Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ NPCs are always weirdly surprised whenever they see you zooming through the air via blasts of synthetic webbing. You’d think that the game’s New Yorkers were somehow unaccustomed to witnessing superheroes as part of their everyday lives…despite how prominently Avengers Tower features into the game’s Manhattan skyline.
Miles Morales’ world is one where there aren’t just two Spider-Men — there’s a whole flagship team of experienced heroes who, for one reason or another, were all conveniently indisposed right when New York’s web-slingers could have used a little superpowered backup. Neither Miles nor Peter Parker seems to begrudge their fellow vigilantes of this all that much, but both of Insomniac’s games have raised the very interesting question of whether the Spider-Men might cross paths with these heroes one day.
It would have been easy enough for Insomniac to stick to references of characters within Spider-Man’s generally-accepted orbit and called it a day for Miles Morales. But the game actually features a rather unexpected shoutout to a member of the X-Men who, depending on how you interpret things, might exist in this universe.
During one of Miles’ first missions as New York’s newest Spider-Man, the game ends up guiding you to an abandoned repair shop where you search for clues related to the new criminal group called the Underground and their ongoing attacks on New York City. As you sneak through the shop, you find yourself interacting with different targets that all prompt Miles to speak to himself about his past — like the time he spent with his best friend Phin working in the shop under the supervision of her older brother Rick.
Though they’re easy to miss, at one spot within the shop, you can navigate towards an assortment of guitars being displayed behind a counter. As Miles looks at them, he muses to himself about how Rick once swore up and down that one of them belonged to the Alison Blaire, the musician who’s sometimes better known by her X-Men codename, Dazzler.
Miles doesn’t say anything more about Blaire from that point, and the game doesn’t make all that big a deal out of her namedrop. However, it’s interesting that Insomniac would even acknowledge an X-Men character’s existence (particularly one not closely associated with Spider-Man), given how the bulk of recent major games featuring Marvel’s heroes have generally stuck to characters more firmly situated in the MCU.
There’s no telling what direction Insomniac plans to take its Spider-Man games in the future, but with as much hype that’s been built around Miles Morales, the developer’s almost certainly thinking about its next steps and how to make full use of the PS5’s horsepower. Chances are slim that you’ll see the X-Men and co. cavorting around Miles and Peters’ streets any time soon, but never say never.