Once again, there are rumblings online about Black Cat potentially factoring into Spider-Man 4. We've been hearing similar chatter for a while and the news that Anya Taylor-Joy is being eyed for a role in the movie only seems to have generated a fresh wave of speculation.
Black Cat's introduction in the Spider-Man: No Way Home follow-up makes perfect sense.
Nobody remembers who Peter Parker is and the comics have established that, early on at least, Felicia has zero interest in the man beneath the mask. Reeling from the loss of MJ, the wall-crawler heading down a dark path seems like a logical next step and Black Cat would surely facilitate that after getting her claws into him.
Spider-Man franchise producer Amy Pascal was asked directly about the Taylor-Joy/Black Cat rumours at a recent press event and responded, "She would be fantastic. She’s amazing, [but] we’re not quite at that stage yet. There’s a lot of fantastic female characters but I can't talk about all this."
Is she playing coy or just reeling off the expected response to a question about a bogus rumour? It's hard to say, though we may be able to clear things up a little.
This weekend, The Cosmic Circus shared another of its rumour roundups and mentioned, "I heard [Gwen Stacy] was being planned to be introduced as the new female lead for the trilogy a while back while Peter entered college and replace Zendaya’s MJ for a bit, but that was a while ago."
That's not a new rumour, though it does mean it possible The New Mutants and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga star is being eyed to play Gwen, not Felicia Hardy.
However, we were recently told that Marvel Studios has considered taking its cues from Spider-Man: The Animated Series by making Felicia a classmate of Peter Parker at ESU who also happens to be the vigilante Black Cat. That could explain why an assumption has been made about the new female lead being Gwen when, in reality, it's a new take on the fan-favourite thief.
For many fans, throwing Spider-Gwen into the mix would perhaps make more sense but that's a valuable character Sony might not want to give full control of to Marvel Studios. Black Cat, in contrast, is someone they've been trying and failing to get into a "spin-off" movie for years now.
Spider-Man 4 has been officially dated for July 26, 2026 with Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director Destin Daniel Cretton helming a script penned by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers.
You can hear Pascal's comments in full below.