New characters! What does that mean for Peter Parker? Did you catch that villain nod? We've rounded up all the spoilery easter eggs, nods, and winks from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and tried to decipher what it all means. Spoilers ahead!
The YouTube Science Guy Was Originally Played By Marc Webb
In between all the death and abandonment issues, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 pauses for a little science lesson, which was nice as it harkened to the days of old Spider-Man when he was just a teenager tinkering in his makeshift lab. Little-known fact, Marc Webb originally played the YouTube scientist who educated Peter Parker about magnets and how they work. But he was cut, as Webb explains above, "Because he wasn't willing to humiliate himself." It's cute, watch.
Black Cat
Felicia Hardy made a big splash as Harry's new assistant. And it's not like she was hiding in a vault somewhere—no, Harry says the name "Felicia" over and over again, drawing specific attention to this character. Have we just been introduced to Peter Parker's rebound gal for the third film? When asked, "Just how important is Black Cat to the third Spider-Man movie?" Webb responded:
We'll see. We're still sort of conjuring that tale. But we wanted to build out the universe and acknowledge the little, sort of dark corners of the Spider-Man Universe, because we're all such fans of the comics, so we wanted to find whatever nuances and see what takes hold.
Not a real answer (of course), but this character makes complete sense for Peter's grieving process. There's no way the audience is going to cheer for a brand new full-fledged-love relationship, so why not introduce a character that is all fun and a little bit of danger. Spider and the Cat!
The Sinister Six Emerges
The legendary Sinister Six got their own strange little teaser. If audience members "Shazamed" the Alicia Keys song at the end, these teaser images appeared, hinting that Green Goblin, Dr. Octopus, the Rhino, the Vulture, Mysterio, and Kraven were all going to be the next film as a power pod of baddies. HOWEVER, the next movie script is not finalized, so it could swing another direction.
Venom (And Others)
Venom, the character The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was not ready to commit to, but was certainly happy to suspiciously namecheck over and over again. Or was that just the actual venom from the spiders that Peter Parker's dad was experimenting on? We don't know; The Amazing Spider-Man 2 offers no answers, but plenty of hints.
For starters, the comic book symbiote appeared in an early version of the trailers [via Superhero Report], but was later swapped out for a Doc Ock shout out (as you can see above). But even though the symbiote was seemingly cut from the footage, there were still plenty of Venom references. For example, when Harry is sorting through his father's entire collection of Oscorp work, you can see "Venom Storage." True this could be the very venom that he injects into his skin later (and probably is), but we like that it's consistently and constantly referred to as venom. Not Spider-Project, or #1212312312—it's Venom. That's a strong beating of the drum for Venom. However, that doesn't mean he's in the Sinister Six, as it doesn't seem like he was being teased above. So it may be some time before we get a Venom anything.
Redditor VurigKnijn actually pulled up a high-res screencap from a trailer with the many names of Oscorp projects. This is where we saw Venom Storage, Experiment "Oct 32A" (32 appearances in the Ult. comics) a Dr. Connors (Lizard) file, and a "Dr. Morbius" file, referring to the vampire villain. Highly HIGHLY doubt we'll be seeing the latter, but it's a nice shout-out nevertheless.
BJ Novak is in this?
"Hey it's BJ Novak!" said just about everyone watching this movie, unaware that this Office actor had been cast as Alistair Smythe. Why is that important? Because in the comics he's a supervillain, and the father of the Spider-Slayer robots. And eventually he encases himself in an exoskeleton suit that increases his strength and becomes the Ultimate Spider-Slayer, proving tha,t yes, everything evil really does stem from Oscorp.
Norman Osborne... dead?
Was anyone else super surprised that this movie version skipped the Green Goblin generation and had Harry Osborne as the first glider-ridding baddie? Is the original Osborne really, really dead?
In an interview with Cinemablend Webb confirmed that Daddy Osborne is very much dead, but left some wiggle room for something else. Did you catch that weird laser scanning the corpse of Harry's father along with the rest of the room? Apparently, that's important.
Webb: [On Norman's Dead-ness]nAs for his future… I mean, I don't really want to say anything. He's dead. He's dead. He actually died. How about that?"...
[On the laser]There is meaning behind the laser, yes. That will have impact …Whether or not it will be in the Sinister Six movie, or the next Spider-Man movie, I don't know. That's the question, and I actually don't know the answer to that myself. But that [laser] does have meaning."
But what?
Gwen's Final Outfit
And finally, this is a bit of a gimme, as we all saw it coming, but it was fantastic, wonderful, and amazing to see Gwen don the original death ensemble for her final scenes in the film.
According to commenter Matthew Kerr, "As Gwen was falling, the hands on the clock face were spinning out of control. After she hit the ground, the hands stopped at 1:21, which of course references Amazing Spider-Man 121, her death issue." Good eye.