The aunt who raised him, who found out by walking in at the wrong moment, and who kept him honest about what the job was for.
May Parker is Peter’s aunt and Ben Parker’s widow, played by Marisa Tomei, and the first screen version of the character to find out on her own that her nephew is Spider-Man: she walks into his room and he is in the suit, which no previous screen version of her had done. This one knows from the end of the first film, and it changes what she is for. She is not a secret to be kept from; she is the person who asks what he is doing it for.
The Blip takes her in 2018 and returns her in 2023, in time for Tony Stark’s funeral. After that she starts seeing Happy Hogan, and she works at the F.E.A.S.T. shelter, which is where the third film finds her.
Minor spoiler
When villains from other universes arrive, May takes in Norman Osborn at the shelter and then helps Peter bring the others to Happy’s apartment to be cured. Osborn’s other self, the Green Goblin, takes over, persuades most of the visitors to refuse their cures, and starts a fight in the apartment. May is impaled by his glider. She tells the grieving Peter that with great power there must also come great responsibility, and dies.
Brand New Day brings her back once, inside a memory Peter shares with Jean Grey.
Show detailsAn animated May
A different May, voiced by Kari Wahlgren, appears in the animated Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which is set in a universe of its own. This catalogue does not count animated variants for live-action characters.