Some Spider-Man villains have had multiple opportunities to shine in movies, including Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Venom and Electro, while others still haven’t appeared on the big screen yet. Come next summer though, The Spot will no longer belong in the latter category, as Jason Schwartzman is voicing the portal-conjuring antagonist in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. With half a year to go until this 2023 movie release’s arrival, Across the Spider-Verse producer Kemp Power has confirmed a key detail about The Spot: we’ll be seeing him more than once.
Given that Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse is coming out less than a year after Across the Spider-Verse, it stood to reason that these two movies would be tightly connected. Sure enough, Kemp Powers informed Total Film that The Spot will serve as the main villain for both movies while hyping up the villain with these words:
The Spot is an interesting villain because he seems like a joke, but when you really look at his powers, there’s incredible potential. His ability to open portals across dimensions sets him up perfectly for the Spider-Verse. He’s the villain of the next two films… and let’s just say that the Spot and Miles are connected in surprising ways.
We learned back in June that The Spot was being thrown into the mix for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, with his cinematic debut happening nearly 40 years after he first appeared in the comics. However, while the portals that Marvel Comics’ original Spot created only allow him to travel to another dimension called Spotworld, Jason Schwartzman’s Spot has the ability to travel to the other realities that these various Spider-heroes live in. So with the multiverse factoring in so heavily to this film series, it makes sense that The Spot would cause trouble across two movies rather than be taken out of the picture at the end of Across the Spider-Verse.
While it’s been made abundantly clear that The Spot will be powerful in the next two Spider-Verse movies, exactly what schemes the villain will be plotting is unclear. However, it is interesting that Kemp Powers noted that he and Shameik Moore’s Miles Morales are “connected in surprising ways.” In the comics, Spot was originally Dr. Jonathan Ohnn, a scientist working for Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. The Kingpin. Could he and Miles share some kind of connection beyond Miles having simply gone up against Kingpin in Into the Spider-Verse. On the other hand, there have been plenty of times in superhero movies where a villainous identity is given to someone else. Maybe this Spot is tied to another version of Miles. Here’s a crazy thought: what if Spot is another version of Miles?!
Some, if not most of these mysteries will be solved when Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings into theaters on June 2, 2023, followed by Beyond the Spider-Verse on March 29, 2024. The first sequel’s other notable players include Hailee Steinfeld and Jake Johnson respectively reprising Gwen Stacy and Peter B. Parker, as well as Issa Rae playing a pregnant Jessica Drew and Daniel Kaluuya coming in as Hobie Brown, a.k.a. Spider-Punk.
