Spider-Noir’s origins have taken a different turn in the Amazon Prime Video series, ditching the comics entirely.
In the comics, Peter Parker is “The Spider,” and he loses Uncle Ben to a murder orchestrated by the Goblin and his criminals. His heroic journey begins when he visits a warehouse of stolen antiques and comes across a spider idol. When it breaks, it releases a horde of spiders. One of them bites him, granting him powers that are heavily implied to be mystical in nature.
However, the same origin story isn’t repeated in Spider-Noir. The series takes a drastically different approach to how its hero gains his abilities, and here’s how it differs from the comics.
How did Ben Reilly turn into The Spider on Spider-Noir?
In the series, Ben Reilly’s transformation is rooted in wartime horror rather than mysticism.
During the Great War, a German scientist named Dr. Faber conducted experiments on captured men as part of a failed super-soldier program. The subjects were restrained on beds and connected to various creatures, including snakes and lizards. The program produced no viable soldiers, only monstrous figures stripped of their humanity.
Upon discovering these experiments, Reilly intervened to free the prisoners. During the rescue, he encountered one subject who had been transformed into a Man-Spider, a grotesque human-spider hybrid. The creature bit Reilly’s arm before being shot, and a panicked Reilly ordered the entire facility burned to the ground.
The bite granted Reilly the full suite of expected Spider-Man abilities, including organic webbing. Initially, he succumbed to his newfound spider-like instincts, becoming increasingly dangerous. Over time, however, he learned to suppress his impulses and regain control. To relearn human behaviour, he frequented cinemas and studied the mannerisms of classic film actors.
Critically, Reilly was spared the fate of Faber’s other subjects. The prisoners had been injected with irradiated materials and were slowly dying, deteriorating further each time they used their powers. Reilly, having been bitten rather than injected, did not suffer the same condition.
