Why Everyone You Know Is Posting ‘He Was In the Amazon With My Mom When She Was Researching Spiders Right Before She Died’

If you are one of the unfortunates who still opens Twitter—sorry, X—on a not-irregular basis, you will encounter a curious phenomenon. (If you are not, you are indeed fortunate.) Twitter feeds across the globe are, right this very moment, featuring a plethora of pictures and text, with some of that text reading: “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.” Curious! Awkward! Definitely a way that people speak! A situation one often encounters! What’s going on here?

Gentle reader, if you’ve made it this far, it’s because you’re genuinely wondering and blissfully unaware of why so many people are typing the phrase “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.” I wish to be in your shoes. Since I am in my own socks, I will seek to end the mystery. The sentence entered our English orbit on Wednesday, November 15th, 2023, a day that shall live in movie dialogue head-scratching history. This declaration about a man in the Amazon with someone’s spider-studying mother right before she died was spoken by Dakota Johnson’s character Cassandra Webb in the first trailer for Sony’s superhero movie Madame Web. She is speaking about a mysterious man who was, we believe, in the Amazon with her mother, who was researching spiders, right before she died.

Though a lot of things happen in the Madame Web trailer, it’s Johnson’s delivery that made the leap to social media and became a meme. As Tom Ley writes in Defector, tongue firmly in cheek, “[T]he trailer features what might be the best line read in cinema history.” Don’t just take our word for it:

Why has this line, of all lines, struck such a chord? Well, we’re all extremely tired, for one thing, and need something to laugh about on this flaming putrescent planet. The grammatical and over-the-top dramatic twists and turns of “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died” appear to bring together, in one sentence, everything that feels overdone about superhero movies and the scripts that somehow make it to screen with millions of dollars behind them. And Johnson sounds about as dead inside as the rest of us as she makes her declaration. Also, it’s just fun to say and write and think about. Try it! “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.” Didn’t you feel your brain magically blink offline for a moment, all other cares forgotten?

Now folks on Twitter/X are running wild with the line, adding it to photos unrelated to Madame Web that further serve to underscore the absurdity of the whole thing.

Of course there is the odd person out there who is genuinely devoted to the comics lore and is taking the line for what it’s worth. Sorry about the rest of us.

Because the majority of social media denizens have devolved into the realm of the absurd.

Surely, no one involved in the business of marketing superhero films predicted that of all the moments in the busy Madame Web trailer, the one that would make even more people aware that a movie called Madame Web exists was the delivery of “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.” But I have a feeling they’ll take what they can get.

Happy He Was In the Amazon With My Mom When She Was Researching Spiders Right Before She Died Day! Everything is fine.

(image: Sony Pictures)

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Kaila Hale-Stern

Kaila Hale-Stern (she/her) is a content director, editor, and writer who has been working in digital media for more than fifteen years. She started at TMS in 2016. She loves to write about TV—especially science fiction, fantasy, and mystery shows—and movies, with an emphasis on Marvel. Talk to her about fandom, queer representation, and Captain Kirk. Kaila has written for io9, Gizmodo, New York Magazine, The Awl, Wired, Cosmopolitan, and once published a Harlequin novel you'll never find.

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