I don’t know if this could be considered sequel baiting, but the last scene in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has a unique scene that brings me back to the heydays of my comic book experience.
**Warning Spoilers Ahead**
Enter the year 2099
Miguel O’Hara, the Spider-Man of 2099 makes an appearance as he’s talking to a holographic image named Lyla recapping the events that just unfolded in the Spider-Verse. There is another menace looming in the Spider-Verse, and O’Hara must gather other spider-folk to combat this new threat. With that, he decides to travel to Universe 67- which is effectively the Spider-Man cartoon from the 60’s.
More particularly, it’s the episode “Double Identity” where a villain named Cameo was impersonating various people from the Daily Bugle like Peter Parker, James Jonah Jameson, and even Spider-Man himself. O’Hara drops in on the scene famously used as a meme on Reddit and other social media platforms. In it, he points at the other Spider-Man and asks for his help.
As the scene progresses, he ends up asking why the other Spider-Man keeps pointing at him. He’s also wondering why he’s continuing to point at the other Spider-Man.
What’s funnier for those who have watched the original episode, is that in this scene, the other Spider-Man is actually Cameo. The real Spider-Man has yet to come in to thwart the villain.
Sequel Baiting
So we’ve got Spider-Man 2099, a character audiences like myself have been begging for on screen for quite a while, as the character design and writing of the comic were quite popular with audiences in the 90’s and helped spur other 2099 titles like Doom 2099 and Punisher 2099.
He makes his entrance into the film’s end credits as hint of something bigger happening behind the scenes as a danger to the Spider-Verse. He has a wrist device to travel to other universes without any danger to himself. And he decides to go back to the beginning, and ask the 1960’s cartoon Spider-Man for help.
A nod to audiences of the old cartoon, and a play on the meme that has been popularized recently on the internet. However, it is a hint that there could be a sequel already in motion at Sony. And the current Spider-Geddon arc going on in the comics might be story fuel for a potential sequel. Whether they’ll dive into the Inheritors or Morlun is yet to be seen. The arc by Christos Gage and Jorge Molina is ongoing. The current story sees Molrun and his Inheritors escape their imprisonment and are hellbent on revenge against Spider-Man and the Spider-Army.
What’s on the Docket?
Sony has been planning a number of movies for the Spider-Verse, milking the property of Spider-Man for all that its worth. They managed to get a bit of cash from the so-so Venom, but they got the lightning in the bottle with Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. So if this movie does well at the box office as many critics are praising it (including myself), then a sequel isn’t out of the question.
Just as long as they keep Lord and Miller.
What are you looking forward to with a potential sequel? Do you think it will include the Spider-Man of 2099 and the Spider-Man of 1967 as the post-credit scene hints at? Leave a comment below or let’s talk about it on social media!