How Madame Web connects to Spider-Man

Let’s talk about Sony’s latest superhero flick — and the messy narrative web it weaves.

First things first: Spider-Man doesn’t show up in Madame Web. But everyone’s favorite friendly neighborhood wall-crawler looms large over the latest Sony-Marvel flick.

Madame Web centers on Cassandra Webb, the clairvoyant paramedic played by Dakota Johnson. After her pregnant mother is bitten by a mystical spider, Cassie develops preternatural powers as an adult, gaining the ability to see potential futures. Her new powers put her in the crosshairs of the villain Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who’s hunting down three young teenagers: Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Mattie Franklin (Celeste O’Connor), and Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced). Like Cassie, Ezekiel was bitten by a spider and granted supernatural powers, and he’s determined to kill Julia, Mattie, and Anya before they gain spider-bite powers of their own.

That’s a whole lot of Spider-people — but perhaps the most intriguing new characters are the ones who don’t have spider-based powers. Parks & Recreation star Adam Scott plays a major role as Ben Parker, one of Cassie’s closest friends and co-workers. Ben Parker, of course, is destined to become Peter’s Uncle Ben, his beloved guardian and the man whose death helps spark Peter’s heroic journey. At the time of Madame Web, he’s working as a paramedic in Queens. (He’s also recently started dating someone, and although he never says his girlfriend’s name, it’s heavily implied to be the future May Parker.)

Emma Roberts also plays Mary Parker, Ben’s sister-in-law and the future mother of Peter. In Madame Web, she’s pregnant with her first child, a child that’s heavily implied to be Peter. Mary never confirms her baby’s name on screen, but at one point, she hints at Peter’s future acrobatics, joking that the baby is really “leaping around in there.” (Mary’s husband, Richard, is apparently away on business and is never seen.) The film ends with Mary going into labor, giving birth to a healthy baby boy. In a few years, he’ll presumably be bitten by a radioactive spider of his own, growing up to become the Spider-Man we know and love.

This revelation, of course, raises more questions than it answers. Madame Web is set in 2003, so it wouldn’t make sense for this Peter to become either Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield. The timing is a little closer for Tom Holland’s Peter Parker, who would have been born around 2000 and was 16 at the time of 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. (Again, not an exact match, but closer). But Madame Web suggests that there are multiple Spider-people crawling around New York in 2003, something that’s never referenced in the Holland Spider-Man movies. And because Madame Web is distributed by Sony, it’s not part of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. (After all, you’d think Tony Stark or Steve Rogers would have known if there was a team of Spider-Women protecting New York in the early-aughts.)

But even if it’s not part of the MCU, Madame Web is technically part of a multiverse of its own. So far, Sony has released four movies in its live-action universe of Marvel characters — including Tom Hardy’s Venom movies, Jared Leto’s Morbius, and now Madame Web. Up next, Aaron Taylor-Johnson will star in the Kraven the Hunter movie, coming later this year. These movies are sort of connected to Spider-Man, but not really: They’re all based on classic characters from the Spider-Man comics, but Spidey himself never appears on screen. There also hasn’t been much crossover between the different films: A post-credits scene for Venom: Let There Be Carnage sees Venom briefly being transported to Holland’s universe, and another post-credits scene for Morbius reintroduces Michael Keaton as the Vulture (who popped up in Holland’s first solo movie, 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming). But those teasers have never really led anywhere, and they don’t appear to be leading to any sort of crossover.

In a recent interview with EW, director SJ Clarkson explained that she wanted to keep Madame Web as self-contained as possible, hinting at fun Easter eggs but mostly focusing the narrative on Cassandra’s story.

“She’s definitely in a standalone world,” Clarkson previously told EW. “I was able to just have free rein and let the movie be what it needed to be, as opposed to trying to force it into something else. That was a gift, in a way, to be able to take something and bring a fresh and I hope original take to it.”

Interestingly, Madame Web does break with one superhero movie tradition: It doesn’t have the traditional end-credits scene teasing potential crossovers or future projects. So, will we see Johnson’s heroine pop up in any future projects? Only Madame Web can see the future — and she’s not telling.