Spider-Noir Ending Explained

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Contains spoilers for "Spider-Noir" Season 1

The first season of "Spider-Noir" is an absolute triumph, with Nicolas Cage shining as grizzled, superpowered private eye Ben Reilly, who was once the vigilante known as The Spider. It's far closer in tone to Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" movie trilogy than you might expect, with Cage having the time of his life diving between slapstick comedy, over-the-top fight scenes, and dark storylines which could upset young fans hoping for a traditional superhero adventure. If you were disappointed by the Nicolas Cage "Ghost Rider" movies, then this series finally lives up to the bonkers potential of a Cage-led live action Marvel Comics adaptation.

If you've finished binging the show — perhaps once in black and white and again in true-hue color like us — then you'll be aware that the "Spider-Noir" season finale appears to neatly tie up all the loose threads from the season, wiping the slate clean in case the Amazon Prime Video series doesn't get picked up for more installments and this winds up being a one-and-done affair. However, that doesn't mean there's nothing to break down when it comes to the ending of "Spider-Noir." And, if you look closely enough, you'll notice that the door has been left ajar with some tantalizing teases of the cases Ben and co. could be taking on next.

Around the midway point of the season, we're introduced to Dr. Faber (Amy Aquino), who Ben Reilly theorizes is activating the latent mutations we've seen from the crop of soldiers experimented upon during WWI. It turns out she's doing this to save her own son, who has rapidly aged despite still being in his mid-30s. After kidnapping and drugging Ben, she discovers his DNA holds the cure and saves her son — but she refuses to save Ben, just after he discovered that it was Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li) who turned him in due to her desperation to find a cure for Flint Marko (Jack Huston).

As this happens, the report by Robbie Robertson (Lamorne Morris) makes front page news in the Daily Bugle, and Silvermane's (Brendan Gleeson) cronies Flint, Lonnie (Abraham Popoola), and Dirk (Andrew Lewis Caldwell) head to the lab, setting it alight and killing the scientist. Ben has gone into hiding by this point but has taken enough samples of the antidote to neutralize the three villains and then remove his own powers. Ben is talked out of taking the antidote (because "with no power comes no responsibility") and successfully injects Lonnie, who leaves town. With this news, both the mayor and Silvermane desperately need The Spider on their side.

Ben's own powers haven't come back after being drugged, and prior to being taken to Silvermane's hideout, he concocts an elaborate plan with Robbie where the reporter pretends to be The Spider to deliver an antidote, which the mob boss doesn't want his lackeys to receive. Ben's powers come back quickly enough to web-sling the vials back into his hands, which is when all hell breaks loose. During Ben's extended fight with the villains, Flint and Dirk christen themselves Sandman and Megawatt.

Before this, the rivalry between Cat and Silvermane had grown tenser, with the mobster threatening to kill her if Ben didn't out himself as The Spider in that moment. She confesses to having ordered a hit on him and having told the mayor of his illicit booze delivery to try and save Flint from falling further into the underworld. Robbie arrives before her fate is sealed — after the fight, she successfully corners Silvermane in a hall of mirrors and kills him. With one threat down elsewhere, Ben's powers go limp again as he takes to the streets to fight Sandman and Megawatt. He slings the latter in front of a train. With only one dose of the antidote left, he gives it to Sandman, who reassumes his civilian identity as Flint and runs off with Cat.

Months later, Ben meets up with the couple and confesses that he's still not forgiven the femme fatale for revealing his identity to Dr. Faber and causing his kidnapping — and, more importantly, for manipulating his feelings to get closer to him for her own ends. The pair are effectively hiding from the criminal underworld, but the door isn't necessarily fully closed on them. Back at the office, we hear that Silvermane's plan to rig the election fell flat, with the mayor winning a second term, closing the door on his reign of terror. The series ends with Ben and Janet (Karen Rodriguez) receiving a call about a new case, and, as they leave, we see that her surname is now on the door right next to Ben's.

The characters may have literally shut the door on us just as the credits closed, but the reveal that Janet has been elevated from secretary to fellow investigator suggests we've only seen the roots of her dynamic with Ben. That's as much concrete plot information as we're going to get about where a second season could go at the moment, and that's quite deliberate, as showrunner Uziel has teased that if given the greenlight, the show could jump forward by several years and show Ben in the run-up to World War II. "Obviously, as time passes from 1933, we're heading towards not just trouble in the financial markets in New York, but also a geopolitical struggle that would be an amazing canvas for any future storytelling," he told SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar+).

However, that doesn't mean "Spider-Noir" would transform from a P.I. show into WWII series (if that's your thing, check out Looper's list of the best war TV shows ever made). In the same interview, Uziel said that the joy of having a private investigator as a protagonist is that there aren't many plot constraints — anybody could turn up and ask for his help. "One thing I love about the genre is that when you have a private detective, all it takes is a knock on the office door and a new client walks in," he said. "Whether it's New York or a different setting, I really feel like this is a great jumping-off point to expand your story." So even if we flash forward a few years to a different period setting, the formula will be the same, and chaos will come knocking at Ben's door.

It's important to note that Nicolas Cage's character in "Spider-Noir" is not the exact same character from "Into the Spider-Verse." Cage voiced Spider-Man Noir in the hit animated movie, a variant of Peter Parker. His character in "Spider-Noir" is not Peter Parker, but Ben Reilly, whose origins in Marvel comics are far more convoluted — he was introduced as a clone of Peter, implanted with all his memories. It seems more likely that the show would pull from "Spider-Man Noir" comics rather than those involving Ben Reilly if Season 2 gets the go-ahead.

Perhaps the most obvious story to adapt would be "Spider-Man Noir: Eyes Without a Face," which picks up eight months after the first "Spider-Man Noir" tale. We're introduced to this universe's Otto Octavius, who is secretly working with the Nazi organization Friends of New Germany on brain surgery experiments to control people of color, using Flint Marko to hunt down test subjects. With Flint ending the first season of "Spider-Noir" with Cat, things would have to take a very dark turn for Season 2 to follow the arc faithfully, though with some tweaks it could work. This would allow them to expand on the first season's themes of the era's racial prejudices.

There's also the 1939-set "Spider-Man Noir: Twilight in Babylon," where an investigation into the death of a waitress leads Spider-Man Noir to Europe to find out more about the mysterious gemstone she was carrying. Set just before WWII, this globe-trotting adventure is very close in spirit to the original "Indiana Jones" movies, with the Nazis on Spidey's tail trying to take him down with a new weapon of their own: Electro. We didn't see Electro in "Spider-Noir," with the creators opting to use Megawatt as their shocking big bad instead — could it be because they're leaving him on the table to use later?