from her assassin life after meeting Spider-Man and Hawkeye, letting Gwenpool talk her out of killing the Great Architect. She went off on her own, free to decide who to be.

This was pitched as the original Gwen returning, which was not only proven to be untrue but also hated by the Marvel fanbase. Frankly, by this point, everyone is tired of Gwen Stacy. She only shows up to make Peter’s life worse, and given how every entry past three has been in the past fifteen years, it feels like Marvel is constantly shoving Gwen down our throats. We can’t escape her, and when you’re beaten over the head with the same sad story over and over again, it loses its potency. Gwen isn’t sad anymore. She’s sad and annoying, which are the last things she should ever be.

10) Spider-Gwen

Introduced in Edge of Spider-Verse #2.

First she was Spider-Woman, then Spider-Gwen, and now, Ghost-Spider. She joined the Marvel Multiverse during the original Spider-Verse event. Instead of just being another character meant to make Peter feel bad, she was something new. This is the first fresh take on Gwen in forever, reimagining her not as a character designed to facilitate Peter’s arc, but a person all her own, thrust into the same role that made Peter into the icon that he is. She flipped the script, showing the audience what it would look like if Gwen lost Peter, instead of the other way around. She can also function without Peter in her orbit while still tickling the parts of people’s brains who love Gwen’s character, making her the best of both worlds.

This Gwen developed into her own character, which is more than we can say for everyone else on this list outside of entry #5, who was too weird and gimmicky to ever stick around. Ghost-Spider was designed to be more than a painful reminder, and as such, she’s grown to be a beloved hero and member of the Spider-Family as a permanent resident of Earth-616. All the other attempts to revisit Gwen’s character have failed to stick around because either they were never designed to or they only played into her death, which isn’t a story that can be repeatedly explored with a new version of the character.

At the end of the day, Marvel brings Gwen back a lot. This list didn’t even examine relatives like Jilly Stacy (who dated Peter in a very weird era), horrible revists like that time Harry tried to convince everyone that Gwen had an affair with Norman and had two kids, or that one time Deadpool had four questionably-sentient Gwen clones as his maids who died in the same issue they were introduced. Marvel never lets anyone, especially Peter, forget Gwen died, but that’s doing them more harm than good. Gwen can clearly be a beloved character, but only if they let her rest. 

Pillaging Gwen’s grave only makes fans annoyed, especially when it’s used to show Peter loved her more than MJ, which, after “One More Day,” is just salt in an open wound. Which version of Gwen Stacy is your favorite? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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