Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Peter Parker (Spider-Man)

*MCU Spider-Man spoilers.*

As I’ve looked over my various fandoms for characters who resonate as neurodivergent, I haven’t gotten too deep into Marvel yet. I’m sure a fair number of characters will pop up in my mind eventually, because once you start looking, it’s easy to see that neurodivergent-coded characters are a lot more prevalent than you might at first assume. (And I would bet that plenty of it is unintentional—I can imagine there are lots of undiagnosed neurodivergent writers and/or actors out there, incorporating relatable traits into their characters without necessarily recognizing that.) At any rate, when I did a cursory rifle through my MCU mental filing cabinet, the first character that really jumped out at me was one Peter Parker.

Now, this may simply be a product of the MCU interpretation of Spider-Man leaning hard into the “superpowered teenager is easily distracted and reckless” angle, but Peter definitely reads as ADHD to me. The stress of being a kid juggling a secret identity can contribute to this—all the Spider-Man franchises feature scenes where Spider-Man misses something important or flakes on errands he said he’d do because he gets held up fighting a bad guy, and Ms. Marvel has some of this flavor too—but the MCU Spider-Man films show that this is not just about having too many conflicting responsibilities.

Yes, Peter has a ton going on. His head is also constantly going a million places at once. Whether it’s making web fluid in a desk drawer during chemistry or editing videos for his Spider-Man YouTube channel during math, he’s frequently doing at least two different things at any given time. He’s a smart kid who often manages to get by anyway—in that math class scene, he’s totally called out by the teacher for not paying attention, but he’s able to look up at the board and quickly figure out the answer to the question. But in a way, being able to camouflage those issues with attention can actually be a hindrance, because it lets him assume he’ll always be able to compensate, and the times when he can’t are often when the stakes are highest.

Peter is also definitely impulsive. He throws himself into all kinds of dangerous situations without a plan: he only survives his first encounter with the Vulture because Tony saves him, he accidentally gets himself locked inside a Damage Control facility with no way to escape or let people know where he is, and he manages to hitch a ride onto one of Thanos’s spaceships, something that Tony is obviously not cool with. And when it comes to less immediate, less adrenaline-fueled situations, he can still do some pretty ill-advised stuff without thinking, like when he decides to hand control of Tony’s E.D.I.T.H. network over to Quentin Beck or when he keeps interrupting Doctor Strange’s spell to make people forget his identity, screwing up the whole multiverse in the process.

And let’s be real: the boy cannot sit still. His most ADHD scene of all time probably comes when he’s trapped inside the Damage Control facility in Homecoming. There are no bad guys for him to fight here, but there’s also not much he can practically do to escape until morning, so Peter is left mostly on his own with only the AI in his suit for company. While he waits, Peter makes a hammock out of webs, gives his AI a name (Karen,) takes a refresher course on the different types of webs his Stark-tech suit can produce, makes a jump rope out of webs, and discusses with Karen whether or not he should tell his crush he’s Spider-Man. He then discovers that only 37 minutes have passed and is utterly gobsmacked. This is the most prominent example, but we see Peter’s hyperactivity all over, like when he talks a zillion miles a second recounting his Civil War experiences for his video diary or when he bounces on his motel room bed while Ned examines his suit tech.

Peter’s ADHD traits can make things hard for him, in both “regular” life and superhero life, but they can also come in handy. He’s creative and can come up with outside-the-box solutions in high-pressure situations, and when the people he cares about are in danger, he’s able to hyperfocus, doing absolutely everything it takes to keep them safe. He’s also caring and compassionate. When villains from other universes start bleeding through to his, Peter wants to send them back where they came from—you know, so the multiverse doesn’t collapse—but he wants to try and help them first, hoping that if he addresses the physiological accidents that gave them their powers, they might be able to avoid their fates back home.