Tom Holland says that Marvel Universe needs to represent ‘more than straight white guys’

The Spider-Man: Far from Home actor also teased that queer Marvel superheroes are on their way

Spider-Man star Tom Holland has said that the future of the Marvel Universe will need to include greater representation in terms of race, gender and sexuality.

“The world isn’t as simple as a straight white guy,” the actor told the Sunday Times. “It doesn’t end there, and these films need to represent more than one type of person.”

Holland also suggested that Marvel is already actively planning to include further representation and diversity in its forthcoming films, and said that a possible queer superhero is likely.

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “I can’t talk about the future of the [Spider-Man] character because honestly I don’t know and it’s out of my hands. But I do know a lot about the future of Marvel, and they are going to be representing lots of different people in the next few years.”

Marvel boss Kevin Feige revealed earlier this year that the company intended to introduce further queer characters in future films, after receiving backlash for heavily-publicised but ultimately minor or non-existent queer representation in recent Marvel movies.

An allusion to a character’s bisexuality was removed from the final cut of Thor: Ragnarok, while a scene depicting a gay man mourning his dead husband in Avengers: Endgame was derided upon release due to its brevity. Particularly after the film’s directors Joe and Anthony Russo heavily teased the scene as groundbreaking.

“That was never meant to be our first focused character,” Feige told io9. “It was never meant to be looked at as our first hero. I guess it’s the first reference so it does, of course, get a lot of attention… We haven’t been shy about saying that [representation] is coming and that there’s many more prominent LGBT heroes in the future.”