This Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales article contains spoilers.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales ends in notably epic fashion considering the deeply personal story at its heart. Most of the game focuses on the conflict between Miles Morales and his best friend Phin Mason, whom he discovers is the villain known as the Tinkerer, the leader of a terrorist group known as the Undeground that has been waging war against the shady Roxxon Energy corporation on New York’s City streets.
Phin’s out for revenge on Roxxon for the death of her brother Rick, and Miles, who has been left to protect the city while Peter’s away in Europe, finds himself stuck right in the middle. He’s forced to stop Phin at all costs before she can blow up Harlem by exploiting Roxxon’s NuForm energy, which is what killed her brother.
This all leads to an explosive confrontation between Miles and Phin that will likely shape the young hero’s crime-fighting career for years to come. Miles’ latest test as a new Spider-Man turns out to be pretty life-altering.
Let’s break down what happened in the game’s final moments:
What happens between Miles and Phin?
When Miles confronts Phin at Roxxon Plaza, which she plans to demolish by overloading a NuForm reactor, he tries to explain to her that Roxxon scientist and criminal mastermind Simon Krieger tampered with the reactor and that the explosion will cause far more damage to the surrounding neighborhood, killing thousands of people in Harlem.
But Phin is overcome with rage and resentment, still reeling from the death of her engineer brother, who lost his life trying to eradicate NuForm, which he invented but subsequently discovered made people sick. She also doesn’t trust Miles after he lied to her about wanting to join her in the Underground all while withholding the fact that he’s been trying to thwart her plans as Spider-Man all along.
They’re at an impasse: Phin is deadset on avenging her brother and Miles vows to stop her to protect his city. They come to blows high above the Harlem streets and Phin gets the best of Miles as the energy converter pulsates and threatens to destroy everything around it. But amid the chaos she glimpses the faces of the New Yorkers down below, running terrified as the volatile reactor sends tremors down the city streets.
Eventually, she loses her footing and plummets to the ground below. Miles saves her (taking off his faulty tech mask in the process), but they crash land mere feet away from the crackling reactor.
How does Miles save the day?
When Miles comes to, he stumbles toward the overloaded NuForm reactor to shut it down with his electricity-based Venom Power. He is successful but can’t hold in all of the energy he’s absorbed for long.
Phin comes to her senses and decides to grab Miles, run up the side of the towering Roxxon building with her Underground tech-powered boots, and rocket high into the night sky. She tells Miles to “let go,” which he does, resulting in a giant explosion that evidently vaporizes Phin and sends an unconscious Miles hurtling toward the earth below. He crash lands AGAIN, this time unmasked for all onlookers to see.
The fact that Phin ultimately uses the technology she developed not to take Roxxon, but to literally “go high” and save lives while paying for her own wrongdoings with her own life, is a poetic exclamation point at the end of an intensely personal story.
What happens now that Miles has been unmasked?
A few civilians—including his best friend Ganke, his mother Rio, Spidey ally Hailey, and the artist responsible for the Spider-Man mural outside Miles’s apartment building—discover Miles’ secret identity. A news reporter arrives as Miles flees the scene and asks the bystanders if they saw his face. They refuse to identify him and instead refer to him as “Our Spider-Man,” a refrain among the citizens of Harlem throughout the game. It seems as if his secret identity will remain safe for now.
This moment underlines one of the story’s main themes — that underrepresented, marginalized people deserve a hero they can call their own. They protect Miles’s identity because they know he’s one of them—he’s from THEIR neighborhood.
What happens to Uncle Aaron/The Prowler and Simon Krieg?
Four weeks after the incident at Roxxon Plaza, it’s revealed via radio host Danika that Uncle Aaron, also known as the Prowler, who briefly worked with Simon Krieger, flipped on his former associate, sending the evil CEO to prison in embarrassing fashion. He’ll do time himself but may get a reduced sentence. Like Phin, he’ll pay for his mistakes, but has also started to redeem himself in the process.
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Where do Miles and Peter stand?
By the end of the game, Miles has finally started to feel comfortable in his role as Harlem’s very own Spider-Man. We see him in a good mood, strutting down his block, flirting with Hailey underneath the Spider-Man mural (which now features his masked likeness in addition to Peter’s), and stopping for a quick bachata dance in his Timbs with an old lady before ducking into his apartment building.
We then see Miles meet with Peter, who’s back from Europe, on his apartment building’s roof. Miles is wearing his new suit (updated with a slick hoodie), which Peter approves of. “Gotta be me,” says Miles as he casually sips coffee while hanging upside down, a nod to a moment between the two heroes at the start of the game that signifies he finally feels ready to be the hero he was meant to be. More importantly, he’s ready to be his true self.
“Roxxon did this uptown because they saw us as disposable,” Miles somberly explains to Peter. “I think part of our job is making sure they can’t get away with it.” This is a poignant moment that hits again on the idea that New York’s POC communities deserve heroes that represent them.
Why is Harry Osborn in that vat?
After the game’s credits, we cut to none other than Harry Osborne floating in a vat of murky green liquid. He sees his father, Norman, enter the lab he’s being held in and get an update on his recovery from the Lizard himself, scientist Curt Connors. Norman says that he wants his son out of the vat now, but Connors advises against this, citing Harry’s dangerous “disease,” but Norman is insistent.
This is actually the continuation of a story whose seed was planted in the original game, in which Peter conducted research for Harry across New York while he was handling Oscorp business “overseas.” In reality, Harry was sick the entire time, and the game’s deadly “Devil’s Breath” concoction was a failed attempt by Norman to cure him. In a short scene in the game, Norman vows to find a cure that actually works.
Now it seems that Norman has finally found a way to release Harry from his emerald cocoon, and this surely means we’ll be seeing Harry and Norman featured front and center in the inevitable Marvel’s Spider-Man sequel, with Harry suffering from side-effects from his treatment that turn him into the Green Goblin.
It’s also notable that in the scene we hear on the radio that Rio Morales’s campaign for city council was successful, which could mean Rio will play an even bigger role in the Spider-Man story to come.
What did Miles learn from his mom?
When all of the end game cinematics are through, we see Miles set down the science award he and Phin won together in middle school atop Trinity Church, as he says his final goodbye to his old friend.
He then shares a conversation with Rio on the phone and they discuss his feelings about Phin. He says he’s conflicted about his feelings for his late friend because she caused so much damage but also ultimately gave her life to save others. She tells him that he doesn’t have to pass judgment on Phin’s life but simply remember why he loved her.
It’s a powerful note to end the story on, as Rio touches on the idea that people don’t simply fall into the categories of “good” or “bad.” This is a story about forgiveness and empathy, and no character exemplifies this more than Rio.
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is out on PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 now.