Every new Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse character, explained

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has big boots to fill as a sequel to 2018’s game-changing feature, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s got to look just as good, if not better; excite just much, if not more; and introduce a slew of new Spider-themed heroes to rival the first movie’s already pretty wild lineup of Gwen Stacy/Ghost-Spider, Spider-Ham, Peni Parker, and Nicolas Cage’s Spider-Man Noir.

So, who is stepping up to the bat — er, spider? Here are all the Across the Spider-Verse Spider-People we know about so far.

Spider-Man 2099

Image: Sony Animation

Real name: Miguel O’Hara
Voiced by: Oscar Isaac

This one’s a freebie: The Spider-Man of 2099 actually appeared in Into the Spider-Verse first! This Spider-Man, who appeared in Into’s credits sequence, is easily identifiable by his distinctive red and deep-blue suit. This is Miguel O’Hara, or, colloquially, “Spider-Man 2099.”

Marvel’s “2099” setting kicked off with a series of comics titles in the early ’90s, an imprint that aimed to present the real and true future of a high-tech, cyberpunk-y Marvel Comics universe — a Batman Beyond sort of idea years before the cartoon series would get there.

In comics, Miguel is a scientist whose corporate masters and research partners betrayed him, and, long story short, he wound up with 50% spider DNA and became his era’s Spider-Man, adventuring with the help of his is assistant, an AI program called Lyla, also featured in the credits scene. In Spider-Verse, he seemed to already have discovered the multiverse, and is about to use a universe-hopping watch of Lyla’s invention to travel it purposefully.

Spider-Woman

Real name: Jessica Drew
Voiced by: Issa Rae

In Marvel Comics, Jessica Drew may share half of Spider-Man’s name and some of his powers, but that’s about it. She wasn’t bitten by a radioactive spider, she’s not related to Peter Parker, and she doesn’t even swing on a web. She can fly!

Like She-Hulk, Jessica is a character who was created because Stan Lee — after clashes with DC Comics over the name of Marvel’s Wonder Man being too close to Wonder Woman, and DC’s Power Girl being too close to Marvel’s Power Man — was worried that someone would swoop in and create a distaff version of one of Marvel’s big hits, without Marvel seeing a dime.

Spider-Punk

Image: Cody Ziglar, Justin Mason/Marvel Comics

Real name: Hobart “Hobie” Brown
Voiced by: Daniel Kaluuya

Created for the first Spider-Verse event in Marvel Comics, Hobie Brown is Spider-Man by way of classic British punk culture. A homeless teenager empowered by radioactive waste — illegally dumped by Norman Osborn’s company — he lead the oppressed of New York City against the privatized police, killed Osborn with a smash of his electric guitar, and lived happily ever after until the next Spider-Verse event and, of course, his own miniseries.

Supaidāman

Image: Jed MacKay, Sheldon Vella/Marvel Comics

Real name: Takuya Yamashiro
Voiced by: Unknown

Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow! Unless you’re a really big tokusatsu fan, you probably haven’t seen an episode of 1978’s Spider-Man TV series. But if you’ve been anywhere on the internet, you’re probably familiar with at least a few screenshots and gifs of the bizarre partnership between the Toei Company and Marvel Comics.

In the Spider-Man TV series, the wall crawler is Takuya Yamashiro, a motocross racer who uses various techniques that allow him to do things that are almost like the comic book version of Spider-Man. Like his Supaidā Buresuretto, which shoots his Supaidā Sutoringusu and Supaidā Netto, and stores his Supaidā Purotekutā suit when he’s not wearing it. He also has a flying car and a space ship that transforms into a 15-story-tall mech called Leopardon (or Reoparudon).

Phil Lord has confirmed that a design of Takuya Yamashiro has been created, though what that means for his appearance in the film is anyone’s guess. For example, Leopardon already had a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it cameo in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Spider-Man India

Image: Sony Pictures

Real name: Pavitr Prabhakar
Voiced by: Unknown

Producers Chris Miller and Phil Lord confirmed in a post-trailer chat that Pavitr Prabhakar, a young Indian boy granted the powers of a spider by an ancient yogi, and who later appeared in the Spider-verse run of comics, will appear in the movie sequel.

Bombastic Bag-Man

Image: Sony Pictures

Real name: Peter Parker
Voiced by: Unknown

First introduced in Amazing Spider-Man #258, “Bombastic Bag-Man” — the name applied to Peter Parker’s getaway outfit after separating from a symbiote in Reed Richards’ lab — might be the funniest damn thing Marvel has ever committed to paper. As you can see above, fans have been reviving this absurd costume as recently as the PS4 Spider-Man. Rightfully, he’s making his screen debut in Across the Spider-Verse.

Insomniac’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man

Image: Sony Pictures

Real names: Peter Parker and Miles Morales
Voiced by: Unknown

Teased in the original Into the Spider-Verse, Insomniac Games’ take on Spider-Man (and the other Spider-Man, Miles Morales) will appear in Across the Spider-Verse fully realized, based on a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment from the sequel’s tour through the Spider-Verse. (Nearby is another Spider-person who appears to be wearing a variant of the Anti-Ock Suit from Insomnaic’s PlayStation game.) Whether voice actors Yuri Lowenthal and Nadji Jeter will voice those characters — or whether they’re just background cameos — is unknown.

The Amazing Spider-Monkey

Image: Reilly Brown, Chad Wayne Hardin/Marvel Comics

Real name: Peter Parker
Voiced by: Unknown

In 2009, the Marvel “monkey-verse” introduced the Amazing Spider-Monkey, who joins the Ape-vengers on an adventure that sends the primates to the Marvel zombie-verse. Things got weird, but the key thing is that there is a spider version of Peter Parker who hangs out with his pals like “Bruce Bananner.”

Iron Spider and ‘Undies Spider-Man’

Image: Sony Pictures

Real name: Peter Parker
Voiced by: Unknown

Technically the Iron Spider suit comes from Amazing Spider-Man #529 and has a bit more of a futuristic sheen. But this variant looks closer to the character’s look in Avengers: Infinity War, in which Tony Stark hooked Peter up with some sweet tech.

The Peter Parker who only wears a mask and Spider-Man-themed Underoos also shows up.

The second trailer for Into the Spider-Verse also includes dozens of other cameos, ranging from Spider-Man suit variants to alternate universe characters, including Marvel Mangaverse Spider-Man, Spider-Man Unlimited, Werewolf Spider-Man, and… is that… Italian Spider-Man? Couldn’t be.

[Ed. note: These are all the officially announced new Spider-Persons appearing in Across the Spider-Verse. But in this era of delayed blockbusters, unofficial leaks based on toy announcements can tell us more. If you’d like to go into Across the Spider-Verse only knowing about the characters that Sony has said are definitely in the movie, stop reading here! But if you’d like to know everything before putting your butt in a theater, read on!]

Scarlet Spider

Image: Howard Mackie, Tom Lyle/Marvel Comics

Real name: Ben Reilly
Voiced by: Unknown

Ben Reilly was the central character of the hugely successful and widely reviled Spider-Man arc known as The Clone Saga. To boil all Clone Saga drama down to its essence, Ben was introduced in the 1970s as a clone of Peter Parker, right down to having many of the same memories, before he was killed while fighting a bad guy. Or was he?

Two decades later, Marvel Editorial revealed that Ben was still alive, and — TWIST — he wasn’t a clone at all — he was the real Peter Parker. In a horrifying mixup, the Peter Parker who had been adventuring as Spider-Man all that time was revealed to be the actual clone. This caused much angst for both Spider-Mans, until — ANOTHER TWIST — just kidding Ben was really a clone and Peter really had been the original Peter the whole time.

Ben lives on in Marvel Comics as an even angstier, more existential Spider-Man than Peter Parker, and he appears to have a role to play in Across the Spider-Verse, judging by a leaked Hasbro toy release.

Cyborg Spider-Woman

Photo: Hasbro

Real name: Unknown
Voiced by: Unknown

We know very little about Cyborg Spider-Woman, except that Hasbro has made a Spider-Verse tie-in toy of her. There is no Cyborg Spider-Woman in Marvel Comics. There is a Cyborg Spider-Man, but he’s only appeared in a handful of issues, and all we really know about him is that he’s a Spider-Man with cyborg parts.

It seems as though, if we want to know more about this mysterious, huge Spider-Person, we’ll simply have to wait for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse to hit theaters on June 2, 2023.