YMMV / The Unbelievable Gwenpool

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Regarding Gwen herself, especially with her flippant attitude regarding the lives of unimportant "background" characters. Is she right about them and a good person trying to use what she knows to survive in a new and dangerous world? Or is she becoming a villain whose knowledge of comic book tropes has given her the delusional belief that she is, at worst, an anti-hero?
    • The comic itself notes that the latter interpretation is perfectly valid, and even makes it a central plot point from issue 18 onward.
  • After seeing Gwen's old life in issues 16 and 17, people have been wondering how her life got so bad, why she dropped out of school, and why she struggles. A lot of people have come to the conclusion that Gwen suffered from an undiagnosed mental disorder or illness, like depression. Considering her issues are largely absent in the main Marvel universe, and a throwaway line establishes that her lactose intolerance was cured when coming into the comic book world, another popular theory is that her depression was also removed.
• Broken Base:
  • Gwenpool Strikes Back. Was it a fun, offbeat miniseries that managed to pull off a great twist showed that writer Leah Williams really did understand and respect the character, and ended on a clever, positive note that ensured Gwen succeeded in having a bright future in the Marvel universe? Or was it an irritating ride that forsook everything that fans liked about Gwenpool for the sake of that Sad Clown twist, with the ending where Gwen seemingly becomes a mutant due to Kamala Khan inadvertently rewriting her backstory also retroactively cheapening her powerset?
  • Love Unlimited: Gwenpool is highly contentious with Gwen fans. Some people enjoy Marvel focusing on aromantic and asexual representation, while others feel it's completely out of character for Gwen given she's been shown to have multiple crushes, has behaved hypersexually, has had Word of God confirmed crushes on several heroes, and even previously labeled herself bisexual, feeling the arc should have been given to a different character.
• Common Knowledge: Despite being a blonde named Gwen, Gwenpool is not an alternate version of Gwen Stacy like Spider-Gwen. Her name actually is Gwen Poole^note Her full name is Gwendolyn Poole. the misconception stems from the character originating as this in her first appearance on a Deadpool "Gwen Stacy" variant cover, which in turn was a part of a series of Gwen variants released in response to Spider-Gwen's sudden popularity, before later being given a proper origin. Various portrayals of Spider-Gwen going on to sport this character's pink highlights in Marvel Rising, Spidey and His Amazing Friends, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse doesn't help. It is even lampshaded on one occasion, with Deadpool using this to mock Gwen during a fight.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Gwenpool herself, downplayed, where due to all the other interpretations of her by different writers and series being much more violent and aggressive end up making the original Gwenpool look tame in comparison and while she's very emotionally vulnerable and cute a lot of people end up forgetting that she can be violent and dangerous herself.
• Epileptic Trees: How Gwen got into the Marvel universe isn't revealed, but there are a lot of fan theories about it. The first one is that she's physically ill and sees herself as a burden to her parents (due to her canon acceptance of her being erased from her parents' memories) and that her adventures are just escapist daydreams where she can avoid the trappings of reality. The other, much darker theory is that she's part of a Make a Wish Foundation deal, and was a dying girl who was written into the comics.
  • It seemed these theories were jossed in issue 16 when Gwen's home life was revealed, but then issue 20 strongly implies that even the back story of the fake dimension was fake and that Gwen no longer remembers her old life.
  • Oh worse, the Nightmare Fuel entry about the issue implies that she could be somehow you, the reader. That's This Loser Is You on some brand new levels.
  • Christopher Hastings, in the final issue, effectively proclaims that it really was you the reader, who brought her in, but not the way you thought — she came to the Marvel Universe because people loved her since that gag cover on Deadpool's Secret Secret Wars all those years ago.
  • The issue becomes irrelevant after Gwenpool Strikes Back, in which Gwen self-retcons herself as being a mutant with reality-warping powers who always lived in the Marvel universe, but the trauma of having her powers emerge caused her to repress her "true" memories and form the belief she's from the real world.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Hard to point one since all the characters in Gwenpool are incredibly fun but Batroc and The Terrible Eye are probably the most beloved by fans.
  • The comic itself is this to the "All-New, All-Different"/"Legacy" era of Marvel, almost everyone who can let pass the fact that the sole reason the comic exists is for an Ascended Meme finds out that is pretty entertaining.
  • Gwen's pet baby land shark Jeff seems to be the most triumphant example of this after Gwen herself. Even after Gwen stopped appearing in comics regularly, Jeff would end up appearing regularly, first with Elsa Bloodstone, and shortly after with Deadpool. He even ended up getting his own series on Marvel Unlimited, It's Jeff.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Gwenpool Strikes Back ends with Gwen joining Krakoa as a mutant, supposedly unlocking a new world of stories. So far, very little has come of this other than a few one-page cameos. It seems more like Gwen has fallen into the fate of any other non-a-list mutant: Background filler. Her struggles to get a new book are even lampshaded in Hellfire Gala by Jordan D. White himself.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why did Ronnie design Gwen's suit with no legs? As she said herself the shade of pink used is both very specific and unpopular so she likely couldn't make legs with the supply she had.
  • Becomes double-brilliance when Ronnie, likely pestered by Gwen, gets a much larger supply of pink fabric. Then Gwen comes into possession of an army of mooks and commissions Ronnie to dress them all in Gwenpool uniforms. Ronnie runs out of pink again and nobody gets leg coverings.
  • Gwen having never read Deadpool makes sense since if she had she would have seen herself on a variant cover.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Gwen's quite popular in Japan due to her cuteness, the book's artwork, and because breaking the fourth wall is a popular concept over there. Gwen's even gotten exclusive merchandise overseas. Ironically, Gurihiru, the main artists of the book, once said that they couldn't find a lot of work in Japan because their style was too "Western."
• Growing the Beard: Gwen's first appearances in Howard the Duck shows the character as little more than a shallow self-insert character, facing no consequences for her actions and acting like an Alternate Company Equivalent to Harley Quinn. But when she is forced to work for MODOK, who out of universe is regarded as a joke by casual fans but can be really powerful in-universe, she starts to learn the consequences of being the protagonist of a superhero comic and her story gains a lot more depth.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A lot of humour, particularly from Gwen's guest appearances in other stories, comes from Gwen's constant screw-ups, or how much people dislike her. Not so funny once we learn her backstory, and see that she was a cynical NEET who lost all hope in herself, saw herself as a major screw-up, and had a strained relationship with her parents. The same things that were jokes earlier are actually things that hurt her enough to make her abandon her family and go to another world.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • After Gwen has a small breakdown in issue 20, she goes to Terrible Eyes for comfort and calls the latter "her best friend". After that, she makes amends with Miles Morales and promises him that she will be a full-on hero from now on.
  • The final issue. Lost and ready to cross the Despair Event Horizon, she's confronted by an older Gwenpool who helps her through this moment by explaining it's not the end at all, giving her a few extra adventures with other characters, including teaming up with Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man, Silk and Miles Morales and befriending a little girl who was a fan of hers... but saving her from a bunch of bullies with Fing Fang Foom.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A future Gwen tries to console our Gwen about cancellation, saying that a future writer could put her on the Great Lakes Avengers. Gwen did end up on an Avengers gag team, but a different one.
  • Kamala Khan is the one who gives Gwen the idea to retcon herself into being a mutant so she can live on Krakoa, a few years later Kamala is retconned into being a mutant and moves to Krakoa.
• Jerkass Woobie: Gwen. Painfully lonely, trapped in a world not her own, surviving on pure luck, so it's not hard feeling sorry for her... unfortunately this brings out her worst sociopathic tendencies, so she would probably kill you for it.
• Les Yay: Several of her interactions with other female superheroes have her coming off like a lovestruck teen trying to be The Casanova. Especially with Kamala Khan.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • The cover of #1 shows Gwen unmasking Spider-Man in public. In the actual issue, she only takes his mask off for a split second and most of the surrounding civilians didn't see his face. The one guy who did promises not to tell.
  • Quentin didn't quite buy Gwen's spur-of-the-moment text message break-up.
• Memetic Loser: Even among her fans, she's a huge Butt-Monkey. This largely stems from her being nowhere near as strong as many of the heroes she meets. The fact that she's often drawn with a flat butt has also reached Memetic Mutation, along with parodies about her trying (and failing) to be sexy.
  • It has been more or less confirmed in-universe that despite being a meta character brought from the real world she's the biggest victim of the fictional universe screw ups.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Is fucking Bendis writing this?" ^explanationThis comes from an exchange in the Rocket Raccoon and Groot: Civil War II tie-in, where an exasperated Gwen wonders why Kitty Pryde is in the area. This panel is often used as a reaction image to insult Bendis books.
  • "We never left the Comic"◊. ^explanationThe final page of issue #18 gained popularity, due to how exploitable it is. The most common edits involve Gwen tearing the page and showing another version of herself.
  • Teddy's attempts to bring Gwen back home to her family and his Only Sane Man treatment of being in a comic book has led to people comparing him to Marche, usually with an image of him delivering Marche's own memetic line about escapism being unhealthy.
  • When the book was announced to be ending at the same time as America (2017), tons of people made jokes about Gwen sacrificing herself to kill that comic.
• Never Live It Down: Gwen was never a selfie-obsessed millennial, and took one selfie during her own story, in order to confirm a kill for her client. The earliest use of her taking a selfie and hashtagging only came from a Howard the Duck cover. Still, nearly all other Marvel properties (such as several figures, crossovers, guest appearances and video games) show Gwen taking selfies all the time.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Gwen's appearances when not written by Christopher Hastings are often criticized for making her dumb and annoying rather than naïve and endearing.
  • For some, West Coast Avengers came close to being seen as managing to be a faithful depiction, but others decry this incarnation to be too similar to her "Howard the Duck" persona, with other complains being that Gwenpool was surrounded by heroes but barely reacts to it. And then she starts having an active romantic relationship.
  • Gwenpool Strikes Back is quite divisive in that regard, approved by some (including Chris Hastings) while others found Leah Williams' approach as Deadpool-esque 'LOL memes'. The final two issues would win over some detractors, thanks to its reveal that there was a narrative reason for Gwen's more maniac behavior, but not all were convinced. There's also controversy over the Hotter and Sexier elements of the miniseries (most obviously, Gwen spending most of the second half of it in a two-piece bathing costume), with some fans accepting it but others viewing it as encouraging creepy middle-aged fanboys to letch over a barely-legal Manic Pixie Dream Girl.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: A small example. Gwen was a majorly divisive character, as many people outside of her fanbase found her annoying, or thought she was just a gimmick character. After issue 16 showed her backstory and revealed her to have a pretty grounded and relatable backstory as an aimless, discouraged older teen, she slowly became a fan favorite. It helps that the issues surrounding this reveal had her deal with real-life problems and struggles, which made her more liked.
• Rooting for the Empire: A lot of fans found themselves rooting for the evil future Gwen and wanted to see her succeed in turning our Gwen evil. The evil Gwen is fun, powerful, sexy, and is offering Gwen near-ultimate power without (permanently) hurting anyone. While our Gwen ultimately refuses to torture people she cares about, fans thought that her becoming this awesome character would be a great twist of events. This type of reaction generally comes from people who missed that Gwen supposed to be a self insert character and horrifies those who didn't.
• Sacred Cow: The original run, it comes to the point people will criticize any other series featuring Gwenpool BEFORE they come out, just for not being written by Hastings, even with his blessing.
  • On a minor note, Gwen herself, like when she's being written more mean than usual or specially romantically active where, despite the original run never mentioning Gwen to be chaste or asexual, since it didn't portray any romance the fans will take any hint of a relationship as a Romantic Plot Tumor.
  • In 2023, Gwenpool was confirmed asexual, but true to it's Sacred Cow status, many people were mad, claiming that just because the original plot lacked romance or sex, doesn't mean Gwenpool must be asexual, and that it's a shallow way to justify not having sex/romance in your story, and that implies that a story must have otherwise.
  • In general, any deviation from the formula that made the original so "perfect" will be considered a step down.
• Spiritual Adaptation: A Trapped in TV Land action-comedy about a young fan who gets sucked into the world of their favorite action-packed media franchise and uses their Genre Savvy to subvert the cliches and fight the villains? Barring the Gender Flip of the protagonist and it being about superheroes instead of '80s action movies, this is the best comic book adaptation of Last Action Hero ever made.
• Vindicated by History:
  • Fan initial reactions to Gwen were mixed, with the usual calls of pandering and selling out being slung. Some saw her as just Marvel trying to create an Alternate Company Equivalent of Harley Quinn, but after her first issue, many stated that they were surprised out how well written and thoughtful the comic was and are optimistic for the future. Also, the reason Gwenpool was created at all was because of how popular the Gwenpool variant cover was with Cosplayers, so there was a demand.
• The Woobie: Teddy, Gwen's brother from the real world. He travels with her to the Marvel Universe, but while Gwen becomes a mercenary, Teddy spends his time scared out of his wits. He comes close to dying on multiple occasions, can't hold a job because he has no ID, becomes homeless, and is forced to do warehouse work for a villain. When he finally does see his sister again, he's horrified to see her ruthlessly gun down a group of men. And then learns that in the future she becomes even worse, with even her friends wanting to escape from her due to her ability to seemingly manipulate reality itself. All of his effort to bring his sister back to the real world winds up being for naught, and it's implied that he's failed to save her multiple times. And then he learns that the "real world" is, in fact, just another comic book world. Even worse, the final issue reveals that when he disappeared again he ended up in Hell.

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