#majority of the scenes i drew this month are canon but this one isn't. i just wanted to think about what his nightmare would be like

[felisartus]

Day 27: Nightmare

[eddiebrockx]

"Disrupting Canon"

⚠️SPOILERS for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (primarily the latter). Like serious spoilers. Please don't engage if you don't want any!⚠️

Incoming mini-essay! (TL;DR - Miguel O'Hara as a character has much to say about grief and guilt, and how it can harm people.)

After watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, I am filled with thoughts!!! So many that they can't all be contained here, and I'll probably have to write an actually essay later--however, I wanted to share some of my feelings and ideas about Miguel and his role in the story, specifically.

Miguel is obviously an antagonist to Miles throughout the story. And, I would actually argue that he is an antagonist to everyone, including himself. He's cynical, he's controlling, he projects his fears onto everyone, and he is terrified of change. The scene where he tells Miles that he is the "original anomaly" is a obvious display of all of that.

Despite this, Miguel still isn't a villain; he isn't evil, and he isn't doing any of this because of pure malice. Instead, he's doing it out of fear. Because Miguel is also an anomaly (at least, I think so). Miguel has more in common with Miles than he does the other Spiders, which is why I think he blames Miles for so much as the "original anomaly."

We know, as the audience, that Miles shouldn't be blamed for anything that has happened. It is not his fault that the Spot brought over a radioactive spider from Earth-42; it's not his fault that he got bit; it's not his fault that the original Spider-Man dies; it's not his fault that the Spot became the Spot. Any logical person can see that Miles didn't have any control over these situations; so why can't Miguel?

He can't because Miguel believes that Miles will cause and experience exactly what he did. We know that a major part of why Miguel is so uptight is because when he disrupted canon, his entire world disintegrated before his eyes. And, its a logical fear; as he said himself, is it worth saving one person over ending the world? But this is where things get complicated: does "disrupting canon" actually cause the world to end?

Peter B. Parker, for example, has a daughter. Jessica Drew is pregnant. None of the other Spiders seem to have children, so wouldn't these be an example of canon being disrupted? Pavitr's world still seems to be around (I'm assuming), after we saw canon disrupted. Gwen's father LITERALLY quit his job, meaning he didn't die, and therefore also disrupted canon. But...nothing happened to Gwen's Earth, even though she was gone for several months.

And, the cherry on top, if Miles is an anomaly, how come nothing has happened to Earth-1610 and Earth-42? Why did nothing happen when the original Spider-Man died?

All of these things, I would like to add, are also very different to what Miguel did. Miguel abandoned his world for a new one, taking the place of a version of him that died. He was in the wrong world. And this reminded me of a certain antagonist in Into the Spider-Verse: King Pin.

Throughout the entire movie, King Pin desperately tried to bring another version of his family into his world. In the end he failed, whereas Miguel succeeded. Of course there are major differences, still. King Pin was entirely selfish and didn't care what consequences came with getting his family back, whereas Miguel thought he wasn't hurting anyone. But Miguel still managed to hurt people, and that's what seems to linger for him. The guilt and grief that he caused the destruction of an entire Earth.

And he can't see past it. Despite the many examples we see throughout the movie that go against what he believes, he can't see beyond his own experience. And if he were to admit that Miles could be correct, his understanding of what happened to himself has to be completely reevaluated. All of that grief that he has suppressed, all of the work he's done to "fix" things; all of that changes.

This is what makes Miguel so compelling to me. I don't think what he said to Miles was warranted, but I can understand where he comes from. The other Spiders can too, because a lot of them have already experienced their canon events. It's what makes this conflict so complicated, so interesting.

Of course, we can't be 100% sure about everything until we see what happens in the third film, but it's all interesting nonetheless.

Ultimately, all I want to say is that I love this series, and I can't wait to see where it takes us next!