Prime Video’s brilliant Spider-Noir series made its UK debut yesterday and has successfully delivered a brilliant first season of television. Bringing an interesting take on the Spider-Man mythos to the small screen and mixing it with a Nicolas Cage performance that only he could have pulled off.
But like any old good detective story, we still a few clues left standing. Now that the full season has dropped, we’re left staring at the corkboard, trying to connect the threads on the show’s biggest lingering mysteries.
Here are the three burning questions Spider-Noir left lingering in the shadows for what could hopefully be a second season one day.
PLEASE BE AWARE, THESE ARE SPOILERS FOR SPIDER-NOIR SEASON 1.
Who is the Multiverse Visitor mentioned in the Opening Monologue?
The series pulls off a massive bait-and-switch right from the get go. The opening lines of the show feature a voiceover from Ben Riley explicitly stating that he was visited by someone from a completely different universe, visiting this stark, bleak post World Ward 1 world before leaving Ben behind with questions on what they meant with questioning what Universe this was.
It’s a brilliant hook from the get go considering for the vast majority of viewers, the first time we saw a Spider-Noir was in the animated Spider-Verse movie, and while this particular Noir is NOT the one from those films, it does hint of a greater web happening elsewhere. Spider-Noir spends the rest of its runtime feeling incredibly grounded, focusing on street-level crime and corrupt systems with no further mention of a multiverse or Ben’s visitor.
That opening line is just left blowing in the wind, and while it confirms that despite Ben’s complete dismissal of the incident, the multiverse is actively moving around him and his multiverse counterparts. While the show keeps the identity of this traveller cloaked in mystery for now, it sets up a potential cosmic crossover for down the line should they wish to include this Spider-Noir.
Ben Reilly’s Secret Past: What Was His Name Before?
One of the biggest talking points for comic purists going into the show was the protagonist’s name. In Marvel lore, the 1930s Spider-Man is traditionally an alternative take on Peter Parker. Yet, Nicolas Cage’s character is named Ben Reilly—a name comic fans know as Peter’s infamous clone. But we know Ben in this series is not a clone (at least from what we have seen in the first season).
The show adds a cheeky noir twist to this with a brief line halfway through the series: “Ben Reilly” might not be the name he was born with. When talking with Ogden after he comes to Reilly’s apartment, he mentions that he was hard to find because he changed his name. But this is never brought up to mentioned again, so could this mean he is actually Peter Parker or just a completely different person entirely?
Who Was Behind the Wartime Experiments?
The show’s overarching conspiracy constantly reaches back into the trauma of the Great War, specifically the horrific medical experiments conducted on soldiers in the trenches of eastern France. The goal was to splice the captured soldiers DNA with that of various animals and substances, which is why we got Sandman, MegaWatt and Tombstone. Ben’s walk through that prision did reveal various other soldiers in various states including the fabled Man Spider that bites him and grants him his future Spider Powers, this solder is also never named, despite me hoping he would be Ben Parker or Peter Parker in some dark twist of fate.
Flash forward to present day (in the Noir series at least) is Dr. Faber who is desperately trying to reverse-engineer a cure to save her own son, Ogden while trying to also help the other previously captured soldiers, though her experiments have ended up exacerbating the mutations, while she is not the one to blame for their initial infection, the question remains, who was? I was half expecting a name drop in Otto Octavious or even Michael Morbius as the mind behind the experiments but this was also left in the air on who and why they were happening in the first place.
What’s Next for the Web-Slinger?
Spider-Noir successfully proved that you can take a high-concept superhero and twist and turn their story into a tragic, Noir-style detective story. By leaving these specific threads dangling—the multiversal visit, Ben’s true name, and the mastermind behind the wartime experiments—the series is sure to have enough threads left for a second season to weave a new web of stories for this Spider to deal with.
Stream all episode of Spider-Noir now on Prime Video in the UK.
