Julia Carpenter is a Marvel comic book character set to make her live-action movie debut in Sony’s Madame Web, but who is she? While most of the plot details concerning Madame Web have been kept under wraps since most of the cast was announced in 2022, a handful of comic book characters have been confirmed. Both Cassandra Webb and Julia Carpenter, who have their roots in Marvel Comic books, will appear in the movie.
Madame Web is set to hit theaters in 2024, and among the cast are Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Emma Roberts, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O’Connor. The cast is stacked with talent, but the roles of most of the young women have been kept secret. While it hasn’t been officially confirmed by Sony, one of those actresses did mention that she’s playing Julia Carpenter in the movie.
Who Is Julia Carpenter In Marvel Comics?
Julia Carpenter made her comic book debut in the Secret Wars event series published in 1984. Created by Jim Shooter and Mike Zeck, Julia made a cameo appearance in Secret Wars #6 before making her true character debut in Secret Wars #7. She first appeared as a villain that the other heroes at the center of the story weren’t familiar with, but she teamed up with the heroes against a larger threat. It wasn’t until the miniseries Dark Web that comic book readers got to go in-depth into Julia’s comic book origin story.
Julia Carpenter didn’t gain her spider-themed powers until she was a college student. She was recruited into a supposed athletic study that actually introduced several toxins, including spider venom, into her system. The combination ended up giving her similar powers to Peter Parker’s Spider-Man. She has super agility, strength, and reflexes as most of the spider-heroes in Marvel Comics do. It’s Julia’s webbing that is very different.
While some of the spider-heroes have organic webbing, others have manufactured webbing that they create to go along with the spider-theme of their abilities and secret identity. Julia Carpenter’s webbing, however, is psionic. That means her webbing is a construct of her mind. Julia’s webs, however, are strong enough to hold ten tons, even if they do disappear after an hour.
Over the years, Julia Carpenter has been a member of several different government agencies and different superhero teams, including the Avengers. She's taken a break from being a hero to raise her daughter, and she's been pulled back into the superhero life repeatedly. She has also taken on three different codenames. She initially went by Spider-Woman, though that is a moniker she had given to her, not one she chooses. She’s the second Spider-Woman after Jessica Drew. She also uses the codename Arachne, which is the one she initially wants, but she passes it on to another spider-hero because she becomes Madame Web.
Julia is also the second person to take on the name Madame Web, and it seems like that might be her future in the Madame Web movie as well. As Madame Web, Julia ends up with a lot of new abilities, like being able to psychically sense other spider-heroes. She also plays a role in connecting spider-heroes across the multiverse, which is exactly what the Madame Web movie is rumored to entail.
Who Is Playing Julia Carpenter In Madame Web?
Though Julia Carpenter has appeared in Marvel animated series before, and even in Marvel-based video games, she has never appeared in live-action. Her live-action debut is in Sony’s Madame Web. According to a recent interview, Julia Carpenter is played by Sydney Sweeney in Madame Web.
Sweeney is best known to TV audiences for her Emmy-nominated role as Cassie in Euphoria alongside Zendaya, but Sweeney has been acting since childhood. She played a young girl who was kidnapped on Criminal Minds early in her career and has appeared in a mix of thrillers, dramas, and comedies ever since. Her role as a wife who is turned in for having an affair in The Handmaid’s Tale really helped put her on the map, but her role in Euphoria definitely made Sweeney a household name.
Since taking on the role of Cassie in Euphoria, Sweeney has also appeared as a villain in the Netflix movie Night Teeth and lent her voice to episodes of Robot Chicken. She also starred as Reality Winner in the HBO movie Reality, inspired by the real investigation into the life of an intelligence specialist after a document about Russian interference in the US presidential election of 2016 was leaked. Sweeney also earned another Emmy nomination when she appeared in the series White Lotus.
Sweeney’s ability to play characters whose lives quickly unravel in a very real well will likely come in handy as she stars as Julia Carpenter in Madame Web.