Sony’s Spider-Man Universe—as far as it pertains to being a place where a series of films of questionably varied quality starring Spider-Man adjacent characters are never allowed to acknowledge that they are, indeed, adjacent to Spider-Man—is dead. Long live Sony’s Spider-Man Universe? The cinematic half-universe formerly known as SPUMC breathes its misguided last with the release of Kraven the Hunter this week, as the studio seeks to re-focus on the webslinger rather than anyone loosely related to him they can get their hands on. But that didn’t stop Kraven from throwing down some hooks for a potential future… all wrapped around an infamous architect in Spidey comics history.
It seems like Sony has never really gotten over its attempts to set the stage for some form of Sinister Six movie. As Kraven tumbles into its third act, it’s revealed that Rhino (Alessandro Nivola) was given his excruciating enhancements by a mysterious doctor in New York, and that eventually, Kraven’s younger half-brother Dimitri (Fred Hechinger) has gone to the same mystery figure to give him the morphing powers that made him the Chameleon in the comics. While that doctor goes unseen in Kraven, Rhino does name him when he’s attempting to pitch Dimitri on going down the same path he did: Miles Warren.
Who Is Miles Warren?
Also known as the Jackal, Miles Warren was a renowned biochemist who taught at Empire State University. Obsessed with the idea of human cloning, Warren put his obsession into action over the cause of another: his romantic interest in one of his students, Gwen Stacy. When Gwen was killed by the Green Goblin, Warren blamed Spider-Man for failing to save her, going down a rabbit hole using genetic samples taken from both her and another of his students, Peter Parker, to try and create human clones. Discovering that Peter was indeed Spider-Man in the process, Miles created his first two clones: his first of Gwen became known as Abby-L, a grotesque figure whose very touch caused living beings to begin rapidly degenerating themselves. Warren intended to kill Abby, horrified by his perceived failure, but Abby begged him to let her live, in exchange for giving up his cloning attempts to avoid anyone else like her being made. Warren promptly ignored that, and moved onto his second attempt when she left him: a clone of Peter, who suffered from cell degeneration but escaped Miles’ attempts to dispose of him, taking on the name… Kaine Parker.
Yes, as you might be able to guess at this point, Miles Warren is the villainous figure who rises behind one of the most infamous Spider-Man storylines ever written: the Clone Saga. Taking on the identity of the Jackal—a green, furry goblin-esque creature—after killing his lab partner in a maddened frenzy, Miles escaped and spent months trying to perfect the art of cloning, all the while preparing for his perceived vengeance on Peter Parker. After a series of failed attempts to get revenge, Miles put into motion his grandest plan. Using a clone of himself to fake his death, Miles developed his latest clone of Peter, who would take on the identity Ben Reilly, in an attempt to convince the actual Peter that he’d been living a lie as a clone of the “real” Spider-Man. The event dragged on over the course of three years, eventually culminating in Ben’s seeming death.
While Miles would go on to have a few more plot lines post Clone Saga—most notably “Spider-Island” in 2011—more recently he played a major factor in Ben Reilly’s return during the events of the 2016 event “Clone Conspiracy”. There, Miles manages to successfully revive Ben through a procedure that gave him all of his past memories up to his death decades prior during the Clone Saga, only for Ben to usurp his power and even his identity as the Jackal, setting his sights on Peter through using Miles’ cloning technology to revive the dead, nearly bringing about a dark apocalyptic future in the process. Both Ben and Miles survived the events of Clone Conspiracy, going their separate ways again, leaving Miles to appear as the main villain of the first arc of this year’s Spectacular Spider-Man series, where he kills his brother Raymond Warren and takes his place, hoping to try and continue his cloning research.
What Did Miles Warren Mean for Sony’s Spider-Man Movies?
Well, now? Nothing. We’re probably not ever going to see anyone pick up on the threads Kraven laid out, unless they’re repurposed somewhere down the line as an excuse to give us two Toms Holland in a direct Spidey movie. Miles, just like Rhino and Chameleon, will likely join the significantly more than six potential candidates of Sony’s perpetually in limbo Sinister Six movie plans. But setting the stage up for Miles to be the architect of all this doesn’t just establish a path to the Sinister Six, of course: the Jackal is both a major villain in his own right and sets the stage for a spin on one of the most infamous Spider-Man comic sagas of all time. Hell, he even gives us multiple Spider-Men in the form of Kaine Parker and Ben Reilly, really letting Sony have its Spider-Cake and eat it if it wanted to do Spider-Man films that weren’t necessarily wrapped up in the current MCU iteration of Peter Parker.
But all of that is off the table once more, now that the studio is re-realigning its Spidey slate around, well, Spider-Man. Time will tell if Kraven‘s legacy will be in setting the stage for Miles to go on into the MCU at some point or, more likely, it simply provides a final sour note to this particularly uneven era of Sony superheroic moviemaking.
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