Across the Spider-Verse and the PPC! (SPOILERS)

Subject: Across the Spider-Verse and the PPC! (SPOILERS)
Author: Thunder
Posted on: 2023-06-11 23:50:28 UTC

Frankly, I’m surprised no one has brought this up yet.

In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, it’s revealed that there’s an organization run by Spider-Peeps from across the multiverse dedicated to the preservation of said multiverse. If someone, like a displaced supervillain, changes a crucial detail in a universe (these details are even called “canon events,”) then that universe is in danger of collapsing, which is why task forces are occasionally sent out to correct these events.

Sound familiar?

Of course, it’s not all the same (the film’s organization is made up entirely of Spider-Peeps, Headquarters is located in just one dimension, the characters don’t use disguises, etc), but I find these similarities to be hilarious. I just kept thinking “Oh my Glod that’s like the PPC!” while watching the film.

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Across the Spider-Verse and the PPC! (SPOILERS) by Thunder on 2023-06-11 23:50:28 UTC

I thought the exact same thing. by Meta on 2023-07-15 08:09:51 UTC Reply

If I'm being totally honest seeing it is what bought me back to the board, remembering I had about nine months of stories to catch up on.
I just saw this today! by Neshomeh on 2023-06-12 04:03:01 UTC Reply

And yes, I did have that thought. {X D Mostly, though, I wonder what missions in that continuum would be like. Hypothetically the Spider Society would support the PPC's directive if they knew it existed, buuuut I don't think we really have all the facts about them yet. Particularly not their leader.

Tangentially related: If you haven't seen Loki season 1 yet, I highly recommend it. I think the TVA is the closest PPC analogue I've ever seen in mainstream media. You'll enjoy it. {= )

~Neshomeh

I have seen the film! by Linstar on 2023-06-21 00:24:15 UTC Reply

The ending, though, whyyyyyyyy?

~~I will just have to wait nine more months.~~

In any case, I'd love to mission a Spiderverse badfic. And yeah, it is rather unclear about the morality of its leader.

And is it in the same multiverse as the MCU?

-Ls

P.S. I've actually heard less-than-stellar thibgs about Loki, in that the TVA (and I guess the Spider-People, possibly???) kinda gets rid of the idea of free will in the MCU? Which is not exactly a good thing.

It's definitely the same multiverse. by Neshomeh on 2023-06-26 03:57:44 UTC Reply

There's a line where Miguel says, "And don't even get me started on Doctor Strange and the little nerd back on Earth-199999." Earth-199999 is the official designation of the MCU. ^_^

Haha, absolutely no one in my theater saw the ending coming. They did a good job keeping it secret.

Re. Loki, whoever is saying that either didn't watch the show all the way through or completely failed to understand it. Elaborating might spoil things, but trust me, if there's still free will in the PPC multiverse, there's absolutely still free will in the MCU. Possibly moreso!

~Neshomeh

I mean, wasn't MCU!Earth designated as 616 in Multiverse of Madness? by Linstar on 2023-06-26 13:52:05 UTC Reply

Not that I've actually seen that, either, but from the 5-hour-long review I watch, it had... plot holes.

I should probably get around to watching more of the MCU, honestly.

As far as the show with the name Kittyauthor would hate, maybe I would realy like it. shrug Again, I need to fully watch these things.

-Ls

Yeah, there is some contradiction. by Neshomeh on 2023-06-26 18:34:32 UTC Reply

The MCU was designated Earth-199999 by Marvel early on, but yeah, references to Earth-616 pop up in a few films, including MoM. It just doesn't make much sense for the MCU to be Earth-616, because that's the designation of the main comics continuity. O.o

And, yeah, in my opinion MoM was not very good, for a lot of reasons. It was fun to watch, but within about five minutes of talking about it afterward, Phobos and I were coming up with a lot of things we'd have done differently. Starting with making Wanda's arc not be a steep plunge into psychotic evil after the character growth she had in Wandavision, and also giving her top billing because she actually has an arc, unlike Doctor Strange.

Wong is really the MVP in that movie. And pretty much anytime he shows up.

~Neshomeh

That's not a contradiction. by Huinesoron on 2023-06-26 20:53:42 UTC Reply

That's just different multiversal teams using different classification systems. Why should the Spider-People and the Illuminati use the same system?

It's a bit like the Canon Events (Spider-Verse), Nexus Events (Loki), and Absolute Points (What If). They all seem to be describing pretty much the same thing, just from different perspectives. It seems that the universe doesn't much care what happens between these Events - you can muck about with those bits of time without much bother - but if you try and change an Event, you end up in capital-everything TROUBLE. The trouble you get depends on how you do it - if you try to use an Infinity Stone it simply can't be changed, if you move an Infinity Stone from its destined place it creates a branching timeline, and if you're crazy enough to use something from another timeline entirely, yeah, don't do that.

Throw in the fact that the TVA was meddling for some but not all of the MCU-related time travel stories, and the fact that moving forward in time likely has its own set of rules (as seen in "Agents of SHIELD" and way back in "X-Men: Days of Future Past"), and you end up with something surprisingly similar to New Who's "fixed point in time" model. Most of history can wriggle around as it likes, but change the anchor points and you muck things up.

(Whether the Multiverse is really all just alternate timelines, given that Spider-Verse has shown live-action universes, and Doctor Strange showed an animated one, is a question for another day.)

hS

Except... (massive spoilers) by Damian Brighte on 2023-06-27 13:31:56 UTC Reply

...there's a high probability that canon events are a buncha baloney. For one, narratively speaking, Miles is the protagonist of this superhero story about rebelling against the system that tells you how to live your life, so he's probably right. But that can't happen if saving a police captain actually endangers an entire universe, so there must be something more going on here.

Miguel claims disrupting canon events, like Miles did in Mumbattan, destroys universes, but let's examine this claim. When the universe he traveled to was destroyed, everything started glitching -- but the destruction caused by an averted canon event in Mumbattan looks a lot more like one of the Spot's holes to me. And what a coincidence, they just got done not stopping that guy from becoming an Avengers-level threat. Not to mention that when Gwen's canon event -- the loss of her dad -- is averted, nothing immediately starts breaking.

I don't think Miguel's lying to everyone to selfishly justify Spider Society and maintain power for himself. That would be suuuuuuuuuuper boring, and I think this particular plot point is meant to parallel the older generation believing it's their way or the highway as much as angry comic book fans claiming Spider-Man isn't Spider-Man if he doesn't go through the same things as the original ~~or if he's black~~. Miguel saw one (1) data point and jumped to conclusions from there -- and isn't it such a comfortable conclusion? To know your pain had a purpose? That it could not be avoided? And who wants to risk entire universes to test whether a few police captains can be saved?

The spoilers, they continues. by Huinesoron on 2023-06-27 14:38:48 UTC Reply

Totally agree that Miguel just lying because he's That Evil doesn't seem in line with the movie's ethos or storytelling, but I'm not sure "leaping to conclusions" covers it either. They had a whole system set up to monitor for Canon Events, and they wouldn't do that without some pretty serious justification. I agree that the hole looked like a Spot-hole, but it wasn't obviously operating like one, so that could just be a graphics thing.

I'm not sure you can talk about Gwen's dad's death being averted - the cop doesn't have to die the very first time he's in danger, and when they have the Canon Event discussion she reacts as though it's still a known fact in her future. There wasn't anything that obviously made the Mumbatten event a Canon Event either - except that the system said it was one.

On the other hand, Earth-42 clearly lacked the Canon Event "kid gets bitten by radioactive spider", and didn't fold in on itself (in that way). If we allow for Canon Events and Absolute Points to be the same thing, then many of the spider-verses seem to lack "Stephen Strange loses the thing he loves most in a car crash" (the only confirmed Absolute Point), and they're still intact. So something shady is going on.

Instead of Miguel, how about Lyla the hologram AI (not to be confused with Spider-Byte the hologram real girl) as the one pulling the strings? Apparently she gave Miguel the universe-hopping tech at the end of Spider-Verse 1, she probably has the ability to open a hole, and... her name literally starts with "lie".

hS

More points (and more spoilers). by Neshomeh on 2023-06-27 17:26:47 UTC Reply

Phobos and I noted that in most cases, when a person travels to another universe, they start glitching. So what's different about Miguel that he made a universe glitch out instead? I don't think we've seen evidence of anything like that any other time—I also think the problem in Mumbattan looked a lot more like an uncontained Spot hole than a glitch. So what happened to (around?) Miguel seems like a unique case.

We also know, thanks to Loki, that altering a Canon Event/Fixed Point/What-have-you doesn't necessarily destroy a universe of itself. It can create a branching timeline—heck, that's why we even have a multiverse now. Now, if the TVA shows up to prune it, it does end up destroyed, but it's not due to the split Trousers of Time, it's due to an outside force. It seems possible that Miguel and the Spider Society could have missed the interventions of TVA agents or an equivalent if they weren't looking for them.

Loki also shows us that it's 100% possible for a character to do things that alter their usual arc. A Loki is not supposed to be able to love anyone besides themself (if that), and yet, at least one did!

It seems that the reality is, there are certain things that do happen most of the time, but if you sift through enough timelines, you'll find the one where, for example, Thanos doesn't win. And that's valid.

... Which, come to think of it, makes me wonder why we don't see more universes where he did win. Or maybe we have and we just didn't realize? Either way, I'd like to see that explored more.

~Neshomeh

As to the general ideas of "archetypes" or whatever they're called... by Linstar on 2023-06-30 00:47:39 UTC Reply

...I really think the explanation that makes the most sense is a meta one, in that the "Loki" or "Spider-Man" arcs are the most interesting fictionally.

Yeah, this is just wild speculation.

-Ls

The TVA is a lie. by Huinesoron on 2023-07-13 14:09:56 UTC Reply

I was thinking about this today, and um, why are we taking the TVA's word for anything?

We know for a fact that they're lying about there being a single Sacred Timeline - the existence of Classic Loki proves that divergent timelines can last for decades. Rather, what they have is a bundle of timelines which they trim to keep them from diverging too far from each other - very specifically, to keep from reaching a timeline where a variant of Kang the Conqueror can attain any significant power.

So there is nothing in the TVA's actual purpose that would preclude the existence of a Spider-Verse. They wouldn't necessarily admit it, but (for example) whether Peter Parker or Gwen Stacy got bitten by a radioactive spider probably doesn't matter. What matters is that the resident Spider-Person hits certain key events: perhaps it's crucial that they defeat the Green Goblin, for instance, to prevent a specific piece of technology being developed that will allow Kang to break free.

The chain of causality from those events to an unleashed Kang probably wouldn't be simple - after all, with a grand overview like the TVA have, it's easier to step in at the earliest opportunity than to wait until a snowball gets rolling. A Spider-Person without the moral core of "with great power must also come great responsibility" would probably lead to a host of potential problems, so just make sure none of them skip that event. A Spider-Person fully allied with the police could do wacky things to the local power dynamics, so make sure "the cop they're close to dies (and it's their fault)" happens. If something - a temporal or dimensional traveller, someone mucking with an Infinity Stone, or just free will - happens to affect that... you prune that timeline.

What I'm saying is, it's entirely possible that the effect Miguel knows of after a Canon Event goes awry is actually the TVA cutting the timeline; and this time round, it really was just a Spot hole that got out of hand.

(Or even still the TVA! They still exist, right? Their goals have just changed, though we don't really know what to...)

hS

"Everything is canon. Not everything is true." —A Watcher, probably. by Neshomeh on 2023-07-14 07:00:10 UTC Reply

If that Watcher took a peek at Warhammer 40k at some point. {= )

But yeah, agreed. The dogma around the Sacred Timeline was always a lie, and "divergent" timelines are not inherently dangerous. I mean, consider the Universe Where Everything Is Shrimp, for instance. (Spot that crossover!) That universe could probably go on existing for ages before there was any chance of its Kang doing any serious Conquering. And maybe that's what the TVA's technomagic really calculated: not distance from the Sacred Timeline, but Probability of Kang.

That makes sense of the varying points at which they intervened with the different Lokis. It seems arbitrary and overly prescriptive from their perspective, but a) they don't know the real logic behind the TVA's actions, and b) the data set they comprise is miniscule compared to all the possible variant Lokis that may still exist in universes below the Kang threshold.

(How would each of the variant Lokis we met have caused their universe to cross the threshold? That's an interesting question!)

I guess I'm suggesting that even the idea that there was only one timeline for a while was a simplification on the part of He Who Remains. I reckon the timeline that produced him was the "Sacred" one, but then there were also all the timelines that didn't have a significantly powerful Kang in them (yet) or, theoretically, didn't have a Kang at all. For the purpose of the TVA, those didn't need to register on their equipment; when he was talking to Loki, there wasn't time to get into it.

I'm up too late to segue neatly, but: It's also important to remember that Miguel is just as unreliable a source as the TVA. Whether his beliefs are based purely on his own biased observations or something else, he's not in full possession of the facts. Or all his marbles.

~Neshomeh