The following article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse isn’t just a great story about choosing the kind of hero you want to be; it’s also an all-encompassing look at Spider-Man lore across film, TV, and comics. It’s so far-reaching, in fact, that the movie unexpectedly answered one of our biggest questions since Spider-Man: Homecoming released in 2017: Where the heck is Uncle Aaron in the MCU?
Very early in Tom Holland’s tenure as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, he met the Prowler — a significant antagonist in the Spider-Verse movies, given that Miles Morales’ uncle dons the mask and attempts to kill the Web-Slinger several times without realizing that’s his nephew in the bunch-up unitard.
But audiences may not have known they were looking at the Prowler in Homecoming, as Aaron Davis (played by Donald Glover) appears sans outfit and partakes in the plot just long enough to get webbed to the trunk of his car and give Spider-Man some much-needed information about alien weapons being sold around Queens. As a nod to Miles, Glover mentions that he “has a nephew” who lives nearby.
Check out the scene below:
Of course, on a meta-level, the scene is poking fun at the long-lived online campaign for Donald Glover to play Spider-Man. Although Glover likely was never going to be cast as Peter Parker, he would have made a great Miles Morales a decade or so ago. But during the early days of Marvel Phase 3, the filmmakers were just trying to make Peter’s character work again after a muted reception to Andrew Garfield’s films. Hence, there was no room for Miles. Hence, Donald Glover was cast to play one of the most important figures in Miles’ life in a plot that would serve Peter and the needs of his character.
But where has Glover’s Aaron Davis been since then? Across the Spider-Verse seemingly gave us an answer, putting a fully live-action Glover in the Prowler costume and confining him to a cell while Spider-Gwen and Spider-Punk argue about who captured this particular “anomaly” who was in a universe where he didn’t belong.
Fans are going nuts over the reveal on social media, and here’s one explaining how Glover’s Spider-Verse cameo elegantly ties up a dangling thread from the MCU:
That’s a pretty great summary, but there’s one error in there: We’re not sure yet whether the live-action Miles Morales movie announced recently by producer Amy Pascal is going to to be a Sony-only endeavor. Remember: Sony and Marvel share the character of Spider-Man and anyone who originated in his comics. Although Sony sometimes makes Spider-Man movies without Marvel, there’s still a chance we could meet Miles in the upcoming Spider-Man 4 led by Tom Holland.
Perhaps Holland will show Miles the ropes, only for Miles to be forced to stand up to his mentor when the black suit teased at the end of No Way Home turns Peter into an antihero. Then, maybe Miles will finally get his own film after live-action audiences have had a proper introduction.
So what do we make of the Spider-Verse cameo if Miles and Uncle Aaron actually are located in Tom Holland’s universe? Simple: The version of the Prowler we see in Spider-Verse is not the same Aaron that we met in Homecoming. That version seemed like he was already rethinking his life of crime anyway, so perhaps he took the straight path while another Donald Glover made the Prowler suit and went jumping through universes murdering everyone who shoots webs.
We don’t want to rob the above TikToker of their enthusiasm, but multiverse movies hardly ever provide firm answers. They’re best appreciated as a series of “what if”s, whether they’re ridiculously well-written or not.