Developed by Oren Uziel, Prime Video’s ‘Spider-Noir‘ is a superhero noir series that expands on the ‘Spider-Man‘ multiverse by focusing on the uniquely gritty world of Ben Reilly, AKA the Spider. After mysteriously receiving his powers at the tail end of World War I, Ben becomes New York’s favorite superhero and a menace to the mob bosses who wish to capitalize on the chaos. Following a traumatic incident, Ben puts the mask down, instead choosing to live in perpetual near-poverty as a private detective. All of that changes when he meets Cat Hardy, a singer with connections to the city’s criminal overlord, Silvermane.
As Ben gets swept into a detective mystery involving superhumans not unlike himself, Cat becomes the most important player in the game, both as the person holding most of the cards and as the only character who truly understands him. However, the man that Ben is tasked with looking for is none other than Cat’s lover, Flint, which makes this into an ever-shifting and turning love triangle. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Flint Has Always Been Cat’s One and True Love
At the end of ‘Spider-Noir,’ Cat escapes the city with Flint, bidding her brief relationship with Ben goodbye. Though things steadily go downhill for her and Ben from the moment she reveals his secret identity to Dr. Faber, that is not the only reason behind this turn of events. Ultimately, this is Cat and Flint’s love story, and Ben has always been a superhero figure who brings them back together like glue. This holds truer than ever in the final sequence, where Ben saves Flint’s life by handing over the last antidote injection, which not only makes him human again, but also regenerates his missing limbs. With Flint back to his regular self and Silvermane defeated, Cat finds herself free from a restrictive lifestyle and, more importantly, free to run away to the destination of her dreams with her lover.
Ben catches up with Cat right when she ties the knot with Flint, and though the love triangle dilemma is complex as it is, it begins to sort itself out from this moment on. On some deeper level, Ben is genuinely happy that Cat is free and safe in her life now, as it has been a fundamental guilt in his life regarding Ruby, his own fiancée who died. Believing himself to be powerless when it actually matters, Ben almost quits being a superhero for good, but this right here serves as his redemption moment, where he ensures that, at the very least, others get the happiness that he could never get. Everything about the season 1 ending implies that this is the last we will see of Cat and her story, and ending things on a healthy note keeps the charm of this brief dynamic intact.
Ben and Cat’s Love Story Was Never Meant to Be
While Ben and Cat’s pairing is romantically charged from the get-go, most of the feelings come from Ben’s side. When he is first taken in by Cat’s soulful performance, she’s actually singing about Flint, with Ben merely projecting his own feelings of grief and loneliness upon her. While this gap in expression marks the foundation of their flawed love story, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the feelings were completely one-sided. Later on in the show, Cat, too, confesses to feeling differently about Ben, but even then, they have sex only after Ben reveals that he is the Spider. In a sense, it becomes an extrinsic representation of the feeling of companionship they feel after letting go of their deepest secrets and yearning. While that is a powerful relationship in and of itself, it still doesn’t quite transition into love.
Before Ben and Cat spend the night together, she labels their dynamic as being lonely together, which, by its very phrasing, rejects the idea that they are connected. Later, when Ben has his nightmare sequences, the person he imagines is markedly not Cat, but Ruby. Similarly, all the promises Cat makes to Ben crumble the moment she reunites with Flint. From the moment it becomes clear that he still loves her as dearly as ever, Cat begins to envision a means of freeing him from the mutation, even if it means betraying Ben. In the end, this is a story of two people hopelessly stuck in their pasts, who become more friends than lovers in their shared journey. As such, when Cat has the opportunity to bring her hopeful past into the present, Ben realizes that it’s not his place to intervene.
Read More: Spider-Noir Season 2 Cast and Plot Theories
