If the superhero comics of the past century — and the various movies, television shows, video games, and radio plays inspired by them — have taught us anything, it's that even the most brooding crime fighters don't work alone. Across years and years of stories, superheroes (and even supervillains) have developed their own ensembles of side characters, whether in the form of friends, family members, coworkers, or love interests. While that concept has had a wild trajectory of its own in the comics (there are multiple instances of creators killing off or banishing a book's supporting cast for the sake of "reinvention"), it hasn't always effectively made its way onto the screen, with some adaptations of the past few decades boiling down any secondary characters into some combination of predictable tropes, cannon fodder, and other unrelated costumed characters.