I wanted to make a little essay where I compare and contrast The Spot and Miguel as characters. A lot of the fanbase is very resistant to admitting that they have similarities given many of Miguelās fans are sensitive about him being portrayed as villainous, and I want to first clarify that isnāt what I intend to do here. Rather, I want to highlight the similarities in their emotional turmoil and how the contrast lies in how they handle those emotions.
Itās important to first go over what makes them so different. Miguel is an altruist, everything he does is done with the belief that he knows best and that sacrifice is necessary. His world view is incredibly rigid and unfeeling. He calculates every move he makes and believes there is an objective right answer to every issue. Spot is the opposite, motivated by personal and emotionally driven goals. Spot is impulsive and does not think about the repercussions of his behavior until it is too late. Heās the epitome of everything Miguel stands against, an unpredictable manifestation of chaos that leaves destruction wherever he goes.
Of course, the hard exterior Miguel puts up is a front. He feels it incredibly deeply when the people around him are suffering, and says himself that he does not like the things he has to do. At his core he is soft, having a strong sense of empathy when he allows himself to let it through. He suffers from immense psychological trauma, leaving him with the nihilistic āCanon Eventā ideology which is a thinly veiled coping mechanism. He has endured immense pain throughout his life, and if he convinces himself it was necessary and unavoidable he does not need to hurt.
Though Miguel does his best to remain selfless, his coping mechanism is just as damaging as Spotās directly violent outbursts. Miguel refuses to heal from his past traumas, allowing others to be swallowed by the very same grief that has consumed him and telling them that they cannot escape the inevitable pain that comes with being Spider-Man. When Spot violently lashes out, people get hurt. When Miguel enforces a flawed standard of the canon, people are hurt. Both of them cause harm regardless of their intentions being different.
The physical situations of both Spot and Miguel reflect their mentalities as well, both coincidentally having been mutated in Alchemax accidents. Miguel tries to drown his feelings, represented by how his fangs and claws can be hidden. He does everything he can to conceal the sharp, rigid edges of himself, even shown by a slicked-back hairstyle that portrays a desire to be seen as put-together and professional. He cares about his appearance and what others may think of him, and is embarrassed when he loses control of that perception and lashes out in front of the other Spider-People.
In contrast, Spot cannot hide what makes him different. The black holes that cover his body are the first thing anyone notices when they look at him. He has frequent outbursts and moodswings, making no effort to conceal his suffering as he is desperate for his pain to be seen and recognized. He has no support system, unable to integrate himself back into society despite a clear desperation for company. Spot is faced with cruelty wherever he goes because he is so visibly different, whereas Miguel is respected by his peers until his mask begins to slip.
The core issue they both face is where they are truly the same. Both of them are incredibly lonely. Spot may blame Miles for his accident, but the true cause of him turning out the way he did is a lack of community. When he says that he ālost his lifeā, he is implying that even though he still lives and breathes there is no point going on after the pain he has endured. He has no friends, and his family has conditioned him to believe that he is so repulsive that he cannot even be looked at. He does not think there is any single person in the world that will treat him with human decency because his perception of reality has been warped by the cruelty he has faced. He even dehumanizes himself, referring to his physical appearance as unfortunate and naming himself āThe Spotā as if he is a thing rather than a person.
These issues were obviously worsened by Spotās collider accident, but seem to predate it; any family that is willing to abandon their child after a horrific lab accident could not have been kind beforehand. The art book for Across The Spider-Verse reveals a lot about his psychological state, stating that he never truly fit in with his coworkers at Alchemax and had no social life when he was still a civilian. I suspect that this aversion to socialization and fundamental lack of self esteem comes from his home life. Spot was written as a parallel Miles, who is able to rise above the challenges thrown at him because of support from a family that loves him. If Spot is meant to mirror him, it makes sense that missing the crucial support and affection that Miles received would put him on a much darker path.
A quote from the art book that is integral to understanding The Spot refers to his motivation to work on the collider in the first place; āhe is constantly tinkering with the idea of traveling to other dimensions to, perhaps, find better versions of himself.ā Does that remind you of anybody? When Miguel gets his hands on the ability to cross dimensions, the first thing he does is go to find a life and version of himself that he deems to be better. Miguel is so convinced that he is destined for misery as Spider-Man that he feels compelled to live an escapist fantasy in another dimension where he is already happy. Spot is so convinced that something is inherently wrong with him that he feels the desire to do the same thing. Underneath all of their differences, the one thing they really care about is a desperation for love. Spot has never known in his entire life how it felt to be loved, and Miguel does not think he can love anyone for fear of them getting hurt in the end.
In terms of speculation, I think these similarities are intentional and that their character arcs will be intertwined in the next film. Across The Spider-Verse ends with them in the same dimension, a clear set up for confrontation. Along with that, the CinemaCon footage from April describes a fight between the two as well as an emotionally charged āI just wanted to be taken seriouslyā line from The Spot, presumably directed at Miguel. Everything Iām about to say beyond this point is subjective, and Iām very open to debate regarding my read on these characters.
The perfect way to have Miguel unlearn his black and white way of thinking is The Spot. Miguel looks at everything objectively, but Spot is an illogical chaotic mess of raw emotion. As far as we know he is virtually unbeatable, the only thing weāve seen damage him so far is himself. His body twitches and tears itself apart violently in his Abyss form as if he is in physical pain, and itās likely that this is the case since this form is the metaphorical and literal culmination of all of his suffering. Along with that, it has been established that putting himself through collider explosions is physically damaging to the point where it could kill him.
A wonderful subversion of expectations would be for the conflict to shift from saving Milesā dad, to Milesā dad being saved but Spot is still rampaging in a form that's slowly killing him. To watch the characters decide if they can stop Spotās violence while preserving his life would be incredibly gripping, and a perfect culmination to the trilogyās ultimate question; how much is worth sacrificing to save just one life? To ask this question with The Spot, someone who is partially responsible for the harm he has caused to himself and fully responsible for the harm he has caused to others, would be a great way to hammer in the message that human life is incredibly valuable and its loss should not be taken lightly. This solution would also help resolve Miguelās worst flaw, being his nihilism and an aversion to being in touch with the feelings that are eating him alive. Having him go from concern for the lives of billions to focusing his efforts on the life of just one person that he personally connects with would be a flawless conclusion for his character.
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