Across The Spider-Verse: Why Each Disrupted Canon Event Is Dangerous To Spider-Man
Every great superhero needs to have an iconic backstory, and often these origins are tangled in a web of tragedy. Batman watches his parents die, Superman is the sole survivor of his home planet, and, of course, Spider-Man loses his Uncle Ben to a senseless tragedy after a run-in with a local criminal. Except, what if these tragedies didn't occur? Would our heroes still be who they are?
This is the question at the center of "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse." Does tragedy create the hero, or is the hero here to prevent as much tragedy as possible for themselves and for others? While Miguel O'Hara, a.k.a. Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac), argues that these tragic events must occur to preserve the timeline and motivate each Spidey to save others, Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) clearly disagrees.
Still, according to the Spider-Society leader in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," these canon events must occur, or all of reality is in jeopardy across every dimension. Case in point, the spider who bit Miles is actually from a different world than his and was meant to bite Peter Parker in that reality. Not only that, but this disruption from the first film is the central cause of the interdimensional rift that now threatens everything.
The canon events tie the web of continuity together
As Miguel explains in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," canon events are pivotal enough to each version of Spidey that they must be allowed to happen, or the fabric of reality itself will start to fall away as a result. These events include the losses of important people that help to inspire each version of the hero and the events that lead up to each web-slinger gaining their powers in the first place.
In Miles' case, one of these events is the upcoming loss of his father, Jefferson Davis (Brian Tyree Henry). However, as he did with Spider-Man India (Karan Soni), Miles intends to upset the apple cart in this particular instance, and he's now got a whole crew of rogue Spideys behind him who are also intent on disrupting the timeline.
Perhaps it's fitting that they're being led by Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) at the moment as, by confessing her secret identity to her police captain father, she seems to have inadvertently saved his life. Now, with Miles and Gwen united in the interest of saving their police captain fathers from certain death, whether this will spell doom for the Spider-Verse or save it is the big question that now hangs over the trilogy.
In this same regard, whether Miles can truly fill the boots of the Spider-Man (Chris Pine) who died as a result of his creation will likely be the defining point of the third film, "Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse," when it releases in the spring of 2024.