The Next Spider-Man Won’t Rely On Old Villains, And That’s Great News

Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.

Insomniac Games pulled a very risky move concerning Spider-Man’s iconic villains that I need to talk about. Kraven the Hunter’s goal in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is to round up a good chunk of Spider-Man’s enemies, with the motive being this is all some great hunt. The threat is blunt, and yet what comes later still ends up shocking, especially since rounding up the rogue’s gallery isn’t unusual for Kraven, nor is it really that unheard of for superhero games.

Kraven’s Last Hunt

Let’s not forget Batman: Arkham City used the titular city as an excuse to round up many of Batman’s fiercest foes all in the same location. But what’s an even darker turn is when Spider-Man crawled through one of Kraven’s compounds only to find security footage of what happened when Scorpion escaped. Scorpion had assumed he had the drop on Kraven, sliding through the sand like the creature he’s named after, and striking Kraven in the chest. But then, Kraven pulls out the stinger, mocks Scorpion for being such weak prey, and kills him in an instant. Being a member of the first game’s Sinister Six did not ensure his safety, and when we play as Mary Jane Watson, we find out he was far from the only one.

MJ is accidentally kidnapped while snooping around in the van of one of Kraven’s goons, but resourceful as she is, she knocks him out and snoops around the abandoned zoo to try and free Dr. Kurt Connors before he turns into The Lizard. Not too long in, she walks into a room and finds the wings of The Vulture, plus a recording in which Kraven laments how the hunt was so easy that it wasn’t even satisfying to clip the wings off Vulture’s corpse.

You can miss the next two victims if you don’t check everything; but both Electro and Shocker also end up as confirmed kills. Shocker ends up with the best eulogy from Kraven’s recordings—he is still disappointed, but enjoyed the resourcefulness and how Shocker came the closest to killing him. As a Shocker fan, this is incredibly true to his character, as he’s just a bank robber. He lacks the ego that immediately doomed Vulture, Scorpion, and Electro, so he was the only one who understood that this was a fight for survival and treated it as such.

Having most of these kills be off-screen can feel cheap, but honestly, I really like that Insomniac decided to end the stories of so many over-used villains. Going back to Arkham, that series ended up relying on returning baddies quite a bit. Origins is still controversial for making the Joker the main villain again despite Black Mask being a great idea for a new main threat. Arkham Knight forced a return for Firefly, Scarecrow, Deathstroke, Penguin, Two-Face, The Riddler, Hush, Harley Quinn, and Poison Ivy. Death didn’t stop The Joker from possessing Batman’s mind, and a DLC brought back Mad Hatter, Killer Croc, and Ra’s Al Ghul. How were the first-time villains Professor Pyg, Man-Bat, and Deacon Blackfire supposed to compete? Ultimately, they didn’t, even as memorable as they were, and I find myself mostly remembering how Two-Face and Penguin were handled.

And that won’t happen with Insomniac.

Is This The End For Mysterio?

If we ignore the villains who die (for the record: Kraven is eaten by Venom), then we still lose a lot of returning baddies due to Insomniac daring something even braver: redeeming these classic villains.

Tombstone from the first game has ditched crime and become a mechanic, even joking with Spider-Man how he’s now out-of-shape because of it before he thanks Spider-Man for rescuing him from Kraven, closing the story for Insomniac’s take on the character. The Lizard and Sandman are forced into transforming, and from the way these are handled, it’s clear these are good people who never want to be monsters ever again, which to me feels like an admission that Insomniac is only doing their transformations once, and this was it. Mister Negative comes to grips with the fact he was a soulless monster and gives up his powers to save the day, turning himself back in afterward, meaning now a total of five of the Sinister Six will no longer come back.

But it’s Mysterio who perfectly stands out for me. During the story, Miles enters a Mysterium that breaks down, and Quentin Beck (who used to be Mysterio) is horrified that Miles almost got hurt and shuts it down. This starts a series of side missions in which Miles enters a Mysterium to fix the issue, each time earning an audio log that shows how Quentin and his team went about creating the Mysteriums. Quentin assumes and worries that this is a set-up to make him look like a villain again, and he’s right. When I got the phone call claiming to be from Mysterio, saying that he’d killed his associates, I instantly figured out the culprits were his associates trying to pin the crime on him. It was more Scooby-Doo than superhero games tend to get, and I mean that in the best possible way.

With Quentin’s name cleared, Miles says “Looks like Mysterio is a good guy now.” And Quentin just turns to Miles with a sad yet conclusive look, saying “Mysterio will always be a villain, just like Spider-Man will always be a hero.”

The direct meaning is in line with Quentin doing everything he can to denounce the name Mysterio, but in the broader scope, I feel that’s a perfect line for Spider-Man’s history, and we don’t need to keep seeing Mysterio anymore.

He will always be a villain. Always part of the legacy. So, it’s time we moved on from him appearing every single time. There are a lot of other Spider-Man villains. Hydro-Man is a silly one nobody uses, Big Wheel has been weirdly teased (as you can see just above), and heck, I’d love to see what Insomniac does with Mephisto. But the returning villains are a small pool: Taskmaster, Screwball, Hammerhead, Carnage, Chameleon, Rhino, and Kingpin. Rhino’s head is in an unfinished room that players have found, and Kingpin is still in jail, so when considering returning villains doing actual villainy, the list is even smaller than that.

Green Goblin and Doc Ock are all but confirmed in the credits, but that’s it. And that’s refreshing. To have a superhero game where I can’t guess the upcoming villains. Now is the time to remember the legacy of Spider-Man’s greatest foes, and how you can do that without shoving them all into every single game.