One of the more surprising waves of Marvel Legends action figures in 2024 was a second wave of Across the Spider-Verse figures based on the summer 2023 film. Despite racking up a healthy box office, I feel like the minute it was revealed that its sequel, the intended concluding chapter of this multiversal animated Spider-saga, was going to miss its overly optimistic release date, that kinda let the air out of these movies’ tires and folks just stopped talking about them. (I could be wrong on that, I swear that’s the vibe I got.) And yet, it was very cool to see new figures for characters who didn’t get one before — Pavitr Prabhakar (Spider-Man India) and shock villain Miles G. Morales (his universe’s Prowler) got nifty whole-new-sculpt figures with dazzling detail … which I didn’t buy. No, me, I bought a couple of the reruns, including the focus of this week’s figure post: yet another Gwen Stacy Spider-Woman.
The new version of Across the Spider-Verse Gwen has a color scheme inspired by the scenes in her universe in the film, which were themselves inspired by the art of Robbie Rodriguez and colorist Rico Renzi on the character’s original comic book tales; the white of her costume has, I think, a faint hint of purple to it, while quite obviously her hair is an extremely eye-catching purple and blue, and the more pink hues of her gloves and the inside of her hood are now firmly purple as well. Her skin tone is much more saturated than the first release, and I forget, could you tell she has an eyebrow piercing in the first release? Because it’s certainly visible on close inspection here. She also has a more pensive expression to match her angsty mood when we see her back at home. Overall, the new deco and the more serious face sculpt do a lot to make someone like me, who will almost automatically just buy The Next Spider-Gwen Figure without much cajoling, not feel like a sucker.
Aside from the new face sculpt, there are a couple of additional new parts in the package. Gwen is wearing a (non-removable, glued-down) Spider-Society Multiversal Gizmo on her left wrist; her and Spidey 2099 both receive those in their updated releases to better match the film. Additionally, for some reason Gwen winds up with the figurine of LYLA, Spider-Man 2099’s long-time A.I. partner (a part of the Spidey 2099 mythos since his comics debut back in the 1990s). It’s a welcome addition to the package, since she is an important Spidey 2099 supporting player (radically reinterpreted though she may have been in the film), though I do find myself wondering what to do with her in a display.
Despite the extra goodies in the package, Gwen still suffers from a reduced hand load-out — in an ideal world, every Spider-figure would have two open/wall-crawling hands, two fists, and two “thwip” hands — hands doing the “devil horns” gesture Spider-folks do when they tap the palms of their hands with the center fingers to fire off their web-shooters. Gwen has the two open hands (one that seems very wall-crawling oriented, but one with fingers bent just a bit, which might work for a more dynamic crawling pose), but just one web-shooting hand (right) and fist (left), and this is repeated from the first Across the Spider-Verse release. (Even if the earlier figure had the opposite hands, of course, the colors are so different that they wouldn’t look right to share across figures anyway.)
Worse, the open hands might be good for wall-crawling, but the figure’s articulation is not; with the hood glued to the masked head, her neck can’t angle back far enough to look up for wall-crawling poses, nor was I able to really get her legs in a good crawling pose either. Her extremely skinny build, matching the animation style, also makes balancing her a nightmare, which is a shame because she IS quite poseable, with full 180-degree bends at elbows and knees and hips ALMOST able to do the splits — she can definitely get in good Spider-poses! It’s just hell trying to get her to stand up while doing them. And while the construction of the figure feels good in-hand, I do still worry just a smidge posing these very thin limbs, slightly fretful that if I’m too rough something will pop out of whack or snap.
Still, complaints aside, I’m still extremely happy to add another version of Gwen to the toy box, especially in colors that are exactly my jam (speaking as someone who spent a month last summer rocking purple hair and is probably going back to give that another go ’round my birthday). I’m just hoping the next time Hasbro offers up another version of my favorite Spider-gal she comes with the full roster of Spider-hands and maybe we up that articulation just a little smidge more, OK? This is a solid high seven out of ten, and I’m hoping the next time we get a Gwen, maybe for the next movie, we get her a little closer to a nine. Fingers crossed!