How Invincible Season 2 Pays Off Those Spider-Man Rumors

This article contains spoilers for Invincible season 2 episode 8.

Sometimes a fandom can get, let’s say, ahead of themselves. A certain rumor will take hold with only the flimsiest evidence to back it up and before you know it, every single character on WandaVision is Mephisto (our bad on that one).

At first glance, that appeared to be the case with the second season of Amazon Prime Video’s Invincible. Shortly before Invincible season 2 premiered in late 2023 (and then again in early 2024), fans of the series and the Robert Kirkman comic upon which it is based became convinced that none other than Spider-Man would be appearing in an upcoming episode. And in said fans’ defense, the evidence was actually pretty compelling.

Readers of the comic noted that Mark Grayson and the friendly neighborhood webslinger have actually canonically met each other on the page, despite the former being the owned by Skybound Entertainment and Image Comics and the latter being Marvel property. In Marvel Team Up (Vol. 3) Issue #14, the Viltrumite and the Brooklynite joined forces to battle Doc Ock after Mark exited out of a mysterious glowing green orb.

When multiverse-traversing villain Angstrom Levy (Sterling K. Brown) was announced for Invincible season 2, suddenly another Mark/Spidey team up didn’t seem so outlandish. Things got even more interesting when fans noticed that The Spectacular Spider-Man voice actor Josh Keaton was slated to appear in Invincible season 2 as well. Keaton even had an appropriately Spidey response when asked about who he might be playing.

Huge spoilers for Part 2!!! https://t.co/cUqBZOnKYC

— INVINCIBLE (@InvincibleHQ) February 21, 2024

Naturally, comic creator and series producer Robert Kirkman denied Spider-Man’s inclusion in season 2, but that did little to stem fan excitement. And it turns out that fans had every reason to be excited! In the Invincible season 2 finale, Spider-Man does make an appearance … sort of. Here’s how the show found a creative way to present Spider-Man and acknowledge the comic’s canon.

As expected, Angstrom Levy was the engine for this encounter. In an effort to soften our hero up, Levy sent Mark tumbling through countless alternate timelines and dimensions to confront other threats before making it back home. That’s how Mark finds himself in a back alley smack in the middle of a fight between a masked superhero shooting webs and a supervillain operating four mechanical arms.

This is as Spider-Man and Doc Ock-coded as any two characters can get without violating copyright law. Some details are off, of course. The “Spider-Man” is wearing a black and yellow costume rather than blue and red. The “A” that adorns his chest suggests his name is something akin to “Arachnid-Man” rather than Spider-Man as well.

After Mark effortlessly takes out the “Doc Ock” (who is really “Professor Ock”) he expresses some concern over beating up an old man, to which the pseudo-Spidey quips: “Look I saw the portal. I know you’re from another dimension. I’ve got way too much experience with that. Especially lately. So uh…trust me. I’m the good guy here and Mr. Mechanical Arms is not.”

And that, my friends, is just some of the fun you can have with the multiverse. Mark’s journeys also take him to a dimension that seems straight out of Kirkman’s The Walking Dead and even others that have Batman and Mad Max-like aesthetics.

But in the end, it’s this brief “Spider-Man” cameo that is sure to capture fans’ imaginations the most. Congrats, all: you got this one right!

All eight episodes of Invincible season 2 are available to stream on Prime Video now.