Spider-Man Beyond the Spider-Verse Review: Why Gwen Stacy’s Arc Is Being Called the Most Empowering Female Storyline in Superhero History

It has been three years since Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse left us on one of the most jaw-dropping cliffhangers in animated film history. Three years of speculation, fan theories, and an almost unbearable wait. Now, finally, Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse is here, and it is not just living up to the hype. It is rewriting the rules of what a superhero movie can be, particularly when it comes to its women.

With Hailee Steinfeld and Shameik Moore reprising their roles as Gwen Stacy (Spider-Woman) and Miles Morales (Spider-Man), the third and final chapter of Sony Pictures Animation’s groundbreaking trilogy has already shattered opening weekend records. But the conversation dominating social media, critics’ circles, and fan communities is not just about the stunning animation or the multiverse mythology. It is about Gwen Stacy, and how her storyline in this film has become something truly rare: a female arc in a superhero franchise that feels fully realized, deeply personal, and unapologetically powerful.

The Long Wait Is Over: What Beyond the Spider-Verse Delivers

When Across the Spider-Verse ended in 2023, audiences were left reeling. Miles Morales was trapped in a universe that was not his own, facing a version of himself turned villain. Gwen Stacy had been cast out of the Spider-Society, branded a rogue for choosing loyalty to Miles over the so-called “canon” of the multiverse. The emotional stakes were enormous, and the pressure on the creative team to deliver a satisfying conclusion was immense.

Directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson (with Bob Persichetti returning in an expanded role) have not just met that pressure. They have turned it into fuel. Beyond the Spider-Verse is a film that manages to be simultaneously epic in scope and achingly intimate in its emotional core. The multiverse set pieces are more ambitious than ever, with animation styles colliding and merging in ways that feel like watching art history unfold in real time. But the film never loses sight of the human stories at its center.

The screenplay, penned by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Dave Callaham, weaves together multiple storylines with the kind of precision that rewards both casual viewers and devoted fans. There are payoffs to setups planted in the first film back in 2018. There are surprises that genuinely shock. And there is a final act that several critics have already described as the most emotionally devastating and ultimately triumphant sequence in any Spider-Man film, animated or live-action.

Hailee Steinfeld’s Gwen Stacy: A Performance That Transcends Animation

Hailee Steinfeld has spoken in interviews about how personal this role has become for her. In a recent conversation with Variety, Steinfeld described Gwen’s journey across the trilogy as “a mirror for every young woman who has ever been told that her instincts are wrong, that caring too much is a weakness, that she needs to choose between being strong and being vulnerable.”

That emotional authenticity radiates through every scene Gwen occupies in Beyond the Spider-Verse. Without venturing into spoiler territory, Gwen’s storyline in this film tackles themes of autonomy, forgiveness (both of others and of oneself), and the courage it takes to build something new when everything familiar has been stripped away. She is not defined by her relationship with Miles, though their connection remains one of the trilogy’s beating hearts. She is defined by her own choices, her own growth, and her own reckoning with a father who loves her but has not always understood her.

Steinfeld’s vocal performance is nothing short of extraordinary. There is a scene midway through the film, set against a watercolor-inspired visual palette, where Gwen confronts a version of grief she has been running from since the first movie. The animation is breathtaking, but it is Steinfeld’s voice that breaks you. The slight crack on a single word. The way a sentence starts with defiance and ends with something much more fragile. It is the kind of performance that makes you forget you are watching an animated character. You are just with her, in that moment, feeling everything she feels.

The Oscar buzz has already started, and while animated performances are historically overlooked by the Academy, there is a growing chorus of voices arguing that Steinfeld’s work across this trilogy deserves recognition alongside any live-action performance this year.

Why Critics Are Calling This the Most Empowering Female Arc in Superhero History

It is a bold claim, and one that invites debate. Superhero cinema has given us memorable women: Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman striding across No Man’s Land, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow finally getting her own film, Zendaya’s MJ bringing wit and grounding to the MCU’s Spider-Man trilogy. But there is a case to be made that Gwen Stacy’s arc across the Spider-Verse trilogy achieves something none of those stories quite managed.

For one, Gwen’s story is not a side plot. It is the emotional spine of the trilogy. While Miles Morales is the protagonist in the traditional sense, the films have consistently given Gwen equal weight, equal complexity, and equal screen time to develop. Her struggles are not simplified or sanitized. She deals with loss, isolation, the politics of a system (the Spider-Society) that demands conformity, and the painful reality that doing the right thing often means standing alone.

What makes it empowering rather than simply tragic is the agency the filmmakers give her. Gwen is never rescued. She is never reduced to a motivational prop for someone else’s journey. When she makes mistakes, they are her mistakes, born from fully realized motivations. When she triumphs, it is because of choices she made, sacrifices she chose, and the strength she built through her own pain. In Beyond the Spider-Verse, this all culminates in a sequence that has already become iconic: Gwen assembling her own team, on her own terms, not because she was asked to lead but because she saw what needed to be done and stepped forward.

The visual storytelling reinforces this at every turn. Gwen’s universe has always been rendered in shifting watercolor tones that reflect her emotional state, a choice the directors have described as intentional femininity woven into the film’s DNA. In Beyond the Spider-Verse, those colors evolve in ways that feel like watching a character literally come into her own. The palette deepens, stabilizes, and ultimately explodes into something vibrant and assured. It is visual character development at its finest, and it communicates something that dialogue alone never could.

As Vogue noted in their coverage of the film’s cultural impact, Gwen Stacy has become a fashion and identity icon for young women in ways that extend far beyond the screen. Her ballet-meets-punk aesthetic, her refusal to conform to expectations, and her emotional transparency have resonated deeply with a generation that values authenticity over perfection.

Shameik Moore, Miles Morales, and the Love Story That Earned Its Moment

No discussion of Beyond the Spider-Verse is complete without talking about Shameik Moore’s Miles Morales, and the relationship between Miles and Gwen that has been building across three films. Moore brings a maturity and warmth to Miles in this final chapter that reflects both the character’s growth and the actor’s own evolution with the role. His Miles is older (narratively and emotionally), carrying the weight of his experience in the wrong universe and the knowledge of what it means to defy fate.

The romance between Miles and Gwen is handled with a delicacy that is refreshing in the superhero genre. It is not a reward for the hero at the end of his journey. It is not the thing that “fixes” either character. It is presented as one beautiful, complicated thread in two lives that are rich with other connections, responsibilities, and sources of meaning. The film earns its romantic moments because it never treats the relationship as inevitable or owed. Every step toward each other is a choice, made by two people who have done the hard work of figuring out who they are independently.

For women watching, there is something deeply satisfying about a love story where the female character is never asked to diminish herself. Gwen does not become softer or more accommodating to be “worthy” of love. Miles does not need to save her for their bond to deepen. They meet as equals, and the film respects that equality completely.

The Animation Revolution: A Visual Masterpiece That Refuses to Play It Safe

Each installment in the Spider-Verse trilogy has pushed the boundaries of what animation can achieve, and Beyond the Spider-Verse takes that mission to its logical extreme. The film reportedly employed over 1,000 artists across multiple studios, blending hand-drawn techniques, 3D rendering, stop-motion aesthetics, and entirely new methods developed specifically for this project.

The result is a film that shifts visual language from scene to scene, sometimes within a single shot, without ever feeling chaotic or disorienting. Each universe has its own texture, its own rhythm, its own rules. A sequence set in a noir-inspired dimension feels like stepping into a 1940s detective comic. A climactic battle rendered in what appears to be living stained glass is unlike anything previously committed to screen. The film’s final moments employ a visual technique so striking that audiences in early screenings reportedly gasped audibly.

But the animation is never just spectacle for its own sake. Every visual choice serves the story. The way Gwen’s watercolor world responds to her emotions. The way Miles’s bold, graphic style becomes more fluid as he grows into his power. The way the film’s villain, whose identity we will not reveal here, is animated with a technique that makes them feel fundamentally wrong, like a glitch in the visual fabric of the multiverse itself. It is storytelling at the level of craft, and it makes a compelling argument that animated filmmaking deserves the same prestige as any other form of cinema.

What Beyond the Spider-Verse Means for the Future of Women in Superhero Films

The success of Gwen Stacy’s arc in the Spider-Verse trilogy sends a clear message to studios: audiences do not just tolerate complex female characters in superhero stories. They crave them. They will show up for them. They will build communities around them and carry their stories with them long after the credits roll.

For too long, the conversation around women in superhero films has been about firsts. The first female-led film. The first female director. The first all-women team-up. Those milestones matter, but what Beyond the Spider-Verse represents is something beyond firsts. It is a proof of concept that a female character can be the emotional center of a major franchise, can carry thematic weight equal to (or greater than) her male counterpart, and can do so without being reduced to a symbol or a statement. Gwen is not “empowering” because the filmmakers decided she should be. She is empowering because she is written as a full human being navigating impossible circumstances with grace, grit, and vulnerability.

There is also something worth noting about the way the film handles Gwen’s relationship with her father, Captain Stacy, voiced by Shea Whigham. Their scenes together in Beyond the Spider-Verse are among the most moving in the entire trilogy. The film does not villainize him or let him off the hook. It sits with the complicated reality of a parent who loves his child but cannot always see her clearly. For anyone who has navigated a complicated relationship with a parent, these scenes will hit hard, and the resolution the film offers is honest rather than tidy.

Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse is now playing in theaters worldwide. Whether you have been following the trilogy since 2018 or are coming to it fresh, this is a film that rewards every minute of your attention. Bring tissues. Bring friends. And prepare to fall in love with Gwen Stacy all over again.