Xiomara Maribel Cortés Solano M.D., F.A.C.S., known colloquially as Xo, is a researcher, and pediatric surgeon with board certifications in fetal surgery. She is currently the Chief of Pediatric Surgery at Metro-General Hospital in New York.
Born of Captain Javier Solano Fortis, an NYPD police captain, and Julieta Cortés de Solano, a former U.S. Navy nurse, and an OR scrub nurse, Xiomara was raised in a comfortable but stringent lifestyle in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York with her older brother, Victor Solano.
Xiomara is bilingual; she was raised speaking English and Spanish and was nicknamed "Marita" within her family. As a young girl, her maternal grandfather passed away and while she was too young to understand the significance of death, Xiomara marked a particular change in her mother that festered as the years went by.
Raised devoutly Catholic, she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls private school in an accelerated program. Like her older brother Victor, Xiomara was raised on the notion that school and family come before all else, encouraging a distinguished academic career. However, the Solano family's pragmatic and emotionally distant patterns have sunk into individual dynamics, such as that of Xiomara and her mother, Julieta, and, for most of her childhood, her relationship with her brother.
With a nine-year age difference between them and Victor's military deployment during her teenage years, Xiomara has never felt like her brother was something more than an entity who understood how cold their mother's womb was. Coupled with a subconscious estrangement fostered by the fact that Xiomara was Javier's only daughter and his soft spot, while Julieta consistently favored and made excuses for her eldest child, Victor, both siblings developed a streak of competition that earned the Solano family a formidable reputation. However, as they matured they rekindled their relationship to that of familiarity, but not quite intimacy.
A prodigious child, Xiomara was a star student who participated in gymnastics and, at her father's behest, became proficient in the art of jiu-jitsu for self-defense. Her academic prowess was refined to the quality demanded for her early admittance into college and medical school at Columbia University. Being a very young admit in a competitive professional track and deprived of community and familial warmth, Xiomara's lonely upbringing continued to haunt her. Until the middle of medical school, where she would meet PhD-candidate and Alchemax protégé, Miguel O'Hara, at a party. Struck by the other's likenesses and intellectual distinction, the two would enjoy an intimate relationship where priorities were far and few. School, each other, and family.
But family would come and go, beginning with the death of Captain Solano following Xiomara's graduation from medical school. It was soon after, during her surgical internship, she discovered she was pregnant with Miguel's baby. Immediately following this reveal, the two were married. Xiomara was twenty-one, the same age as her mother when she first had a child.
But while love was mislaid between Julieta and Javier, it saw no end for Xiomara and Miguel. Despite the strenuous tugs of their fledgling yet rapidly growing careers and the obstacles that spring from the preparation of having a child, both continued to depend on each other for love and support, regardless of the opinions of their families. They welcomed a daughter named Gabriella O'Hara, in honor of Miguel's brother, Gabriel.
Xiomara proved to be an excellent doctor, brimming with potential to the point where she was spotted by the arrogant yet brilliant neurosurgeon, Doctor Stephen Strange. While unusual for Strange to take students under his wing, he saw Xiomara as a promising surgeon despite the challenges she faced involving her age, softer disposition, race, and motherhood. Their bond hits a bump, however, as Xiomara decides to specialize in pediatric surgery rather than neurosurgery as Strange hoped, with the latter pettily refusing to talk to her for a year. However, throughout their mentor-student relationship, Xiomara trusted Strange as a friend and family figure to appoint him as the godfather to her daughter.
To cope with stress, conflict, and anxious feelings, Xiomara bakes, her specialty being scones, brownies, and flan. She also has a hobby of knitting to improve her manual dexterity and to relax her. While she is a rather good cook, Xiomara is extremely territorial of her kitchen space, often refusing to let anyone enter while she is cooking.
Fresh off of completing an extremely competitive and extensive clinical and surgical fellowship in pediatrics, Xiomara soared up the rank of surgeons at Metro-General.
As a surgeon, spouse, and mother, Xiomara has struggled with balancing her familial and professional responsibilities. Deep down, she does not want to end up like her father—who consistently prioritized his police career and wishes—or her mother—who was essentially forced to submit to her husband and cater to his career demands. She was also terrified of the disintegration of her marriage, as Miguel began to ascend the ranks of genetic research at Alchemax and often undertook the child-care duties while she completed her residency and fellowships. The role-reversal of their marriage is one of the many criticisms exploited by Julieta, who believes Xiomara was selfish and neglectful of her young family. This has caused Xiomara to later regret her lack of involvement in her family affairs, despite her undeniable devotion and love for her family.
And the forgotten chain that links her with them, the common thread of death: the inheritance of grief.
One night, Xiomara suffers the brutal, sudden loss of her daughter and husband in a car accident. Though Gabriella was pronounced dead at the scene, Miguel was taken to Metro-General, where he was declared brain dead. Taken to the hospital, Xiomara consented to remove him from life support. Unable to move back in with her embittered mother, she forfeits the penthouse she shared with her family and moves to Soho.
Eventually, parallels show similarities in Xiomara and Julieta's lives: both have lost their fathers—prominent, short-tempered, and militaristic figures, both have married older men who resemble characteristics of said fathers, both had their first child at an early age, and both have lost their husbands... as well as their daughters.
But while Julieta's career growth was stunted, Xiomara's continued to flourish. She was appointed as Head of Pediatric Surgery and underwent a fetal surgery fellowship in the wake of her losses. Throwing in research in medical genetics, Xiomara quickly became, in Strange's perspective, "one of the best pediatric surgeons on the East Coast." Deeply empathetic and innovative, she has a rare and natural genius in the surgical field, resulting in national recognition and renown at a young age. A cheerful and confident advocate for her young patients, Xiomara has turned her pain into the drive to be a better doctor, even as the horrors of her life continue to bleed.
On one late, dark night after stopping for a pastry at a local shop, Xiomara is held at gunpoint by a young assailant in demand of her wedding ring. Refusing to give it up and attempting to reassure the nervous man, she is shot in the chaos. Though she lost a lot of blood, Xiomara is rushed to Metro-General, undergoing emergency surgery.
Following the shooting and her exceptionally rapid discharge, Xiomara wakes up in a cocoon of spider silk, discovering that the webbing has been expelled from her wrists. While psychologically recovering from her traumatic incident, she slowly discovers her enhanced abilities such as super-strength, agility, and a heightened sensory awareness. Though she tried to make the best of a highly unusual situation, Xiomara frequently experienced glitching, even during a surgical operation she was performing.
The answer to these bizarre occurrences comes to her when Miguel O'Hara A.K.A. Spider-Man 2099 meets the business end of her taser.
Taking her to his home dimension of Earth-928, Miguel explains to Xiomara that he transported himself to her world the night of her accident and donated the blood used in her life-saving transfusion. The enhanced sample manipulated her own genetic code in the process, subjecting her to many of the superhuman attributes that Miguel possesses.
While shaken by the manifestation of her dead husband and the sudden twist in her life, Xiomara is faced with the mantle of Spider-Woman that she is destined to bear. Miguel invites her to an elite strike force of Spider-People called The Spider-Society, appointing her as Director of Surgery and Chief Medical Officer, along with heading the genetics research he started in Alchemax.
Disagreeable at first, Xiomara eventually relents and begins her journey as the web-slinging superhero of Earth-501.