Miles Morales Transcends the Tragedy of Being Spider-Man
The penultimate act of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) ends when protagonist Miles Morales tactically outsmarts and physically defeats an entire army of Spider-People. After being pinned down by Miguel O’Hara (aka Spider-Man 2099), the leader of the Society, Miles pushes him off with a powerful burst of electricity, turns invisible, and escapes Miguel and the army that was chasing him.
Aside from Miles, not a single Spider-Person exhibits powers outside of the usual Spider arsenal: the proportionate strength of a spider, enhanced agility, the Spidey sense, the ability to climb walls and swing on webs. Miles has all of these but also possesses two additional abilities: he can zap enemies with his venom burst and turn invisible by camouflaging with his surroundings.
Beyond the multiversal superhero epic, the two Spider-Verse films are essentially about a boy and his emotional relationship with the gift shoved into his hands. First, he has to accept that he is worthy of the gift; once he does, he has to resist those questioning his legitimacy as they attempt to wrest it from his hands. During the above-referenced penultimate act of Across the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales reaches overpowered status, best exhibited by the privilege of two abilities not afforded to his peers. His competence and privilege as Spider-Man are built on the contribution of pivotal figures in his life, so when the Spider-Verse films are assessed through the lens of this foundation, Miles’ victory is rendered both beautiful and inevitable.
The Reluctant Spider-Man – Into the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) is the emotional journey of a young boy learning to let go of his anxieties and embrace his potential. After getting bit by a radioactive spider, it takes Miles an agonizing amount of time to become Spider-Man – finally transitioning in the third act of the film. By comparison, in both Sam Raimi’s and Marc Webb’s live-action iterations, Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man around the second half of the film. Miles takes longer because he is opposite in character to Peter Parker. Peter first enjoys his powers but does not accept his responsibility. Miles first accepts his responsibility, but he responds to his powers with fear.
To become a superhero, Miles has to find the courage to overcome his anxiety. This is why Miles’ origin story is a series of cumulative emotional pushes. He has to: a) see the previous Spider-Man die; b) hear his mother remind him of his family’s resilience; c) hear his uncle Aaron reassure him of his path while dying in his arms; d) confront the reality that he is not ready to be Spider-Man despite his desire to save the day, and; e) finally, listen to his father convince him that he “will be great” at whatever he does.
In Into the Spider-Verse, Miles’ father Jefferson “Jeff” Davis is the parent to whom Miles’ emotional arc is tied. Into the Spider-Verse begins with the two struggling to communicate with each other. Jeff and Miles argue about the necessity to study at the reputed private school in which the latter has recently enrolled. Both are out of sync with each other: the son fails to understand the father’s desire to give his talented son the best education possible while the father fails to realize the son’s struggle with communicating his difficulty adjusting to a new environment. Later, when Miles is overcome with fear and confusion after the spider bite, he almost calls his father for help but changes his mind.
Miles’s two other parental figures are his uncle Aaron, the Prowler, who works for Kingpin, and Peter B. Parker, the washed-out Spider-Man from another dimension. They both function as mentors in the areas Jeff cannot help Miles. Aaron encourages Miles’s creativity and individuality, which is a core aspect of Miles’s personality. Peter B. teaches Miles how to be Spider-Man. Despite his initial reluctance, Peter B. believes in, facilitates, and protects Miles throughout his development. Miles also has other mentor figures in the rest of the Spider-Gang: Gwen Stacy (aka Spider-Woman), Penni Parker, Spider-Man Noir, and Peter Porker (aka Spider-Pig). They push Miles hard in their first meeting, but from that point remain sensitive to his struggles in that fraught period of acclimatizing to Spider-Man, coaching him through his fears until they cannot anymore. They must attend to their immediate concern: return to their respective dimensions or disintegrate. Miles wants to save them, but he is not ready. Peter B. thus assumes responsibility for him and decides to stay behind, prepared to sacrifice his life.
Miles is humbled and humiliated when faced with the reality that he cannot live up to the task at hand. Here, it is Jeff who brings the final emotional push that Miles needs to relinquish his fears.
Despite being out of sync until this point, Jeff – excellent parent that he is – gives Miles exactly what he needs despite having no input in his superhero endeavors. When Jeff comes to inform Miles of Aaron’s death, he opens up to him about not wanting to grow distant with him like he did with Aaron, and that the crux of their disagreements lie in the “spark” he sees in Miles. It is why he pushes Miles so hard, but he understands that whatever Miles “choose[s] to do with it, [he] will be great.” By opening his heart out to Miles, Jeff opens Miles to the reality of the latter’s brilliance: the cause of Miles’ external and internal pressures is his potential. Whether it is the pressure that Jeff puts on him or the Earth-ending stakes of the super-collider that he is afraid to confront, Miles is only facing them because he is capable. Jeff helps Miles embrace his potential; once he does, Miles becomes Spider-Man.
While Jeff is the primary figure in Into the Spider-Verse who helps Miles emotionally fit into the mask of Spider-Man, Peter B. and the Spider-Gang accelerate Miles’ competence in the role. By exhibiting significant generosity, the heroes allow Miles to bypass some of the core Spider-Person origin struggles. The Peter Parker origin story, and by extension every Spider-person origin story, is defined by how lonely the process of becoming a superhero is. The Spider-Gang pass their knowledge and offer Miles the companionship they never had, thus functioning like found family members by aligning their actions with Jeff along a crucial ethical polarity: why should Miles have to endure the same challenges, learn the same lessons, only to reach the same ceiling as those that preceded him?
The Anomalous Spider-Man – Across the Spider-Verse
By the beginning of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), Miles has fully established himself as Spider-Man. Two years have passed since the events of Into the Spider-Verse, and Miles isn’t managing his personal life so well. He gets into two public disagreements with his parents. First, Miles disagrees with his mother, Rio, who does not want him to go to university in a different city. Then, Miles gets disrespectfully defensive when Jeff and Rio confront him about his flagrant tardiness, for which they ground him. The parents can sense that Miles is hiding something from them.
Mirroring the first film, Miles’ emotional arc in Across the Spider-Verse is tied with his mother Rio Morales. After Rio and Jeff interrupt a conversation between Miles and Gwen, who Miles has pined after for two years, Jeff leaves Rio alone with Miles so she can find out what Miles is keeping from them. She first tells him that he can say anything to her, and for a moment Miles decides to confess that he is Spider-Man, but he changes his mind and instead apologizes for being late. Although disappointed, she excuses him so he can go talk to Gwen, who left soon after the interruption.
In light of their disagreements, Rio opens up to Miles, acknowledging that she is struggling with watching Miles grow up and need her less. She has taken such care of him to ensure that he feels loved and worthy of his place in the world, and now that she knows Miles has big ambitions, she worries that “they won’t look out for [him] like [Rio and Jeff].” She then asks him, no matter where he goes with all his potential, that he take good “care of that little boy for her,” never forget “where he came from,” “never [doubt] that he is loved,” and that when he reaches the big places he desired, he never lets anyone tell him “that he doesn’t belong there.”
Later in the film, Miles reaches such a big place: the Spider Society. They protect the universe by traveling to other dimensions using the quantum physics he wants to learn in university. The Society’s mission is to preserve the future or the “canon.” This canon entails that Jeff will die very soon, and the status quo determines that Miles needs to let it happen. Miles refuses to accept this. To prevent Miles from intervening in the unfolding of the canon, the leader of the Society, Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099, restrains him. To save his father, Miles must break free of his restraints and then elude an entire army of Spider-People.
Although Miles has become a competent Spider-Man, he makes additional progress in Across the Spider-Verse. In the first movie, the Spider-Gang served as his mentors; in Across, the mentor figure is Hobie Brown (aka Spider-Punk). Hobie’s first words to Miles are about how to improve the use of his powers; he also engenders Miles’ critical thinking by subtly interrogating Miles’ motivations with respect to the ethical standing of the Spider Society. Hobie teaches Miles how to enhance the power of his venom burst, an ability that Hobie himself does not exhibit. Like the Spider-Gang before him, Spider-Punk supports Miles in becoming an even better Spider-Man.
After using his improved venom burst to break his restraints, Miles evades the army for several minutes until Miguel catches up, screaming at him for his insolence, saying he isn’t Spider-Man, bellowing: “Who do you think you are?” To this question, Miles responds by affirming his identity, reminding everyone where Rio and Jeff’s son comes from, and how their son became Spider-Man: “My name is Miles Morales. I was bitten by a radioactive spider. I’m sure you know the rest.” When Miguel then tussles with Miles, he berates him, saying that the latter is an “anomaly,” a “mistake,” invalidating his status as Spider-Man because the rules of the canon dictate that Miles was never supposed to get his powers. The Spider Society rejects Miles, his legitimacy, and his right to exist. This supposition may have stopped Miles before. But Rio – excellent parent that she is – had already given Miles exactly what he would need despite having no input in his superhero endeavors.
Miguel, far stronger and larger than Miles, aided by his futuristic tech, immobilizes Miles, pinning him under his weight. Miles has lured the entire Spider Society away from the machine that can transport him back to his dimension. Since the chase began, Miles has refrained from using his two additional powers, relying only on webs, agility, and combat. But now, Miles takes them out of his arsenal. Miles absorbs the electricity from Miguel’s suit using Hobie’s technique and then zaps Miguel off him with a powerful venom strike. He then stands resolute looking at the army he has overpowered and outsmarted all by himself. Having rejected the Society’s diktat and resolving to do things his way, he turns invisible, leaving everyone in his wake.
Miles defeats the army by using his two additional powers. Jeff once told Miles that no matter what he does with his potential he will be great. Rio told Miles to never accept someone questioning his legitimacy. Miles’s venom burst and camouflage function as a beautiful but simple allegory: two additional superpowers, two present and loving parents, a luxury no other Spider-person has.
Empowered by the love of his parents and improved by the mentorship of the Spider-People that have supported him, Miles breaks the glass ceiling that has limited every Spider-Person since the first in “Amazing Fantasy #15”: every Spider-Person is completely defined by tragedy. Implicitly, the canon is about the tragedy that comes with being Spider-Man – this is what the Society preserves. Miles’ victory is about rejecting this status quo, not just defeating its physical manifestation in the form of an army. This is what makes Miles the anomalous Spider-Man. The heroics of the Spider-Verse films lie not just in the actions of its protagonist, but in the actions of everyone who contributes to his development, in their commitment to the human intergenerational project: of passing on care, love, and knowledge to the ones that follow, so they can transcend what was the status quo for the previous generation.
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Written by Faiz Elahi
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