Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse Sets Up A Spidey Event Nearly A Decade In The Making
This article contains major spoilers for "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse."
After nearly five years of waiting, "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" is finally in theaters. The story was simply too big to be contained in a single film, though, so audiences have much more to look forward to as this is just the first part of a two-part story that was cooked up by producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, alongside co-writer Dave Callaham. This means we now await the release of "Beyond the Spider-Verse" next year. Not only will that movie resolve the big cliffhanger we were left with this time around, but it will seemingly bring one of the most notorious supervillain groups to the big screen for the first time. That's right! It looks like we're finally getting the Sinister Six.
A great deal happens in the third act of "Across the Spider-Verse," so audience members would be forgiven for missing this key detail. However, late in the film, we hear one of the many versions of J. Jonah Jameson on a TV in the background make an explicit reference to the "Sinister Six." It's a small thing in the movie, but a pretty damn big thing for Marvel fans who have been hearing a lot about this group for a long, long time, with nothing materializing in any "Spider-Man" movies to date.
As for how they will be incorporated and which villains will make up the team? That remains unclear, but we leave off with Miles trapped in the wrong universe since the spider that bit him and gave him his powers in the first place was from The Spot's universe and not his. In the universe Miles is now in, Spider-Man never existed and the city is a crime-ridden hellhole with the Miles of that universe becoming The Prowler.
A (very) brief history of the Sinister Six
Even early on in his run dating back to the 1960s, Spider-Man has had one of the best rogues galleries of villains in all of comics. That being the case, Marvel decided to have a bunch of them team up to try and take down Spidey together in "The Amazing Spider-Man Annual" #1, which is where the Sinister Six was revealed to the world. The original lineup consisted of Kraven the Hunter, Mysterio, Vulture, Sandman, Electro, and Doctor Octopus, who served as the de facto leader of the group.
The legendary duo of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko are credited with creating the group, but they have been a mainstay in the pages of Marvel Comics for decades now. Granted, the lineup has changed a great deal through the years, with Hobgoblin, Venom, Lizard, Chameleon, Tombstone, and many others having also joined the team at various points. Essentially, if you can get six villains together that hate Spider-Man, you've got the Sinister Six.
This gang of villains has been at the center of some of the biggest "Spider-Man" storylines ever published, including "Revenge of the Sinister Six," "Ends of the Earth," and "The Death of Spider-Man." While many of the villains associated with the team have, individually, made their way to the movies, never have six of them united to take down a cinematic version of Spider-Man. That is poised to change with "Beyond the Spider-Verse," and it's taken us an awful long time to get here.
Nearly a decade in the making
Looking all the way back to "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" in 2014, Sony has long had plans to bring the Sinister Six to the big screen. Granted, the group has appeared many times in other media such as video games and various TV shows, but they've never graced the silver screen, even if such a thing has been teased ad nauseam up to this point. In "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," there is a scene with a character named Gustav Fiers (a deep-cut Marvel villain) who walks by some suits in a lab, setting up villains like Doc Ock and Vulture. This was clearly teeing up the ball for the then-planned "Sinister Six" movie, which was to be directed by Drew Goddard ("The Cabin in the Woods").
Ultimately, that film never came to pass, largely thanks to the deal Sony made with Disney to bring Spider-Man into the MCU, which led to Tom Holland taking over as Peter Parker. It also seemed like "Spider-Man: No Way Home" was setting the table for a Sinister Six situation, but we ended up having three villains and three Spider-Men duking it out instead. Most nonsensically, there was the bonkers post-credits scene attached to "Morbius" that seemed to tease a not-so-evil version of the Sinister Six in that universe, though that is almost certainly not happening.
All of this is to say that plans for the Sinister Six have been in the cards for a long, long time. This is a big deal and will serve as a big payoff for fans who have been teased by this group's arrival for far too long. And, given the quality of both of these "Spider-Verse" movies so far, one can only assume and hope it will be worth the wait.
"Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" is in theaters now, with "Beyond the Spider-Verse" due in theaters sometime in 2024.