I think I’d have to add this to the discussion - the popularity and proliferation of
high school Spider-Man alongside the continued appearances of older married Spider-man might have seriously altered the “eternal” view of Spidey.
If you want a Spidey who’s “young,” youthful, a “kid,” etc... then are you going to show a guy who graduated college? Or are you going to show a kid who in high school or just reaching college age?
Similarly, if you want a Spidey who’s post-college, even if he’s still
something of a young adult... then are you looking forward to that dude being an unlucky single guy? Or has comics, games, tv shows, and movies now prepared you to think that Spidey is automatically going to have a de-facto “supreme love interest”/wife?
I genuinely think the audience has started to have (the first) Ultimate Spider-Man, Spectacular Spider-Man, and the MCU Spider-Man’s idea of “young” Peter as a high schooler and teenager replace the 70’s-to-80’s idea of “young” Peter being a college student or graduate who’s single, with a post-college Peter
always expected to have MJ eventually become his confidante and monogamous life-partner.
The College and post-College single days have slowly become a clear
transitional period in pop culture, rather than his “prime” or “classic” form. Even the first two Sony movie series and the classic 90s cartoon
set in his college years have inadvertently helped with that, since their finite timelines meant that they either had to approach major changes in Peter’s personal life, or risk making the audience get sick of their repetitions in those areas (Spider-Man 3.)
Now, don’t get me wrong; I definitely see how high school Peter’s resurgence and rise in importance to pop culture has reinforced the idea of him as a young, single unlucky dude... but by the same token, that also leads to people expecting him to
grow into an adult in most successful variation son his story, with the next “oasis of stability” being him married as a snarky but experienced hero.
It’s a sort of contradictory trick to the franchise that Marvel editorial probably hates, but smart movie makers and cartoon creators like - a successful Spider-Man is expected to
start as “unlucky youth personified”, but hang around their too long, and the audience will get bored or irritated, and expect change.
That’s part of the reason the next MCU entry is so interesting - if they do bring Zendaya back, you can probably bet that the storyline will have her MJ rediscover who Peter is, use the drama from her anger at having his promise to her broken about reconnecting to fuel some turmoil... but likely have them emerge as an even more fiercely connected couple at the end of it. Hell, I wouldn’t be shocked if some of Marvel editorial staff are personally sort of hoping Zendaya and Holland break up, since that might prevent MCU Spidey from having a brutally short existence at their preferred “classic” status quo for him as single and unlucky, even if the MCU version remained unlucky in everything else but love.