So, since seeing it, I’ve fallen madly in love with Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse. Like, you know, tons of other people. And I know there’s a sequel and an all Spider-Women spin off already in the works (YAY) but I can’t help but wonder where the series is going long term. My hope is that a multiple movie story line is already planned out. With such a big, ambitious project, you pretty much have to have everything, or near everything, nailed down before you really get started.
And thinking about that, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Inheritors are going to eventually show up. Now, here’s the thing about the Spiderverse if you didn’t already know: it’s actually based on a comic storyline, which was a big crazy crossover with tons and tons of Spider-People having to band together to fight a common enemy. That common enemy was the Inheritors.
Basically they were a clan of universe-hopping vampires who extended their natural lives by sucking the life force out of Spider-People and other animal themed empowered folks. (Such as Black Panther.) There was also a Spider God thing that controlled whether or not there’d be a Spider-Person in any given universe, and weaved the web that intertwined them and ultimately allowed the various Spiders to meet and work together. There’s a good chance the inter dimensional web the Spiders see and travel through in the first movie is at least a nod to that concept.
It was all quite out there cheesy fun, but I’ve felt like you could take some of the things the Inheritors had going for them and re-write them into something really cool, and I’ve been wracking my brains trying to figure out how to do that.
The movie already re-wrote it’s main characters a bit to fit into the story they were trying to tell. Peni is a mix of Penelope and Peni Parker. Original Spider Noir was more steam-punk. Gwen was older. Peter B. is of course a Spiderman who was allowed to grow up. Miles is more gregarious than his comic counterpart, and his family is also a little different. So doing something similar with the original series’ main villains wouldn’t be an unprecedented move.
And after thinking about it a bit, I think I’ve got a really fun idea.
Here’s how it goes: over the course of several films, the Spiders (most likely due to the investigative efforts of 2099, who seems, at this point, to be the most on top of the multi-verse) come to realize that there’s a group that’s always present in every iteration of things. Which is weird. Because while each universe has its various quirks that make it unique from every other one, these people are always there. They’re always the same race, gender, age, they’re always doing the same stuff, and they always manage to secure the same positions of power. Taking all of this into account, it doesn’t take the Spiders long to realize that this isn’t a case of suspiciously similar multiple universe counterparts. These are the same people every time, in every universe, who’ve some how found a way to freely travel between dimensions.
That’s not all. Turns out? These folks are behind every evil company that ever dipped its pen in the super spider DNA inkwell. Yep. These people are going from universe to universe, not only funding and propping up nuts like Osborn and gangsters like the Kingpin as their puppets while they run things from the shadows, but they are spreading the Spider-People making spider DNA splicing blueprints throughout the multi-verse like measles through a school full of unvaccinated children.
Once this is discovered, the Spiders give chase. And after a long period of barely even catching a glimpse of any of these people before they disappear into another universe, there comes a moment where a pursuing group of Spiders, at last, stumbles across an Inheritor. They’ve finally confronted one of these scheming, backstabbing, double-dealing, manipulative, murderous monsters face to face and then....
Spidey-Sense reverb. They all feel it. But instead of being struck with awe, or surprise, or relief like Peter Parker was upon meeting Miles Morales, they’re all struck with horror. Because what they all say to the Inheritor together is....
“You’re like me.”
So here’s my idea. The Inheritors are, themselves, Spider-People. Ones who have discovered they can gain power and extend their own lives by eating the life essence of (or even just) other Spider-People. After all, there are quite a few species of spider that are cannibalistic.
This would be such a gut punch because by the time we’ll have met an Inheritor face to face, we’ll have already seen multiple movies featuring various factions of the Spider-Clan coming together like one big, happy, sarcastic, web-slinging extended family. We’ll have cheered on and cried with and exhilarated in the triumphs of this whole eclectic cluster. We’ll have seen Spiders meet and band together to beat common foes or accomplish common goals, learning from each other as they do so; every single one of them spreading this message to their fellows just by nature of their existence: you are not alone. The whole group (the original six, the other Spider Women, Spidey 2099, and anybody else we’ll have met by then) will, by this time, feel like a real family. Both to us and to the Spiders themselves.
So then how will it feel for them to realize that it’s members of their own family that are hunting them down across multiple universes? That have been causing so much pain and strife to various worlds in various universes for literal centuries? How much would it hurt to see everything they’ve come to take pride in, draw strength from and find love in twisted so viciously into something so heinous, selfish and cruel?
And the Inheritors’ true motives and nature? It’ll be why they’ve been setting up companies that get involved in splicing Spider DNA. They were purposefully ensuring there would always be more Spider-People, so they'd always have more to eat!
I just think this could be a really cool take on them. There are already themes of family and community in the first movie that can be built on in the proceeding films. Having that built up, undercut by the reveal of the villains’ true nature and then built back up again in order for the Spiders to join together one last time to finally defeat their enemy? I, for one, would love the hell out of that.
