Sony and Marvel have spent nearly a decade convincing audiences that anyone can wear the mask.
Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, Spider-Ham, a Japanese girl with a robot, a cartoon pig, a noir detective.
So why does every single Spider-Verse story keep circling back to the exact same three or four faces?
Across *Into the Spider-Verse*, *Across the Spider-Verse*, the 1994 animated series, the comics, and now the leaked production chatter around *Beyond the Spider-Verse*, the same names keep surfacing: Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, Miguel O'Hara.
The official line is that these characters are simply the most popular.
But popularity is a trailing indicator, not a cause.
Someone decided which spiders get the budget, the merchandise, and the third act.
And that decision traces back to a small circle of executives and licensing attorneys who understand something the fans don't: an infinite multiverse is worthless if every variant is legally distinct.
Marvel doesn't own "Spider-Man" as an idea.
It owns specific expressions of Spider-Man, each with its own trademark, likeness rights, and actor contracts.
A live-action Miles Morales is a seven-figure negotiation with a real human being whose face has to appear on lunchboxes.
The multiverse isn't a creative playground.
It's a cost-accounting spreadsheet dressed up as a comic book.
This is why the live-action films keep retreating to Peter Parker.
Tom Holland's contract, Sony's distribution deal, and Marvel Studios' continuity requirements form a kind of legal gravity well.
Every new spider gets pulled toward the same center.
The animated films can cheat because they're cheaper and don't require an actor's physical presence.
But even there, notice how *Across the Spider-Verse* built its entire emotional climax around Miles and Gwen, two characters who were already established.
The hundreds of other spiders are set dressing.
If the multiverse is genuinely infinite, then somewhere there's a Spider-Man who never lost anyone, never learned responsibility, and never became a hero at all.
The brand depends on tragedy as a renewable resource.
Uncle Ben has to die in every timeline because grief is the product.
The "anyone can wear the mask" slogan is marketing.
The real rule is: anyone can wear the mask, as long as they suffer in a way we can sell.
Count how many new spiders get a name, a voice, and a moment of genuine interiority.
Then count how many exist only to fill a crowd shot.
The ratio will tell you everything about what the multiverse actually is: not a celebration of infinite possibility, but a carefully managed scarcity of spotlight.
The most radical Spider-Verse story wouldn't add another spider.
It would let one of them walk away from the franchise entirely and never come back.
That's the variant Sony will never greenlight, because a spider who escapes the web is a spider who stops generating revenue.
So the next time a studio executive tells you the multiverse means anyone can be Spider-Man, ask them one question: anyone who signs the contract, or anyone at all?
Final Thoughts
The answer is in the credits, not the comic.