The Best New Spider-Beings In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, we met a lot of Spider-Entities. Hundreds, at least, and possibly a thousand or more. Just about every Spider-Man suit you’ve ever seen is represented here. But we’re not here to talk about a bunch of slightly different Peter Parkers. In fact, we’re not about to talk about Peter Parker at all, because the best new Spider-People we meet in Across the Spider-Verse are all somebody else. Or some thing else, in some cases–several of them aren’t human at all.

That’s a large part of the magic of the Spider-Verse: we get to meet so many Spider-Folks who aren’t Peter Parker. Which is great, because we’ve had more than our fair share of those Spider-Men on the big screen. Now it’s time for the others to get their time in the sun.

Warning: There are some spoilers ahead for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. But this is just a fun feature and we’re not going to talk about the plot much.

It may be somewhat difficult to believe, but nearly all the Spider-Beings who get meaningful screen time actually do originate in the comics, even the animal ones. See, a few years before we had the first Spider-Verse movie, which came out in 2018, we had a Spider-Verse event in the comics back in 2014. In this story, Spiders from every dimension formed the Web-Warriors, a trans-dimensional Avengers-esque group made up exclusively of Spider-People, in order to defend themselves against a group of multiversal hunters dedicated to killing every single Spider-Being.

So, yeah, nearly every outlandish new Spider-Person we meet in Across the Spider-Verse has origins in the comics, with many being introduced specifically in these Spider-Verse comics. So yes, even the horse came from the comics.

Check out our list of our favorite new Spider-Folks that we met in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse below.

10. Spider-Therapist

Sony Pictures

I know I said this list wouldn’t have any Peter Parkers in it, but we actually don’t know who the Spider-Therapist is who sarcastically mocks his patient, a different Spider-Man, for being upset his uncle died. He could definitely be Peter. We have no clue. But the idea that there’s a Spider-Man who just uses his powers for therapeutic purposes is pretty good–his heightened Spider-Senses would probably be helpful for reading his patients. Though he might want to work on his bedside manner a little bit.

9. Spider-Cat

This house cat-turned-superhero is famous not just for being a cat who’s a Spider-Person–he actually was killed battling the Inheritors, which is upsetting to think about. But fortunately he makes it through his 10 seconds of screen time in Across the Spider-Verse alive.

8. Scarlet Spider (Ben Reilly)

This growling and melodramatic clone of Peter Parker (voiced by Andy Samberg!) only gets a few random lines here and there, but every single one of them is a great joke. And trust me, he’s earned that moodiness–his backstory is that he was killed and resurrected over and over by his creator, who was using Ben to refine his cloning tech. Pretty traumatic.

7. Spider-Man India (Pavitr Prabhakar)

Voiced by Karan Soni, the comedian who played the cabbie in the Deadpool movies, Pavitr is a delightful contrast to all the other Spider-folks because he lacks a traumatic backstory–his is supposed to go down during this film, but Miles prevents it. It’s nice to have a happy Spider-Man for once. Side note: His city of Mumbattan is the best location that has ever been in a Marvel movie.

6. Spider-Rex (Pter Ptarker)

An actual dinosaur from a version of prehistoric Earth (Earth-66) where dinosaurs were apparently sentient. Spider-Rex actually began life as a pteradon named Pter Ptarker. But when he was attacked by a T Rex, the pair were nailed by a meteor filled with radioactive space spiders and swapped bodies, and they both suddenly had superpowers. Pter, now in the T Rex body, won that one.

5. Spider-UK (Malala Windsor)

This female version of Spider-UK who’s wearing a burqa isn’t from the comics, but she’s likely a reference to Malala Yousefzai, the well known Pakistani activist who has been living in the UK since the Pakistani Taliban nearly assassinated her when she was a teenager. Windsor, by the way, is the surname of the British royal family.

4. Sun-Spider (Charlotte Webber)

The pun name is obviously amazing, but even better is that she’s in a wheelchair that can swap its wheels for sick mechanical spider legs on the fly. Sun-Spider is actually a fan creation inspired by the first Spider-Verse film who was then introduced in one of the Spider-Verse comics in 2019. And not only did she get to have a cool featured action moment while all the Spider-Folks are chasing Miles around the Spider-Society–she also gets to deliver a pun. Technically that makes her a more legit Spider-Man than most of the other ones we met in this movie.

3. Spider-Horse and the Web-Slinger (Patrick O’Hara)

These two–a Wild West gunslinger and his horse, who were both bitten by the same radioactive spider and have a telepathic bond as a result–are a pretty great Lone Ranger joke. And, honestly, few things hit the spot like a horse shooting spider webs out of their hooves. It’s just such a weird image and I have no desire to get it out of my head.

2. Spider-Mobile (Peter Parkedcar)

In the comics, this sentient car is basically just one of the random background Spider-People from a Spider-Verse comic, but apparently the idea was that he comes from a dimension that’s basically Pixar’s Cars. And I gotta say that I would definitely watch Marvel’s Cars–if Phil Lord and Chris Miller are involved, anyway.

1. Spider-Punk (Hobie Brown)

Daniel Kaluuya’s Spider-Punk is the best character in the whole dang movie, an agent of chaos who encourages all defiance of authority. Normally a character like this would be kind of obnoxious in the hands of movie screenwriters, but instead Hobie is just the cool uncle who has some very on-point life lessons to share with the youngsters. Hobie knows what he’s talking about, kids.

Fun fact: Due to a miscommunication, Spider-Punk was originally designed to be Spider-UK as a mistake. But Marvel liked the look of him so much that they recycled it for Spider-Punk, who was American in the comics. So making him be British in the film could potentially be a nod to that odd real-life origin.