Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse has a lot of cameos. Don’t believe me? Check out the long, long list of Across the Spider-Verse cameos and Across the Spider-Verse Spidey variants. Wait, there’s more!
One cameo – at least in our experience – left the entire theater with their jaws on the floor. Not only that but, if you dig a little deeper, it could have telegraphed the multiverse movie’s big twist well in advance.
Miles’ introduction to the Spider-Society on Earth-928 also saw him encounter various villains that had left their own worlds and created anomalies elsewhere.
In a surprise move, one of those was Donald Glover – in live-action, no less – as The Prowler.
MCU webheads will remember that Glover previously appeared in Spider-Man: Homecoming as Aaron Davis, the true identity of The Prowler. He even referred to his off-screen nephew ‘Miles’, indicating that Miles Morales exists in the MCU.
On the surface level alone, that’s an incredible cameo. But there could be more to it than that.
In the final act on Earth-42 (a world that never had a Spider-Man, thanks to Alchemax bringing their radioactive spider across to ‘our’ Miles’ world), it’s revealed that their Miles is The Prowler.
And, yes, while Glover probably is the MCU version of Aaron Davis here, it also works as a neat meta joke. Simply: Glover, who has played Miles in the past, became the Prowler. Could it be because he is also Miles Morales and someone in his world interrupted a Canon Event? It’s certainly possible. It would certainly make ‘our’ Miles staring at Glover’s character for so long carry a bit more weight and meaning. It just goes to show that, Across the Spider-Verse, anything is possible.
