The Spider-Verse has been making more appearances in more mainstream media in recent years, bringing the Spider-People of different dimensions together to fight against reality-threatening adversaries. An inter-dimensional community of webheads has been explored on the big screen, seen with 2018's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as well as the upcoming Spider-Man: No Way Home. The multiverse is an especially hot topic right now, with Loki recently dabbling in it and upcoming MCU projects raising lots of questions in fans' minds about what crossovers could be seen next.
Further fanning the speculative flames is Insomniac Games' recent reveal of Marvel's Spider-Man 2. Although the first two games in the studio's web-slinging adventures have had next to no mention of a wider Spider-Verse other than unlockable alternate Spider-Suits, the world created by Insomniac Games in 2018's Marvel's Spider-Man exists in the wider Marvel Universe, residing on Earth-1048.
While the plot of that game never touched the Spider-Verse, Insomniac's version of Peter Parker soon found himself embroiled in the drama surrounding the Great Web. A few years prior to the game's release, Marvel Comics released the Spider-Verse event that saw a legion of wall-crawlers team up to fight against the Inheritors, a vampiric family hunting Spiders across the multiverse. While the good guys managed to prevail, the Inheritors came back for revenge in the follow-up series, Spider-Geddon.
The story New Players in Spider-Geddon #0 by Christos Gage, Clayton Crane and VC's Travis Lanham marked the debut appearance of Insomniac's Spider-Man in comic form, getting front cover treatment and opening the story. The issue takes place several months after the events of the first game, with Spider-Man having his first encounter with that universe's Tarantula, and Earth-1048's Mary Jane Watson and Miles Morales also making brief cameos. Before long, the skirmish is interrupted by the arrival of the Superior Spider-Man of Earth-616, a character that sees Peter Parker's body taken over by Otto Octavius. From there, Insomniac's Spider-Man is recruited into the struggle against the Inheritors.
The events of Spider-Geddon see Insomniac's Spider-Man interacting with a number of other webheads, like Spider-Punk, Miles Morales of Earth-616, and even an actual Spider-Cop, much to his own personal delight. However, the ordeal with the Inheritors eventually sees him coming to blows with the Superior Spider-Man. Wary of Octavius after the actions of his own universe's version of the iconic villain, Spider-Man attacks him after Octavius appears to be betraying the others, sacrificing Ben Reilly in exchange for mercy on Earth-616. This, however, turns out to be a part of Octavius' plan to defeat the Inheritors, which ends up successful. As the various Spider-powered heroes return to their respective worlds, the two share a brief conversation, understanding each others' actions and Insomniac's Spider-Man leaving Octavius with a message that he could truly be a truly honorable hero if he tried.
With Spider-Geddon taking place some time after the first game and the events of Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales even later, Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will occur quite some time after Earth-1048's Spider-Man's first contact with the Spider-Verse. The confirmation of the existence of many more worlds is sure to impact this Spider-Man's mind in some way, but will the multiverse come into play in the upcoming sequel, and what form might that take? It would be perhaps too ambitious for Insomniac Games to plug the concept of the Spider-Verse into the main campaign, especially with a different thematic route already alluded to. Given that a vast majority of its audience will be unfamiliar with the Spider-Geddon storyline, introducing it in a major way would require a lot of work to concisely get players up to speed.
Of course, that doesn't mean the Spider-Verse might be ruled out completely. In the previous games' open world, side missions have been used to dive deeper into Spider-Man's rogue gallery, with characters like Tombstone and Taskmaster making small appearances away from the main story arc. Going a smaller route with side-missions could be a much more digestible way to implement features of the Spider-Verse into the game series. Perhaps additional DLC could be the way to go. 2018's Spider-Man received three additional content drops after launch, piecing together to make The City That Never Sleeps arc. If Insomniac wanted to give an inter-dimensional tale more of a spotlight, creating new pieces of content around it would give it a more elevated position. That is, unless there are plans to make the Spider-Verse the basis for the next installment in the series.