Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse co-director Joaquim Dos Santos addressed the lack of Spider-Ham in the movie.
Although Spider-Ham does show up as part of Gwen’s “band” at the very end of Across the Spider-Verse, Collider asked Dos Santos why there wasn’t more of the character. The director revealed that Spider-Ham originally did have a larger role in the sequel, but his scenes ultimately ended up being cut. “That was some stuff that was cut pretty early on, just for time,” Dos Santos said. However, he promised that Spider-Ham will have a larger role to play in the series’ third film, Beyond the Spider-Verse. “We knew part of the joy of Gwen getting the band back together was the promise that you’ll see them more in the next one.”
Spider-Ham Doesn’t Hog the Spotlight
Peter Porker, aka Spider-Ham, was one of the more unusual variants of Spider-Man who appeared in 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The character first appeared in the 1983 comic book Marvel Tails Starring Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham alongside other animal versions of Marvel’s most popular superheroes. Two years later, Spider-Ham received his own series, which revealed that he was once just a regular spider who was bitten by an animal scientist and promptly transformed into an anthropomorphic pig.
Spider-Ham is not the only character from the original movie who was largely left out of Across the Spider-Verse. Spider-Man Noir, voiced by Nicolas Cage, was also not featured in the movie until the very end. Peni Parker, another member of the main crew in Into the Spider-Verse, showed up briefly as a member of Miguel O’Hara’s Spider Society. However, she also didn’t appear again until the end, now a member of the group who is set to oppose O’Hara in Beyond the Spider-Verse.
In addition to Spider-Ham, Spider-Man Noir, and Peni Parker, the final moments of Across the Spider-Verse revealed that Gwen also recruited Peter B. Parker, his daughter Mayday Parker, Pavitr Prabhakar aka Spider-Man India, Hobie Brown aka Spider-Punk, and Margo Kess aka Spider-Byte to help find Miles.
In a recent interview, Dos Santos addressed why Across the Spider-Verse doesn’t have a post-credits scene. He explained that he prefers these characters banding together before the credits roll: “We explored Miles tied to the punching bag, we talked about that as a post-credit,” he claimed. “We talked about Gwen and Peter B. going back, we talked about that being post-credit, but then we ended up settling on what I love, which is this kind of cross-cutting between the plight of all these characters kind of catapulting us into that next film, and knowing that the cavalry is coming for Miles.”
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is now in theaters.
Source: Collider
