Warning: This article contains full spoilers for Madame Web.
“Madame Web, explained.” That’s a bit like boldly proclaiming “The meaning of life, explained.” No one on this planet, in any timeline, can genuinely claim to be able to understand the infinite complexity of Sony’s latest serving of superhero slop, with its unique blend of the bizarre and the banal.
Perhaps the only way to explain it is to immerse yourself in a Peruvian Spider-Pool or hop into the Hudson and gain psychic spidey powers like Dakota Johnson’s Cassandra Webb. But as that sounds like a lot of effort and I’m on a deadline, all I can do is simply give it my best shot.
First, let’s set the scene: Cassie Webb is a paramedic, whose whole career is about saving people yet her one personality trait seems to be that she dislikes everyone. When she briefly dies after falling from a bridge in a car (apparently it’s a contractual requirement that every Spider-Man movie must feature a scene like this), she is reborn with psychic powers which she uses to protect three young women — Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Anya (Isabela Merced), and Mattie (Celeste O’Connor) — from being hunted down by Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), alternatively known as Ceiling Man or Spider-Person. This is the Sony Spider-Man Universe, but god forbid they actually say the word Spider-Man.
By the grand third act, Cassie Stardust and the Spiders from Marvel confront Sims in a *checks notes* abandoned fireworks factory? (Milhouse Van Houten, your day has come). And here’s where things get interesting vaguely more intriguing even weirder.
How does Cassie Webb defeat Ezekiel Sims?
Sims gets the better of the Spider-Women and leaves all three in deathly danger, taunting Cassie that she can’t save them all. At this point, Cassie decides to pull a handy new power out of her hat and astral projects herself x3 in order to save her friends (Doctor Strange’s lawyers will be in touch). Apparently having mastered her powers in an instant, Cassie enters the Boss Fight with Sims and tells him the truth of his vision. Although he had foreseen his death in 10 years’ time at the hands of Julia, Anya, and Mattie, Cassie tells him it was always her who was destined to kill him.
With that, Cassie causes Sims to fall from a great height, whereupon he is crushed by a giant ‘S’ and ‘P’ from a crashing ‘PEPSI’ sign, which is such a bare-faced blend of shameless product placement and heavy-handed SPider-Man foreshadowing that it almost deserves applause. Unfortunately, a firework then proceeds to go off in Cassie’s face and she falls into the water for the THIRD TIME IN A SINGLE FILM. Her friends pull her out, though, and in a painfully prosaic pay-off for a scene earlier on when she taught them all CPR, they succeed in bringing her back to life. Still, the explosion from the firework has left her blind and paralyzed.
Does Spider-Man appear in Madame Web?
In the same hospital where Cassie recovers from her injuries, Mary Parker (Emma Roberts, in a role that requires her to smile and act pregnant and nothing else) gives birth to a baby boy. A baby boy who goes unnamed, but given his mother’s surname, the presence of Adam Scott’s Ben as his uncle, and a beautifully understated shot of some web-like mesh hanging over the bed, we can probably guess who he is. Yes, Spider-Man doesn’t turn up in Madame Web, but Peter Parker does.
How do the Spider-Women become superheroes?
The final scene sees Cassie unlocking her comic book look, now wearing red sunglasses and in a wheelchair, having seemingly adopted the girls as her own. What the film curiously makes no attempt to explain is how exactly the not-so-fantastic four eventually become the Spider-Women of Sims’ vision of the future. The film ends with another flashforward, in which all four are depicted in fancy CG superhero suits and possessing special powers — Julia can shoot glowy spider-webs, Anya has super-agility, and Celeste has an Iron Spider-like tech-suit.
In essence, then, Madame Web creates a whole new paradigm of comic book movie — it’s an origins story for an origins story.
Which Spider-Man timeline is Madame Web set in?
You may also be wondering which Spider-Man Baby Peter grows into. Well, the film does its best to avoid overtly stating its setting, but it’s been confirmed that Madame Web was supposed to take place in 2003. Needless to say, this makes Baby Peter far too young to be either Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield. Crucially, though, he’s also too young to be Tom Holland’s Spidey, who was canonically born in 2001. So we have literally just witnessed the birth of a brand new Spider-Man. With Madame Web 2 as unlikely as Cassie Webb displaying any human emotion, however, we probably won’t see him ever again.
