Earlier today, I wrote a review of the second season of Severance where I mentioned how hard it is to follow up on a stellar first take on an idea. I was really nervous about this sequel in the same way, but it really works!

Kiddo somewhat begrudgingly admitted she liked the first movie enough for us to watch this one over the long weekend. It was great! I have been giggling about Ben Reilly jokes for the past 24 hours. I also love how Reilly looks like he’s from a 90s comic book, and the whole movie does a good job of following up with the creative blend of animation styles (the LEGO joke was fine, but the Da Vinci Vulture was fun, as was the “-Ed.” joke, which I’m surprised they didn’t use in the first one.

Also, Spider-Man might be the best superhero for the great power/great responsibility thing (as much as it gets reduced to a cliché in some treatments), and seeing Miles wrestle with stepping up as Spider-Man while just trying to deliver a cake was great. Also also, specifically referring to “canon” and questioning who’s “supposed to be” Spider-Man is a good shot across the bow of fandom. Nice choices.

Even further, though, for all that Spider-Punk is mostly a source of jokes, the idea that it’s possible to defy “how things must be” has some real anarchism behind it, and it was fun to see that as implicitly present in the movie as it would have been in a Graeber book.

Can’t wait for June 2027.

• Across the Spider-Verse
• anarchism
• David Graeber
• fandom