Marvel Comics has just rewritten the nature of its whole multiverse. There have always been fashions to popular culture, and right now the multiverse is most certainly in fashion. On the big screen, the MCU’s Phases 4-6 are collectively called “The Multiverse Saga,” set to climax in a multiversal epic in 2025. Meanwhile, other franchises are embracing the multiverse as well; even Buffy the Vampire Slayer has officially christened its “Slayerverse,” a creative opportunity to tell “What If…?” stories in which the Slayer’s life turned out very different or other girls were called to become slayers instead.
The multiverse has long been an excuse for Marvel Comics to tell similar “What If…?” tales, with the publisher imagining worlds where heroes were defeated instead of triumphing, where the superheroes emerged in 1602 rather than in the 20th century, or where impossible futures spun out of present-day crises. Spider-Man is oddly important to these, with Marvel revealing each dimension has a Spider-Totem who serves as the guardian of that particular strand of the great Web of Life and Destiny that somehow binds the multiverse together. It’s long been clear there’s a structure to the multiverse, simply from the fact standard numerical designations are used to describe different timelines. The main Marvel Comics universe, for example, is Earth-616.
Marvel’s current Edge of Spider-Verse miniseries is shining a new light on the nature of the multiverse. Edge of Spider-Verse #2 contains a short story by Dan Slott and Paco Medina called “A Single Thread,” and it finally reveals the true origin and nature of the Web of Life and Destiny. It reveals the distant past, a time when the evil Elder Gods had been banished and Gaea and Oshtur of the Vishanti had only just begun creating more gods and demigods. Oshtur placed her daughter Neith, a spider goddess, in charge of deciding the structure of the multiverse. She chose a web, with all the strands sweeping out from Earth-001, which lies at the center of it all. Every timeline that has ever existed can be traced back to this ancient time.
Neith’s multiverse is designed to allow free will, as every decision creates new strands of the Web of Life and Destiny. This is the origin of the Spider-Verse – and, because the Web structures the multiverse, it is the origin of all timelines as well. Spider-Totems navigate the Web of Life and Destiny, shaping it and protecting it. Their spider-senses are in tune to the flow of time, bordering on true precognition (which is why Spider-Man has occasionally sensed danger that is not physical or immediate).
It’s exciting to finally have a sense of the multiverse’s structure, one that finally explains the numerical designations; Earth-616 must be the 616th strand of the web to be woven. The current Marvel event is officially called End of the Spider-Verse, though, raising the possibility something about to go horrifically wrong. Marvel Comics may have finally explained the structure of the multiverse – but it seems that’s about to be broken apart.
