Madame Web is here, whether you like it or not, and the movie’s ending does set up a future for the characters in it. Whether or not we will see it come to fruition, as Cassie Webb (Dakota Johnson) can, is a completely different story.
**Spoilers for Madame Web. If you want to keep the secrets, don’t scroll on.**
Cassie comes into her powers of clairvoyance and being able to see the future when she’s stuck in a car that crashes into the Hudson River while she’s trying to save someone in her job as a paramedic. Her newfound powers spur Cassie’s determination to figure out why this has happened to her.
Through a series of events, Cassie foresees the brutal death of 3 teenage girls while waiting for a train to leave the station. Determined to save them, she quickly becomes the reluctant guardian of Julia (Sydney Sweeney), Mattie (Celeste O’Connor), and Anya (Isabela Merced). Their would-be murderer, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), previously worked with Cassie’s mother, trying to find a spider that was rumored to have healing powers and gives “spider people” special abilities.
Ezekiel, in his own visions, has seen Julia, Mattie, and Anya with their own “spider” powers and that they would lead to his death, but in trying to save himself, he died at the hand of Cassie, in her efforts to protect the girls. In a final battle between them, Cassie uses an abandoned fireworks facility under the Pepsi Cola sign in Queens (don’t ask) to her advantage and eventually knocks Ezekiel to his death.
That battle also sends Cassie crashing into the water, and in her fall, she is injured in such a way that the iconic imagery of Madame Web from the comics is brought to life.
Madame Web is here, cool glasses and all
In the final moments of the movie, it is revealed that Cassie is blind and uses a wheelchair. This is, of course, how many of us know the character. The three girls are still extremely close to Cassie (who says that they’re hers when a nurse asks if they are immediate family during Cassie’s recovery), and we get to see a setup for the future.
Cassie is explaining the spider-powers that Mattie, Julia, and Anya will eventually possess, and we get glimpses of them in their superhero attire, joined with a telepathic version of Cassie in her own suit. This means that eventually they will all be a fun little group of heroes, saving New York together.
We don’t see them get their powers or know when that will happen, but we just leave the movie with the knowledge that it will, eventually, happen for each of them, and that’s all we have—for now.
(featured image: Sony Pictures)
