Mary Jane actor Shailene Woodley has finally opened up on why she was cut from The Amazing Spider-Man, despite filming multiple scenes with Andrew Garfield

“I was cast as Mary Jane for [The Amazing Spider-Man 2], which was my dream because Spider-Man’s my favorite hero. Mary Jane was my favorite character growing up,” Woodley said during a career retrospective with SAG-AFTRA.

“When I got it, I was like, ‘This is so exciting.’ We filmed like three scenes together, me and Andrew Garfield.”

Woodley, then, was seemingly set to be a pretty significant character in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which saw Garfield’s Spidey face down Jamie Foxx’s Electro and Dane DeHaan’s Green Goblin. But the fallout from the death of Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy meant they didn’t want to introduce an iconic love interest in the same movie – with plans afoot for the character to instead debut in The Amazing Spider-Man 3, a film that was never put into production.

“Then a year later they were like, ‘So, you’re not in the movie anymore. We’ve introduced a lot of new characters in this last one… let’s wait for [Emma Stone’s Gwen Stacy] to die and then we’ll introduce Mary Jane. Which made sense, but then they didn’t make [The Amazing Spider-Man 3]. They thought it would be weird to introduce a new love interest.”

The Amazing Spider-Man 3 is one of Sony’s big what-ifs. A threequel was planned, with another removed scene – a post-credits scene involving Norman Osborn’s head in a box (via CBR) – also left on the cutting room floor in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Garfield, of course, would go on to reprise his role in multiverse movie Spider-Man: No Way Home. The franchise as a whole is currently in rude health, thanks to Tom Holland’s take on the character breaking all sorts of box office records with Brand New Day.

For more, swing on over to our ranking of the best Spider-Man movies.