Warning: full spoilers ahead for Spider-Man: No Way Home!
With Spider-Man: No Way Home now out on Blu-ray, we’re taking a look at one scene in particular that practically begs for a closer look: the rupturing of the multiverse during the finale where numerous familiar characters from the Spider-Man mythos can be glimpsed. We’re going to break down which character silhouettes are visible in the purple tears in the sky and speculate on what their appearance may mean for future Spidey-related movies.
Kraven the Hunter
The first and most identifiable figure is none other than Kraven the Hunter, one of Spider-Man’s deadliest foes.
In the classic 1987 Marvel Comics story “Kraven’s Last Hunt” by J. M. DeMatteis, Mike Zeck, and Bob McLeod, Sergei Kravinoff is a famous big-game hunter who, after hunting every dangerous animal there is, sets his sights on the super-powered Spider-Man in order to give himself a fitting challenge. To put himself on the same power level as Spider-Man, Kraven drinks a potion created from jungle herbs to give himself the kind of enhanced strength and senses he’d need to track down and go toe-to-toe with the Wall-Crawler. It should be no surprise that Kraven was given prominent placement during this sequence given that Sony has already begun production on a Kraven the Hunter movie starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, so expect to see the notorious hunter on the big screen soon.
Doppelganger / Superior Spider-Man
Next up is a hard-to-identify character that seems to have a few extra arms. There’s no shortage of Spider-Man characters who bear a resemblance to a spider in that regard, so it’s hard to pin it down on exactly who this silhouette belongs to, but it’s bound to be one of the more popular options.
One guess is Doppelganger, a monstrous creature who resembles Spider-Man but with six arms, razor sharp teeth, and pointy claws. He’s often seen with Carnage, helping the deranged symbiote serial killer increase his body count.
Our other choice is Superior Spider-Man, who is a far more complex character. Once upon a time, Doctor Octopus succeeded in pulling off a nefarious master plan to swap bodies with Spider-Man, leaving Peter Parker to die in his failing body and giving Otto Octavius free reign to operate as the Friendly Neighborhood hero in secret. His signature look features a pair of robotic spider legs that allowed Otto to fight using the same tactics as his classic robotic octopus arms. That sneaky devil! The events of No Way Home seem to have cured Octavius for good, so it’s unlikely we’ll see that version of Doc Ock enact this evil plan against Spider-Man, but with the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, who’s to say a variant of Doc Ock from another universe wouldn’t?
Scorpion
This hunched over character with a sharp tail ready to strike has to be the Scorpion.
Mac Gargan was hired by J. Jonah Jameson to find out how Peter Parker was able to take such good pictures of Spider-Man, and after failing that, Jameson paid Gargan to be transformed into the Scorpion so he could take on Spider-Man directly. The experimental enhancement worked, only it had the little side effect of driving Gargan insane, making him a supervillain who forever blames Spider-Man for his misfortune. Scorpion is one of few classic Spidey villains who has yet to be properly featured in a live-action movie, but a powerless Mac Gargan did appear in Spider-Man: Homecoming, played by Michael Mando, complete with a Scorpion neck tattoo, so with Sony showing no sign of slowing down on the Spider-Man movie front, perhaps he’ll show up again to don a scorpion suit and show Spidey the definition of insanity.
Black Cat
Speaking of characters we’ve been dying to see in live-action, this next outline appears to be Black Cat, real name Felicia Hardy.
Much like Catwoman is to Batman, Black Cat is an anti-hero thief who has been known to steal Spider-Man’s heart. We’ve actually seen Felicia in live-action once before–she was the Osborn’s executive assistant in Amazing Spider-Man 2, played by Felicity Jones–but we’ve yet to see her don the black-and-white cat-burglar costume to become the Black Cat proper. With the reappearance of Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man character, who’s to say Felicity Jones’ Felicia Hardy isn’t out there somewhere, sharpening her claws, waiting for her return, too.
Rhino
This absolute unit with a pointy horn is unmistakably the Rhino.
Russian mafia enforcer Aleksei Sytsevich underwent experimental treatment (seems to be a recurring theme with these guys) to be turned into a brute with the unstoppable might of a rhino. This classic Spider-Man villain played a small role in The Amazing Spider-Man 2, played by Paul Giamatti, where he piloted a rhino mech suit. However, the version glimpsed in the sky looked more comics accurate, so perhaps if we do see the Rhino in live-action again, he’ll have the more authentic look of a transformed rhino/man body instead.
Mysterio / Miles Morales
This next one has seen a lot of debate online.
To us, the orb-like dome on this character’s head bears a striking resemblance to Mysterio. We did see Jake Gyllenhaal’s Quentin Beck perish at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, but there’s bound to be a multiversal variant somewhere out there who is still alive and well. In fact, in the Spider-Men comic by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli, it’s revealed that Mysterio was actually an avatar being controlled by a different Mysterio from another universe, so it could be that the real Mysterio is still out there, wearing a fishbowl and plotting his revenge against Spider-Man.
Then again, some fans are convinced this slender figure is actually Spider-Man Miles Morales. Okay, we can kind of see it. Miles is a beloved character many fans are dying to see in live-action, so it stands to reason that Sony would tease him in this sequence.
Madame Web
And finally, we have to point out this unusually shaped silhouette that could possibly be Madame Web.
This one was glossed over as an indistinguishable blob at first, but after the news that Sony is making a Madame Web movie starring Dakota Johnson, the internet seems to think it’s a woman sitting in a chair–a seed being planted ahead of Madame Web’s big-screen debut. The mysterious Madame Web is a powerful psychic and precognitive who uses her powers to divine the meaning behind the “web of fate” and help guide Spider-Man and other spider-related characters along its threads.
Johnson is reportedly playing Julia Carpenter, a younger hero who starts out as Spider-Woman and inherits the Madame Web mantle from the original, elderly Madame Web named Cassandra Webb. We know little about the upcoming movie, but with the events of No Way Home making a mess of the multiverse, or, ahem, the Spider-verse, it’s possible that Madame Web’s movie could see her trying to untangle the web of fate and bring order to chaos in the multiverse.
Those are all of the Spider-Man characters we spotted in the finale of No Way Home. Were there any others that you spotted? Let us know in the comments. And for more on Spidey, check out every Spider-Man spin-off currently in development at Sony.