The number of Spider-variants in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse just keeps getting bigger… Which is something that’s almost hard to believe after that mind-blowing first trailer for the incoming Sony animated sequel, and yet it’s happening. Following on from the recent confirmation that none other than Andy Samberg has boarded the film, the latest rumors have seemingly revealed which character he’s playing — and it just happens to be a fan-favorite webslinger.
This remains uncorroborated on a larger scale at this point, but the word on the street (as originally reported by One Take News) is that Samberg is voicing Ben Reilly aka Scarlet Spider. For those not familiar with the character, Ben — named after his uncle and Aunt May’s maiden name — is a clone of Peter Parker and one of the few good things to come out of the 1990s’ Clone Saga comic book event. The fact that he might be finally about to get some love on the big screen is blowing his loyal fans’ minds.
Although, for Brooklyn Nine-Nine die-hards, there’s really only one appropriate reaction to this news…
On top of the fact Ben Reilly will apparently be in Into the Spider-Verse at all, the other really exciting thing about this rumor is that Samberg is supposedly being set up for a much bigger presence in next year’s Beyond the Spider-Verse trilogy-closer. Having planted that idea in folks’ heads, now it’s all Scarlet Spider stans can do to pray to the Sony gods that this turns out to be true.
As much as Sony’s live-action Spidey spin-offs might be… not so great, the studio knocked it out of the park with Into the Spider-Verse, so let’s hope we can trust them to do Ben Reilly justice as the trilogy continues. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings into theaters this June 2.
