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Things are really coming together for Sony’s Spider-man reboot.

We have Marc Webb as director, Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-man, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey, Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben, Sally Field as Aunt May, Rhys Ifans as the unnamed villain...

But the film still feels like it’s missing someone important…

Mary Jane Watson, Spider-man’s main squeeze will NOT be appearing in the 2012 reboot of the series according to reports.

The character, central to Peter Parker’s life in the comicbooks was expected to be cast at some point in the next few weeks, but according to a source close to The Wrap the character does not appear in James Vanderbilt’s screenplay and never did come to that.

In the long running comicbook series, Mary Jane Watson (known more commonly as MJ) does not appear until later down the line, up until her appearance, which was a running joke of the series, was Peter dodging his Aunt May’s attempts to “set him up with that nice girl next door”. Peter was convinced she would not be his type seeing as his Aunt May was so keen on her. Eventually appearing in November 1966, the character was instantly popular after uttering the now famous line “face it tiger, you just hit the jackpot”.

MJ had to compete for Peter’s affections, most commonly against Gwen Stacey and The Black Cat.

So can we expect MJ to make an appearance in the sequel? Probably.

If this series is following the comics more closely than the original trilogy then Gwen Stacey may not be a permanent fixture, meaning that eventually a Mary Jane-sized gap will appear in proceedings.

Until then we all have Emma Stone as Gwen Stacey to look forward to!