Yesterday, my heart sank a little. A new Miles Morales toy, linked to the upcoming Spider-Man 2 game, was revealed with a description that mentioned the multiverse. It also mentioned Miles' Venom electric powers his own spin-off game is built around, and that was enough to make me fear for Spider-Man 2. It's already a little busy with two leads, the various supporting players, and the wrath of Kraven, plus the emergence of Venom himself (whose superpower appears to be release date spoilers). Thankfully, the description was an error, and we can all rest easy.

The mistake seems to have come from whoever wrote it mixing up the Miles Morales in the game and the Miles Morales in the Spider-Verse movie as being the same character. It's not the end of the world - mistakes happen, and this is a pretty harmless one that was rectified quickly. No foul and all that. But it does raise the fear that Spider-Man might now be 'the multiverse thing', and given Spider-Man is my favourite of the current crop of PS exclusives and, with Insomniac at the helm, easily the most efficient, this minor mistake has me fearing for its future.

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Into the Spider-Verse is the touchstone of multiverses in popular media, and it's an excellent execution of the idea. It works so well because it's authentic in how it uses the multiverse as a storytelling tool. While the characters all exist already, this is the first time we're introduced to them. Both Peters are distinct from the ones in other movies, and for many fans it will have been their first experience of Miles. The other characters across the multiverse are thrown in not because they're that guy from that IP, but because Spider-Noir and Spider-Ham make for funny characters. It uses the multiverse as a tool to tell stories, not to sell toys.

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Unfortunately, that's not how the trend has been used. After a year of stories about time loops in 2021, we were given a swathe of stories about multiverses in 2022. Spider-Man: No Way Home (technically a late 2021 movie) used the idea cheaply, getting two previous big screen Spider-Men back with Tom Holland, and bringing along all of their villains, overcrowding the movie unnecessarily. MultiVersus meanwhile was just Warner Bros. Smash Bros., but came up with a convoluted explanation of characters gathered from across multiple universes instead of just letting Arya Stark beat up Superman without us needing a plot.

It's not even the first time Warner Bros. has messed around in the multiverse recently, with Space Jam: A New Legacy also using a strange cloud-based interpretation of the multiverse at its core. Bayonetta 3 and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin both rely on multiverse mechanics to bring back fan favourites, while Fire Emblem Engage gets around requiring multiverses through Emblem Rings, a rose by any other name.

Even when used well, it can go badly. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness offers visual flair and lets us see different universes while telling a dark tale of a mother searching for her family, but so twisted by grief and desperation that her family no longer wants her. However, it's mostly remembered for a gratuitous fight scene in which Marvel characters past, reimagined, and future all come together to get their ass kicked.

Alongside Spider-Verse, Everything Everywhere all at Once stands above this crowd with its fantastic use of the multiverse to tell a thematically rich tale of identity, potential, and purpose. We don't know the characters we meet and so the movie does not need to rely on introducing us to fresh IP at the right time, it can just tell its story in peace. Having moved audiences across the world, become a surprise breakout hit for A24, and swept the Oscars, EEAAO proves there's a way to do multiverse stories right. However, I'm worried the takeaway will be that we want more multiverse stories, as many as our one universe can bear, and it's rarely the right path for established stories.

And so we come back to Spider-Man 2. While it seems it won't be tackling the multiverse here, Insomniac moves fast enough to capitalise on trends. Given we have two Spider-Man multiverse movies already (and two more Verse flicks on the way before whatever game comes after Spider-Man 2), I hope Spider-Man doesn't become reliant on multiverses to the point where Insomniac feels obliged to explore it in the future. Spidey is the single most popular superhero in the world with decades of stories, allies, and foes still waiting to be explored. Spider-Man's future, in pixel form at least, should stay as far away from multiverses as it possibly can.

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