Yes, Prime Video’s Spider-Man TV show is finally web-swinging its way to our screens, but is Spider-Noir connected to the Spider-Verse?
Nicolas Cage voiced the 1930s-era Wall-Crawler in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and is now playing him in live action. Fans will also be able to choose whether to watch Spider-Noir in color or black-and-white. It’s the first live-action Spider-Man TV show since the 1970s, and is a spinoff of the Oscar-winning animated movie.
In Spider-Noir, Cage plays a hardened detective with a masked alter-ego known as “The Spider,” who investigates a conspiracy surrounding New York mobster Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson).
But considering Cage first voiced Spider-Noir in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, you might be wondering if the live-action show is connected to the animated movies… But the answer is complicated.
Is Spider-Noir connected to the Spider-Verse?
While the show is a Spider-Verse spinoff (because it wouldn’t exist without them), Cage is not playing the same version of Spider-Noir as the one in the animated movies. The hero fans saw previously was an alternate version of Peter Parker from a 1930s black-and-white version of New York City. In the TV series, Cage’s detective is called Ben Reilly.
This is a nod to the comics of the 1990s when Marvel introduced a clone of Peter Parker who goes by Ben Reilly. This led to a huge event, known as the Clone Saga, which revolved around who is the “real” version of Parker. Ultimately, Ben goes off to become his own hero and becomes the Scarlet Spider.
However, producer Phil Lord told Esquire that the show will explain why Cage’s detective is named Reilly, and not Parker. “I have to be coy about the reasons, because you’ll find out,” he teased, before his collaborator Chris Miller added: “The reason he’s named Ben Reilly is explained. We’ll leave it at that.”
Now it seems unlikely that the show will introduce clones into its 1930s depression-era New York, but it could riff on the idea that Cage’s hero has a connection to a Peter Parker somewhere.
Of course, the Spider-Verse’s multiversal nature means that Spider-Noir is tangentially connected to the movies by association, just like the rest of the live-action/animated Spider-People. But the TV series appears to be separate… For now.
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