Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe had Tom Holland's Spider-Man, the web-slinging hero was always portrayed to have been bitten by the radioactive spider in their respective universes. Even Miles Morales had his own cut in the "canon" Spidey moment.
But how come the billion-dollar franchise didn't have its very own spider bite sequence? The most that Spider-Man: Homecoming did was briefly mention that Peter Parker was indeed bitten by a spider. And that it died right after.
And let's be honest, it's not easy to trust summarizing this huge a heroic transformation with a simple anecdote. Especially since Peter didn't even make his own suit after meeting Iron Man and the Avengers.
Now, this is where it gets tricky, does MCU Spider-Man actually have powers or does it entirely rely on the suits?
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Was Tom Holland’s Peter Parker Bitten By a Spider in the MCU?
Peter Parker made his debut before his solo movie came into the picture. It was when Tony Stark was recruiting his own set of supers to convince Steve Rogers (Captain America) to stay and sign the Sokovia Accords.
At the time, Tony had to assess whether the videos he saw online about Spider-Man's run were true, and surely enough, they were.
Parker had his suit hidden in his attic, he could shoot his webs from his own wrists and had the strength that matched well with Cap’s Super Soldier-enhanced bodybuild.
However, since Tony's main purpose for hiring Spider-Man was to help him capture Steve and Bucky, the friendly neighborhood hero didn't get to flourish and discover more of his powers beyond being provided with a suit made by Stark himself.
What makes things even more confusing about the MCU Spider-Man is how his powers work, exactly, seeing as the high-tech suit pretty much already covers what could count as his superpowers.
Here is what Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts unveiled why they decided to skip the whole Spider bite gimmick in a previous interview with Comicbook.com:
“It was just so nice to skip past it and just deal with more with the repercussions… and just explore it from the perspective of someone else finding out about it and having a lot of questions.”
Considering that it had been less than 20 years since Tobey Maguire’s and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man movies were out, it’s a given that watching Holland do the same thing over again would be too on the nose for MCU fans.
But this does pose concerns about the franchise’s Peter Parker relying too much on technology as compared to his predecessors.
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The MCU’s Spider-Man Super Powers Explained
Taken from Peter Parker’s own words in Captain America: Civil War, the spider bite “dialed his senses up to 11” which explains his enhanced strength and abilities as Spider-Man.
As you might have already guessed, Holland’s Spidey hero’s powers don’t differ much from what the previous Spider-Men have already shown MCU diehards with the web-shooting, agile, and flexible body, Spidey senses where he could sense danger from a mile away, and climbing on walls and swinging across buildings.
Tony Stark’s super suits may have tampered with Peter Parker in reaching his fullest potential as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, but most of the endings of Tom Holland’s films always end up with unmasking the hero in his nearly destroyed ‘armor’.
It is when he’s at his most vulnerable point that he greatly accelerates and ends up surpassing the Spider-Man he was when the movie started.
Heck, he even got to create his own super suits back in Spider-Man: Far From Home, which not only depicts him as Tony Stark’s prodigy but ultimately makes things easier for him on his heroic journey.
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