You won’t believe the life-changing lesson I learned from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

I always thought the grandest lesson I would ever learn from a Marvel movie would be “With great power comes great responsibility,” but watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse last week changed that. Don’t get me wrong—Uncle Ben gave some solid grandparenting advice to Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man about “changing into the man he’s going to become for the rest of his life,” but today, we’re more inclined to seek guidance from our peers instead of our elders (thanks to a majority of them holding on to problematic beliefs from their generation). 21 years later, another Spider-Man movie came through with advice that is a lot less preachy and a lot more personality.

A bit of background (and spoiler alert) for those who haven’t watched Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse yet. When Miles Morales follows Gwen Stacy into the Spider-Society—a team of Spider-People from different dimensions tasked with ensuring the Multiverse remains intact—he learns that the stability of the Multiverse is contingent on each Spider-Person experiencing their “canon event”. A canon event can be defined as a life-changing episode, like the deaths of uncles (both Ben and Aaron) or police chief fathers, which plays a crucial role in the character development of every Spider-Person across the Multiverse. If a canon event is averted or interfered with, it can result in the complete disintegration of the fabric of that universe’s reality.

Now, on account of Spider-Man being the most relatable MCU character even 60 years after it was first created, it would be foolish to not apply his fictional superhero life experiences to our regular, fragile human existence. Therefore, going forward, I’m going to refer to every painful, embarrassing, traumatic incident in my life as my canon event. Tripping in full public view when I put an extra spring in my step because I thought I was looking fantastic? Canon event. Sending a screenshot of a conversation about my ex to my ex instead of the friend I was talking to said ex about? Canon event. Telling the doctor my urine was blue because I thought he was testing my general knowledge and quizzing me about the colour of chlorine? Canon event (and I was wrong anyway). As agonising as these memories are, I’m halfway to convincing myself that they had to occur in my life in order for the earth to keep spinning on its axis. And sure, the canon event of giving my ex a 6-page letter telling him I still loved him, only for him to turn around and tell me he was dating my cousin is a nightmare of a burden, but just because I carry it well to save the universe from imploding on itself, doesn’t mean it isn’t heavy.

The term “canon event” may have come into common parlance thanks to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, but it is merely a derivative of catchphrases that have found their way into mainstream usage through the years and signify a calm resignation to things beyond our control. Perhaps we were taught to sing Doris Day’s Que Sera, Sera (Italian for ‘whatever will be, will be’) during music class in primary school in preparation for a life over which we would have little command. Maybe that whole phase of teenagers installing c’est la vie (French for ‘this is life’) neon signs on their bedroom walls was an acceptance of the curveballs they would have to field on their way to adulthood. A viral video of a young boy saying “It is what it is” with his friends reverentially repeating the phrase back is proof that unlike their never-back-down predecessors, Gen Zers and millennials are comfortable subscribing to the mysterious powers of fate. Gen Z TikTok also spawned the more conversational motto “fuck it, we ball” which sums up their spirit of persevering in the face of adversity.

Let me be clear—labelling upsetting memories and incidents as canon events is in no way a substitute for therapy, but it’s comforting to think that every version of yourself in every alternate dimension has gone through the exact same experience that altered your life so significantly. It’s all fiction, of course, but living in a dystopian present where New York is coated in a sepia haze, AI will most likely surpass human beings in terms of intelligence and pro-lifers have made it so that women have no agency over over their bodies, it is perhaps make-believe concepts like these that bolster our ability to keep carrying on no matter the circumstances.

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