Even before launch, there was a theory going around that the secret identity of the Tinkerer in Spider-Man: Miles Morales is none other than Miles’ friend Phin. Since the first trailers dropped earlier this year, fans speculated that the purple-clad supervillain Miles does battle with is a female incarnation of the Tinkerer. Now that the game is out, the answer is clear.
[Warning: Spoilers for Spider-Man: Miles Morales below]
There are many villains who give Miles a hard time in Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Some of Spider-Man’s most famous baddies drop by for brief moments, including Rhino. But in keeping with Insomniac’s first entry in the series, which featured the lesser-known villain Mr. Negative, Spider-Man: Miles Morales casts a relatively minor villain as its antagonist. This allows Insomniac to surprise fans of their games while paying off the investment of more hardcore Spider-Man fans. Likewise, Miles’ friend Phin is a nod to Spider-Man comics, which also differentiates Spider-Man: Miles Morales from other Spider-Man adaptations that feature more well-known side characters.
Longtime fans of Spider-Man comics will recognize the Tinkerer from dozens of iconic stories. Originally introduced in 1963, the first Tinkerer was an elderly man named Phineas Mason with a knack for engineering. Recently, in the Ultimate Marvel line, the Tinkerer has been reintroduced as a far younger villain. Unsurprisingly, this iteration of Phineas was friends with Miles Morales – Spider-Man’s friends have an unfortunate tendency to turn out to be villains and/or die. It is this younger Tinkerer who appeared in the film Spider-Man: Homecoming. In this new Spider-Man game, Phin is indeed the Tinkerer, and she has an even more personal connection to Miles than usual.
The New Version of the Tinkerer In Spider-Man: Miles Morales
In Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Phin’s backstory is a bit different. Usually, the Tinkerer has been an extremely accomplished professional engineer far along in their career. In fact, even in the Ultimate Marvel line, another version of the Tinkerer was revealed to be Elijah Stern, an aged researcher at the evil Roxxon Corporation. While Phin is clearly brilliant, she is not quite on this level of career advancement in Spider-Man: Miles Morales.
This deviation in character is supported by Rick Mason, one of the most important characters in Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Phin’s older brother. Much like earlier Tinkerers, Rick is an engineer working for the villainous Roxxon. When he is killed for planning against his sinister employer, Phin takes on the mantle of the Tinkerer to exact revenge. In this way, Phin and Rick together draw from the legacy of prior Tinkerers.
Phin is a new interpretation of Phineas Mason specifically created for Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Obvious differences from the traditional Phineas – like Phin being a young African American woman as opposed to an elderly white man – are explained by Ultimate Marvel’s inversion of expectations and Insomniac’s demonstrated desire to strike off in a new direction. Making Phin another teenager helps ground this sympathetic spin on the Tinkerer in Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ Harlem setting. This version of the character better fits Miles’ world while paying off on established backstory and character beats. It’s just one way Spider-Man: Miles Morales both embraces and expands stories from the comics for old and new fans of the franchise.
