The following article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse shows off some astounding animation — including 3D, hand-drawn, and even an approximation of watercolors. Perhaps most shocking, though, are the little bits of live-action that Miles encounters while swinging through portals and making new Spidey frenemies.
Those could just be Easter Eggs, or they could suggest that we’ll see an entire live-action universe in the final chapter of the trilogy: Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse. But the film’s co-director isn’t telling.
In a recent interview with Collider, Joaquim Dos Santos, co-director of Across and Beyond the Spider-Verse, deftly dodged a question about whether we can look forward to Miles visiting a live-action universe in the finale:
“I mean, you saw it in the film, there was cool stuff to be seen. I think everything’s on the table. I can’t give you an answer. I wouldn’t dare give you an answer for fear of being, like, sniped right here on the spot, but yeah, I mean, that’s the exciting thing of these films. Look, I’m a man of a certain age, and in my mid-forties, the idea that I would be seeing a film like this, so beyond what I could imagine, even when I was a kid, it’s the stuff that I would draw in school on my notebook paper, and now it’s happening. So I think everything’s up.”
That tantalizing-but-frustrating answer seems to suggest that, although web-slinging through Sam Raimi’s New York may or may not be on the table for Miles, we’ll at least get our money’s worth with even more art styles in Beyond. We’re also going to take this as proof that the reason MCU boss Kevin Feige wears hats all the time is because he’s hiding a tiny derringer for the purpose of silencing people who start spilling secrets.
While Feige doesn’t have much to do with the Sony-helmed Spider-Verse films, who’s to say live-action Tom Holland won’t shake hands with animated Miles Morales before the credits run on this series? That would warm our Who Framed Roger Rabbit hearts and prove that animation doesn’t have to be the fantastical shortcut that it sometimes feels like in family movies. At least we have a director who seems to grasp just how boundless the multiverse, and the design therein, can truly be.
