(Spoilers from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse will be found ahead.)
Sony’s Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse swings into theaters Friday to knock your socks off and possibly change the game for cinematic superhero futures. Since so many films these days, and especially Marvel Comics titles, include the gift of post-credits scenes, you’d probably expect this movie to do so as well. You’d be correct in that assumption — so let’s give it a quick rundown.
Obviously, one of Sony’s bigger draws for this movie is that the studio’s moving beyond Peter Parker (who’s still dust in the wind in the Marvel Cinematic Universe), who’s older here (and voiced by Chris Pine), to add a plethora of spider-people into the mix. This story revolves around Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), and we also meet the likes of Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Spider-Ham (John Mulaney), Peter B. Parker (Jake Johnson), and Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn). However, there’s still room for one more face, who surfaces in the post-credits scene.
We meet Spider-Man 2099, whose alter ego is Miguel O’Hara, the first Latino Spider-Man who first surfaced in 1992 comics. (Voiced by Oscar Isaac, the character is a geneticist who attempted to recreate Spidey’s attributes but ends up having his own DNA largely rewritten and becomes a spider-person himself.) Given that Sony plans to rapidly expand its Spider-Verse (and has announced multiple followups, including an all-female spinoff), we can probably assume that we’ll see more of Spider-Man 2099 in the future. In fact, we see him observing the Spider-Verse through a futuristic lens, and then there’s some dimension-travel, which leads to a reference that might be the most obvious post-credits joke in recent memory:
Suddenly, the scene referes to this ^^^^^ meme — from the 1967 animated Spider-Man series — that will look awfully familiar to anyone who’s surfed the internet. These “pointing Spider-Men,” who have suffered through countless out-of-context versions, are now on the table. And yep, no more post-credits scenes are needed, in any movie again, ever. Sony has finished them, and the studio appears to have set up Spider-Man 2099 for his own movie.
In addition, there’s also a tribute to the the two Spider-Man creators, the Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, that surfaces within the credits. In doing so, a quote from the late Lee is visible: “That person who helps others simply because it should or must be done,” read Lee’s words. “And because it is the right thing to do, is indeed, without a doubt, a real superhero.” It’s a fitting quote and one that reignites hope for all the comic-book superhero stories that have yet to come to life onscreen.