It does seem like there has been a large cultural shift towards anti-woke sentiment in creative industries as of late. With a buzzword as hard to pin down as woke, though, it seems a few have their own definitions of it, meaning it's difficult to understand what Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man star exactly means when he said he feared the series would be woke.
"I mean, my biggest fear was that it was gonna be annoying and woke," Hudson Thames told Collider. "And it wasn't, and I was like, 'Yes, this is great, it's so well written,' like it feels real. I'm the oldest of five boys, so I feel like I kind of know what's happening in their lives and in high school, and it felt like it was doing that justice."
Thames co-star Colman Domingo has been criticised for playing Norman Osborne, a character that is usually white in the comics. Harry Osborne will also be black in the series, which some may consider woke. But, when we remember that Nick Fury's most-popular incarnation is still Samuel L. Jackson, despite the character being white in the comics, it appears it's easy to forget how we used to take such casting choices in our stride, without having a select loud few throw their toys out of the pram.