Spotting the character deep dives and rewards in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
January 30 sees the debut of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 on the Epic Games Store. Insomniac’s follow-up to its 2018 game sees players switch between two Spider-Men, Peter Parker and Miles Morales, in an adventure that pits them against villains like Sandman, Kraven the Hunter, and Venom.
Insomniac has put a lot of effort into fleshing out its unique take on Spider-Man’s universe (officially labeled as Earth-1048 in Marvel’s multiversal continuity), with the help of comic book writers like Christos Gage and Sam Maggs (Critical Role, IDW’s Rick and Morty). When Spider-Man 2 opens, Peter has been suiting up to fight crime for around a decade, with Miles as his newfound superhero apprentice. The rest of the Marvel Universe is visible in the background but usually offstage; Insomniac’s focus is squarely on Peter, Miles, and their friends and family.
Part of the fun of Spider-Man 2 for longtime fans of the character like me, however, is seeing all the shout-outs that Insomniac has packed into the game’s margins. Between 60 years of the mainstream comics, their alternate timelines, the various film franchises, the cartoons, and everything else, there are dozens of distinct versions of Spider-Man, and Insomniac doesn’t seem inclined to rest until it manages to fit a reference to them all into its games. Here are some of the quieter nods to Spider-Man continuity that are scattered throughout Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 for the benefit of new and returning fans.
Arachknight Suit
Source: Infinity Wars #3, 2018
Unlock: Once you reach level 20, buy this off your inventory screen with 45 Tech Parts and three City Tokens.
In the 2018 series Infinity Warps, the new villain Requiem captures multiple heroes inside the Soul Stone, then joins their essences so they’d be too confused to find a way back out. (It’s a long story.) Spider-Man ends up conjoined with Moon Knight, which creates a new hero called the Arachknight: a vigilante empowered by a spider god with four distinctive personalities.
The name also doubles as a shout-out to an old Marvel Comics in-joke. Back in 1990, Todd McFarlane (Spawn) was given his own Spider-Man comic to write and draw. The cover featured the blurb “The Legend of the Arachknight” as a parody of the current post-Tim Burton Batman craze.
Civil War Suit
Source: Civil War vol. 2 #1, 2015
Unlock: This becomes available for purchase from your inventory screen once you hit level 28. It costs 60 Tech Parts and two Rare Tech Parts.
In the 2015 storyline Secret Wars, the Marvel Universe was briefly reduced to a handful of small alternate universes under the control of Doctor Doom. One of those universes was based on the 2006 storyline Civil War, which featured a conflict over an attempt by the U.S. government to register and control superheroes.
In this new ending to the original storyline, the United States has been split into two warring factions. Tony Stark leads the Iron, a technocratic faction based on the East Coast, while Steve Rogers is the leader of the more anarchic Blue. Six years after the original Civil War, Peter has become Steve’s right-hand man, wearing a new suit that features a pair of mechanical wings in honor of the late Sam Wilson.
In Spider-Man 2, this suit has a special feature. Whenever you glide as Peter, the backpack on the Civil War suit deploys a pair of wings.
Life Story Suits
Source: Spider-Man: Life Story #6 (2019)
Unlock: Once you complete all the EMF Experiments, you can purchase Peter’s Life Story Suit for 15 Tech Parts and one City Token. Miles’s, by comparison, is unlocked when you hit level 12 and costs 35 Tech Parts and two City Tokens.
The 2019 limited series Life Story by Chip Zdarsky and Mark Bagley explores the Marvel Universe through Spider-Man’s perspective as if it had developed in real time, with each issue encompassing the events of a decade.
The final issue, set in the 2010s, features an elderly Peter as the mentor of a new generation of heroes, which includes Miles, Kamala Khan, and Peter and MJ’s daughter Claire. When Peter and Miles have to go on a mission into high orbit, they both get equipped with their own custom space suits. Unfortunately, as a nod to this universe’s version of the Superior Spider-Man storyline, Miles isn’t exactly who he says he is, and a fight ensues.
Hellfire Gala Suits
Source: X-Men: Hellfire Gala #1 (2022)
Unlock: This is a free reward as part of Spider-Man 2’s 1.002 update. Players on Epic should have access to this as soon as they install the game.
The X-Men comic books recently wrapped up a yearslong storyline where Earth’s mutants gathered to create a new nation on the living island of Krakoa. As part of that storyline, Marvel published several one-shots about an annual party on Krakoa called the Hellfire Gala.
As a homage to the real-world Met Gala, the Hellfire Gala featured many X-Men and other superheroes wearing new, one-night-only costumes designed by illustrator Russell Dauterman. While Spider-Man skipped the first Hellfire Gala, he was on hand for the second, featuring this new fit.
Miles never showed for a Hellfire Gala, but he got a suit for it created by Bernard Chang. It first appeared on a variant cover for issue #8 of his 2022 run. This furthers a proud tradition in Insomniac’s Spider-verse of including suits that only ever appeared once, such as the Spirit Spider costume in the first game.
Best There Is Suit
Source: What If…? Miles Morales #2 (2022)
Unlock: Reach Level 52, then pay 105 Tech Parts and seven City Tokens.
In a five-issue miniseries, various creators explored stories where Miles adopted other superheroic identities such as Captain America, Thor, or the Hulk. The final issue featured a team-up between “our” Miles and his alternates sent up against villainous versions of his uncle Aaron.
The Best There Is Suit is a nod to the second issue of the series. In this alternate reality, Miles was abducted as a kid by the Weapon X program and used as a guinea pig for similar experiments to those that created Wolverine. By 2022, Miles is a vagabond with a healing factor and unbreakable claws.
Notably, the other three color palettes for the Best There Is Suit mimic various costumes that Wolverine has had in the comics. This includes his debut yellow-and-black look, his second black-and-tan outfit, and the Uncanny X-Force “black ops” uniform.
Dark Ages Suit
Source: Dark Ages #1 (2021)
Unlock: Once you reach level 56, you can buy this for 110 Tech Parts and three Hero Tokens from your inventory screen.
In an alternate reality, Earth came under attack from an ancient mechanical creature called the Unmaker. In an attempt to fight it, Dr. Strange opened a portal to an alternate dimension that struck the Unmaker with a constant electromagnetic pulse, but he was killed before he could close it.
As a result, the Earth was saved, but the EMP returned it to pre-industrial levels of technology. Iron Man was forced to go steampunk, androids ceased to function, and in the aftermath, Miles ended up as a host to the Venom symbiote. Unfortunately, he subsequently fell under the control of Apocalypse, who joined the Carnage symbiote with Miles and Venom to form an entirely new threat. The Dark Ages Suit in Spider-Man 2 is a homage to that short-lived look.
Delilah & the Spider-Bots
Once you clear the Science Buddy mission in the main story, you’ll be able to find 42 separate Spider-Bots scattered throughout Manhattan. These are usually found on the sides of tall buildings or hovering in mid-air, and each one you collect is worth some XP and Tech Parts. If you see a big circular pulse as you’re exploring the city, that means you’ve just stumbled across a Spider-Bot.
Each Bot has a unique paint job that’s patterned after a different character or suit from Spider-Man history. This includes several of the suits from the first Marvel’s Spider-Man that didn’t come back for the sequel, like the Future Foundation costume; other alternate-universe Spider-characters, such as Peter and MJ’s teenage daughter Mayday Parker; or characters that have yet to appear in Insomniac’s universe, like Cassie “Dusk” St. Commons or Anya Corazon.
Once you’ve collected all 42 Spider-Bots, you unlock a final mission, The Message, that sends you to Chinatown. Here you’ll have a short encounter with a woman named Delilah, who name-drops Miguel O’Hara, the Spider-Man of 2099 and the antagonist of the animated movie Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Delilah is odd because in a game that’s otherwise packed full of shout-outs, she actually hasn’t been in anything yet. She’s the bartender at the Bar With No Name, a supervillain hang-out that was originally meant to feature in the post-credits scene of Across the Spider-Verse. However, her scene ended up on the cutting-room floor.
What we do know about Delilah is in Ramin Zahed’s Across the Spider-Verse: The Art of the Movie, which describes Delilah as a trained assassin who prefers to work as a bartender. It’s possible that her appearance in Spider-Man 2 was intended as a tie-in to Across the Spider-Verse that didn’t pan out due to incompatible production schedules. Alternatively, she may play a role in the forthcoming sequel Beyond the Spider-Verse.
The Symbiote Logos
Spoiler warning: As you approach the end of Spider-Man 2, you start to encounter Symbiotes: normal New Yorkers who’ve been possessed by Venom’s spawn. This represents a solid difficulty spike over the thugs, mercenaries, and assorted crooks you’ve been fighting up to this point, but you’re given a couple of extra tools that can make things easier.
For Marvel fans, the real eyebrow-raiser about the Symbiotes comes from what they’re wearing. Most of the Symbiotes you face in Spider-Man 2 have a spiral-shaped sigil on their foreheads. If you’re paying attention earlier in the game, this is the same symbol you can find on the whiteboard in the hidden laboratory of Dr. Connors.
A slightly less elaborate version of the same sigil appeared in King in Black, a 2020 Marvel storyline that sent Marvel’s heroes up against Knull, an ancient god of darkness and the original creator of the symbiote species. Over the course of the story, Knull possesses several heroes, all of whom end up with sigils like those found in Spider-Man 2. This was the source of Miles’s King in Black look.
As a result, fans have been expecting Knull to make an appearance in Insomniac’s universe ever since. Knull is out of circulation in the mainstream Marvel Universe, but if you’re looking for a serious raising of the stakes for Spider-Man 3, how about an ancient space god with an army of alien dragons?