Madame Web Is the Spiritual Successor to a Long-Forgotten DC TV Series

The Birds of Prey TV show perfectly parallels Madame Web's energy.

By Jenna Anderson

Madame Web arrived in theaters last week, and the conversation surrounding the Sony film definitely has not slowed down. The film, which is the latest entry into Sony's Spider-Man Universe, has been met with some baffled reactions, including a record-breaking performance at the box office and on Rotten Tomatoes.

Amid the discourse, many have argued that Madame Web embodies a lot of tropes of the superhero movies of the mid-2000s, evoking titles such as Daredevil, Catwoman, and Elektra. But to an extent, a better encapsulation of Madame Web's energy — down to a handful of parallels within the film itself — is The WB's short-lived Birds of Prey TV show. Spoilers for Madame Web lurk below! Only look if you want to know!

What Was the Birds of Prey TV Show About?

Premiering in the fall of 2002, Birds of Prey had a distinct place in DC's burgeoning superhero canon. It initially aimed to be a spinoff to the network's Superman-focused Smallville series, which had premiered the previous year to great fanfare. It also, through its marketing and opening sequence, tried to establish connections to the Michael Keaton-starring Batman and Batman Returns, insinuating that Helena Kyle / Huntress (Ashley Scott) was the daughter of those films' Batman and Catwoman. Together, with wheelchair-bound computer hacker Barbara Gordon / Oracle (Dina Mayer) and teenage runaway Dinah Redmond (Rachel Skarsten), Helena works to combat crime in the dire world of New Gotham.

Despite breaking records upon its premiere, Birds of Prey was very quickly canceled, only airing a total of thirteen episodes across its run. The series followed Dinah, Helena, and Barbara across an array of superhero-adjacent scenarios, including a fight against a revenge-filled Dr. Harleen Quinzel / Harley Quinn (Mia Sara).

How Is Madame Web Like the Birds of Prey TV Show?

While Madame Web and Birds of Prey play off of two wildly different superhero canons, their approaches prove to be surprisingly similar. At the time of Birds of Prey being greenlit, the comic had only run for a handful of years with just Dinah and Barbara at the center, as Huntress would not be added to the book until months after the show's cancellation by Gail Simone. Madame Web, meanwhile, involves Cassandra "Cassie" Webb (Dakota Johnson), Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor) — various Spider-Man-adjacent heroines who have (outside of Cassie and Julia) rarely crossed paths in the comics. Madame Web, herself, has only had a limited role in the comics since her 1980 comic debut, a fact that created a meme of sorts once the film first started getting off of the ground. While countless superhero projects have showcased the potential of throwing disparate characters into the same story, it can be argued that both Madame Web and Birds of Prey showed what it's like when some of that potential is left untapped. Despite boasting an ensemble of intriguing female characters, Madame Web still roots itself (for better or for worse) in Cassie's origin story — similarly to how Birds of Prey regularly treated Huntress like its main protagonist. 

The similarities between Madame Web and Birds of Prey extend beyond that, though. The broad archetypes of teenage runaways and/or orphans led by a wheelchair-bound mentor with the ability to view more than most can describe both projects to a tee, especially once the film reaches its final moments and Cassie is blinded and partially paralyzed. There are even some smaller parallels, like precognitive visions (Dinah's in Birds of Prey, and Cassie's in Madame Web) inexplicably changing one of the heroines' comic-accurate last names (Dinah in Birds of Prey and Julia in Madame Web), a deranged villain who inexplicably wants them dead (Harley in Birds of Prey, and Tahar Rahim's Ezekiel Sims in Madame Web), and a subplot revolving around a baby (a fast-growing metahuman orphan in Birds of Prey, and Peter Parker in Madame Web). As some have already pointed out on social media in the time since Madame Web's release, even the base of operations that Cassie and the girls work out of during the film's finale has a spiderweb-shaped window that looks awfully similar to Birds of Prey's clocktower. The very last moments of the film, which show all four women suited up as superheroes in the future and looking out at the city below, is a narrative beat that nearly all of Birds of Prey's episodes ended on. 

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Sure, these parallels certainly don't absolve Madame Web of some of its faults and flaws — but they at least contextualize the type of superhero story it ended up telling. Whether by design or by accident, Madame Web might be the closest thing we've gotten to the Birds of Prey TV show in a while.

Madame Web is now playing exclusively in theaters.

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