Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’s Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), aka Spider-Man 2099, is a vampire, a ninja, and a mystery. Here’s what the comics tell us.
Sometimes, a movie doesn’t need a villain; a jerk will do. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has one of each.
For the former, there’s the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), one of the odder villains in the Spider-Man canon, a guy who can generate portals at will and cause all sorts of spatial chaos. As for the jerk, that’s Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac), aka Spider-Man 2099, head of a cross-reality elite task force of parallel-world Spider-Mans. Unlike the Spot, whose whole deal is thoroughly explained in Across the Spider-Verse, Miguel is largely a mystery in this movie — we get some backstory for him, but it’s mostly vague hints. Those hints suggest he’s different somehow, maybe even disturbingly so. And likely because Across the Spider-Verse is just the first of a two-part story, the movie doesn’t follow up on the clues it lays down.
[Ed. note: Mild spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse follow.]
For a film that’s so packed with exposition, Across the Spider-Verse’s dodgy characterization of this particular alternate-universe Spider-Man can be frustrating. Throughout the film, we learn that he’s kind of a vampire (which is never explained), he secretly takes a drug of some kind (also not elaborated on), and most crucially, he’s the one Spider-Man who’s never funny. (Insulting to all the other Spider-People, really.)
Like a lot of things in Across the Spider-Verse, it’s easier to appreciate Miguel if you know his whole deal from the Marvel comics he first appeared in. However, there’s a caveat here: While the Spider-Verse films lovingly pull from Spidey comics and their many adaptations, most of the movies’ characterizations are original to them. In fact, the backstory Miguel does get in this movie is new to this film — the way he mirrors Kingpin in Into the Spider-Verse, attempting to interlope in another reality where he could have a family, doesn’t come from the comics.
So before diving in here, take this information with an appropriately sized grain of salt. Because while Miguel is among the stranger versions of Spider-Man that Marvel has published a lot of comics about, he might ultimately be a lot stranger in the Spider-Verse films. First of all: 2099 is a year
The name “Spider-Man 2099” is not, strictly speaking, Miguel O’Hara’s nom de guerre.
