What are Canon Events? Explaining Across the Spider-Verse’s meta story reveal
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse introduced a legion of Spider-People and various worlds, but it’s one story beat that carries the most importance – and could have major ramifications in the sequel.
As Spider-Man 2099 explains to Miles, a 'Canon Event' is a moment or action that must happen to certain Spider-Men – otherwise their universe risks being destroyed.
In the case of some, like Miles and Spider-Gwen, that moment involves their police officer dads becoming Captain and sacrificing themselves to save a child during a rampage from Spider-Man’s nemesis.
Other Canon Events that we’ve glimpsed so far include the death of Uncle Ben (Peter B. Parker, Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, and countless others as seen in Across the Spider-Verse), as well as being bitten by a radioactive spider.
Each moment – while they may not be exactly the same – essentially binds the Spider-Verse together and ends up 'creating' or improving that universe’s Spider-Man in some way. It’s also a meta nod to how Spider-Man’s origins have been remixed or reworked over the years, but usually still keep the core details intact.
While we’ve seen that just changing one may not be enough to unravel entire universes, disrupting or interrupting too many Canon Events can have dire consequences. For Miguel, the act of replacing another universe’s Spider-Man 2099 entirely eventually lead to that Earth being wiped out. But on Pavitr’s Earth-50101 in Mumbattan, saving Captain Singh didn’t lead to the destruction of that universe. Despite Spider-Man 2099’s protestations, there does seem to be some multiversal wiggle room.
That, then, leads us neatly into Beyond the Spider-Verse. The 2024 sequel will likely revolve around the fate of Miles's father, Captain
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