Back in 2014 my fancast for Emily was Lena Headey (Cersei from Game of Thrones). I remember making a little edit of her with Dane Dehaan’s Harry. I reckon she looks the part.
I also think Rosamund Pike (from Gone Girl) looks the part when her hair is brown! I like her as a fancast for 616 Emily.
But ya know what, if someone came to me and was all like, “We’re remaking the Raimi Spider-Man movies and Emily Lyman will appear in the flesh this time, who would you cast?” I would TOTALLY cast the now 42-year-old Kirsten Dunst because of how much a delicious mindfuck that would be
My problem with Emily Osborn/Lyman being revealed to have been alive all along is not so much the fact that she abandoned her baby son in the custody of an abuser whilst letting him believe she’d died. Yay for toxic female characters.
It’s more that this was not remotely treated with the weight it deserved when it could have been the perfect opportunity to explore her personality and relationship with Norman as well as delve deeper into Harry’s pre-established abandonment issues. Emily’s reintroduction should have added new fuel to the ever so compelling fire of Osborn Family Drama but alas, it did not and Harry shrugged off learning one of the most fucked up facts about his already deeply fucked up little life.
Congratulations! You brought this character who was practically just a concept into the story and you did it with a bang by establishing glaring faults counter to the bland saintlike perception everyone previously had of her while also granting her added complexity by having her try to iron out her previous wrongs! Now actually commit to giving her depth and let her impact things, please.
hellllllll yeah!! emily green goblin has also been on my mind a lot lol. ive been doing some sketches to try to figure out what she looks like based on the one crusty jpeg painting of her from the raimi movies. i dont know what im doing but its fun to play around with
If you’ve been around my fanfiction for long enough, you might remember Faith In Humanity, my 30-odd chapter ode to the Spider-Man verse and the original trilogy in particular. Among the main characters was Emily, Harry’s late mother. Back then (this was the ’00s) she didn’t have a surname or much characterisation at all really. She was essentially the founding member of my Dead Fictional Mothers Club. I was fascinated by how heroes and protagonists never had mothers. Why were they always the ones to die?
So imagine how gleeful I was to realise that in the comics she is now not dead! It happened ages ago, but I only heard about it now. It’s funny, she looks exactly how I imagined her.
And the dyamic between her and Norman (he’s red now, whattya know) is pretty much how I always thought it would be. I love this panel here:
She’s finally got a last name, Lyman. Harry has it too now! And all the Osborn-Lymans (Norman 100% does not count) have gotten to be together:
And I don’t know what happens after this particular story. I know Harry, rather understandably, refuses to call her ‘mom’. But hey! She’s alive!
I’ll always love Harry and the Osborn story. This new (uh, new-ish) development is so pleasing to me, you have no idea. (Emily also features quite a lot in the new Spider-Man game, which is also very pleasing to me, although she’s definitely dead in that one.)
An idea that won’t leave my head: in some far-off uncharted corner of the Marvel world, Emily Lyman cheats on her abusive husband with a strange man who claims to be an alien. Maybe he can help her leave Norman, she thinks, but he doesn’t. Through what seems like no fault of his own, he leaves her alone and pregnant. Luckily, Norman never suspects that the baby isn’t his.
Emily gives birth, names the child Harry and promises she’ll do the best she can for him. But, when Harry is still an infant, she’s stricken down with cancer. She dies in despair, but clinging to a shred of hope that Harry’s real father will reappear one day and take Harry away from Norman. But Ego – for it was Ego – is of course far from the man Emily thought he was. He never loved Emily and won’t love her son.
By the time Yondu comes to pick the eight-year-old Harry up, he already knows in his gut that something’s terribly wrong with Ego’s planet. He looks at Harry, looks at Norman, looks back on his memories of the last couple of kids he delivered, and thinks “fuck this”.
Suddenly, Harry Osborn is a space pirate under Yondu. A couple of years later he gains a brother called Peter. (He likes that name. He had a childhood friend with that name.) What’s going to happen next? What has the universe got in store for him? Harry doesn’t know, but he’s kind of glad about the way things turned out.
“I am guessing it did not go well, dear?” her mother asked as she tutted about, setting up the table for dinner.
Beverly’s lip tightened. “We invited him weeks ago, no answer. I call the day before, and he refuses. He acts like he’s the only one affected by Emily’s death.”
Beverly’s mom, Elisabeth, merely shook her head. “Being married does odd things to you, dear. You feel like they are the other half of your soul. You will understand one day.”
Folding her arms, Beverly privately thought that she wouldn’t. She never understood why sloppy kisses at the end of dates sounded appealing. Being with friends or family had so much more warmth.
“I just wish I could at least see little Harry. He was the light of Emily’s life!”
Elisabeth paused. “I would like to see my grandson as well. Maybe at Christmas.”
