Highlights

  • Marvel's Spider-Man 2 delves deep into Peter's subconscious fears, highlighting his concern about crime rehabilitation and the never-ending cycle of villains.
  • As the third installment looms, potential loose ends in character development for Peter and Miles may remain unaddressed.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is encumbered with story content and while that should’ve made sense for a sequel that needs to balance two playable Spider-Men, all of its incessantly brimming narrative moments arrive in the third act and center almost exclusively around Peter Parker as soon as he somehow allows the symbiote to pass back to Harry Osborn. Even Miles Morales’ moment to earn closure and share dialogue with Martin Li’s Mr. Negative outside of a gladiatorial arena revolves around them rescuing Peter by diving into his subconscious, which glides right on by a neat piece of character development in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

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Peter Parker’s Deep-Seated Concern is an Afterthought in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

As Miles and Li explore Peter’s psyche they learn that, while affected by the symbiote and its emotional enhancement, Peter subconsciously wishes he could kill the super-criminals he goes toe-to-toe with to rid the world of their villainy. This sequence also reveals—or rather shouts it at players during dialogue between Miles and Li—that Peter believes and fears that criminals he puts away will always manage to break out again, his efforts as Spider-Man are fruitless, and allowing himself to tap into the symbiote would solve that problem.

Peter is not a killer and would never act on that thought if not for the manipulation of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 ’s symbiote , though.

The more intriguing element of this entire sequence is how Peter is concerned about the state of rehabilitation and how criminals should be processed. He puts them away out of habit and knows violent criminals should be behind bars, but as Li points out—and as is obvious due to there being infinite enemies for players to apprehend—criminals are always finding ways back on the street.

Otherwise, there are always new criminals or villains who arrive to take the place of another. It’s an interesting topic for Insomniac to touch on because it needs to continue peppering antagonists into these Marvel’s Spider-Man entries for there to be games at all, and perhaps that cements Peter’s deepest fear as the acknowledgment that his great responsibility is a never-ending one. Rather, that theory would be contradicted by the end of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which shows Peter willing to take a step back from his Spider-Man duties for an undetermined amount of time.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 Needs to Find More Time for Its Amazing Spider-Men

It would be unfortunate if Insomniac dove into Peter’s mind for such a poignant nugget of character development and never returns to it, but that seems like it’ll be the case in this scenario. It would be easier for Insomniac to sweep it under a rug—that rug literally being Peter’s subconscious, where it’s still buried deep—than to uproot it again in Marvel’s Spider-Man 3, especially if no solution could give Peter any therapeutic catharsis.

Instead, the third installment is likely to center around Norman Osborn becoming Green Goblin, if not Harry, with even less time for Insomniac to spend on developments for Peter or Miles. Indeed, Miles’ own development seems stunted after this time spent with Li, whom he is evidently unable to forgive for killing his father. This puts Miles in an ambiguous place and how he’ll grow from that encounter should definitely have repercussions in Marvel’s Spider-Man 3.

Likewise, if Peter’s subconscious fears are never brought up again it’ll be a crying shame. If Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 is the “final chapter” as Otto Octavius has ominously hinted at, seemingly as a fourth-wall-breaking nudge, it could be leaving both its Spider-Man protagonists with loose threads—and not just the strands they fire from their web-shooters.