The Spider-Verse begins with a simple thrill: Spider-Man discovers he is not alone. Somewhere else, another person was bitten, lost someone, made a terrible mistake, and decided to help anyway. Put enough of those people in one room and you get jokes, arguments, spectacular fights, and at least one serious dispute about who gets to call themselves Spider-Man.

Behind that excitement are two different stories. Marvel’s comics explore a cosmic web connecting Spider-heroes, complete with spider gods, weavers, and predators. Sony’s animated films follow Miles Morales into a multiverse patrolled by Miguel O’Hara’s Spider-Society. The films draw from the comics, but their rules and conflicts should not be treated as identical.

The Comics: A Web Connecting Spider-Heroes

In the comics, the Web of Life and Destiny link Spider-heroes across realities. It gives a cosmic shape to an idea that might otherwise be a collection of amusing alternate versions: these people are connected, and that connection can be found, protected, or attacked.

A Spider-Totem is a person tied to the mystical spider side of this mythology. Peter Parker’s spider bite still happened, but the totem stories raise the possibility that his powers have a deeper source. The Great Weaver, a spider deity, is described as having chosen Peter as an earthly avatar.

That possibility does not answer every question about Peter’s life. Even if something chose him, it did not force him to help a stranger or accept responsibility after Uncle Ben’s death. The cosmic web makes his origin stranger. His decisions still make him Spider-Man.

The Great Weaver, the Master Weaver, and Anansi

The names are close enough to cause confusion, so they deserve a clear distinction. The Great Weaver belongs to the spider-god side of Peter’s story. The Master Weaver is a figure who tends the Web of Life and Destiny in the original Spider-Verse comic crossover.

The Master Weaver is eventually revealed to be an older version of Karn, a member of a family called the Inheritors. After that Master Weaver dies, the living Karn takes on the role. Karn is therefore part of a particularly strange time loop; he is not simply another name for the Great Weaver.

Anansi is another spider god who appears in Marvel’s comics. A later story has Anansi choose Miles Morales as a champion. The web, spider gods, and characters called weavers are connected ideas, but collapsing them into one character makes the mythology harder to follow.

Why the Inheritors Matter

The Inheritors are the great danger of the original comics crossover. They are a family of predators who travel between realities and feed on spider-toots. Morlun, one of the family’s most frightening members, was a threat to Peter before the wider hunt brought Spider-heroes from many worlds together.

The Inheritors turn the web into a liability. A connection that lets Spider-People find one another also gives hunters a way to find them. Heroes who might never have met have to work together because facing the threat alone can get them killed.

That conflict does not end every Spider-Verse story. The Inheritors return in Spider-Geddon. Later, The End of the Spider-Verse brings in Shathra, a wasp-like threat seeking to replace the Web of Life and Destiny with one of her own. The comics keep returning to the same frightening thought: if someone can control the web, they can reach far beyond a single world.

The Films: What Is the Spider-Society?

The animated films give the multiverse a different center of power: the Spider-Society. In Across the Spider-Verse, Miles encounters this organized group of Spider-People led by Miguel O’Hara, also known as Spider-Man 2099. The Society travels between worlds and works to protect the multiverse from threats that cross between them.

That sounds like exactly the team Miles would want to join. He knows how lonely being Spider-Man can feel, and here is a place full of people who understand. The catch is that belonging to the Society means accepting Miguel’s view of how the multiverse must be protected.

Miguel believes certain major events are part of a Spider-Person’s story and that disrupting them can endanger a universe. The film calls these canon events. When Miles learns that someone he loves may be in danger, Miguel expects him to accept the rules. Miles refuses to stand aside.

That disagreement gives the Society its bite. Its members are trying to prevent catastrophe, but their mission asks them to treat a person’s suffering as something that might be necessary. Miles sees a life he could try to save. Miguel sees the risk to an entire world. The film puts that conflict between heroes who all believe they are acting responsibly.

Is Miguel O’Hara the Master Weaver?

No. The film’s Miguel leads the Spider-Society. The comics’ Master Weaver tends the Web of Life and Destiny. They belong to different Spider-Verse stories and fill different roles.

Miguel O’Hara also exists in Marvel comics, but readers should be careful about carrying every detail of his film story into his comic history. Likewise, the Great Weaver and Karn’s Master Weaver are part of the comics mythology; the animated films have not established that their cosmic roles govern Miles’s story in the same way.

The versions can speak to one another without sharing one rulebook. The comics ask what happens when Spider-People are connected through a web that gods and monsters can reach. The films ask what happens when Spider-People build an organization to manage the dangers of those connections—and one of their own rejects its answer.

What Holds the Spider-Verse Together?

The Spider-Verse has enough lore to make anyone reach for a notebook. There are cosmic threads, Spider-Totems, ancient predators, time loops, dimension-hopping technology, and an entire society capable of chasing Miles across worlds.

Yet the strongest question is familiar. When Spider-Man knows someone is in danger, what does he do? Peter has had to answer it. Miles has to answer it. Miguel believes he has answered it, too, and that is why his clash with Miles hurts more than a fight with an ordinary villain.

A web can connect every spider-person in existence. It cannot make them agree on what responsibility demands. That is why the Spider-Verse has room for so many heroes—and why putting them together is far more interesting than merely counting the masks.

— Sushi

For the live-action question surrounding Miles, see the theory about Miles Morales joining the MCU.