Rosalie Octavius

Rosalie “Rosie” Octavius is a fictional character portrayed by Donna Murphy in Spider-Man 2 (2004). She is the wife and colleague of Otto Octavius. Created by and for the Sam Raimi [https://en.m. .org/w/index.php?titleSpider-Man_(2002_film_series)&redirectno Spider-Man film trilogy], Spider-Man 2 marks her one and only appearance in the Marvel universe.
Characterisation
Besides Aunt May and a woman named Mary Alice Anders, Rosie is one of Otto Octavius’ only canonical love interests.
Rosie, as a character, serves as a plot device: to reinforce Octavius’ credibility as a mentor and role model to Peter Parker, particularly when asking for dating advice: and to die, to make Octavius’ post-incident motivation for his project a more emotionally-driven and sympathetic one.
Rosie’s diminished character presence and death bear resemblance to a popular literary trope known as Women In Refrigerators, a trend in fiction which involves the death or harm of female characters as a motivator for the male protagonists. Other characters in the franchise, such as Gwen Stacy, have sparked debate on the reliance on this trope and its impact on female-centric narratives.
Character biography
In the film, during a conversation about Peter Parker’s struggle to pursue Mary-Jane, Rosie expresses that upon meeting Otto she knew that their relationship would take work, due to their academic differences (with Rosie studying English, and Otto studying Physics) and their personal ones, but have since grown and bonded over their differences and embraced each other’s interests. This is shown by Otto’s interest in poetry - notably in T.S. Eliot - and his recommendation to use it to get closer to Mary-Jane, and Rosie’s role in Otto’s work as a collaborator and lab assistant.
Rosie’s work as Otto’s assistant results in her death due to the malfunctioning of his fusion reactor, after the magnetic field buckles the frames of a window, with the glass pane shattering, the shards fly into her face and kill her instantly.

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