Spider-Man Is Officially Getting Closure for His Greatest Tragedy

Published Sep 30, 2026, 9:00 AM EDT

Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.

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No hero knows tragedy quite like Spider-Man. Whether on the page or the screen, Marvel always finds a new way to fill Peter Parker's life with unbelievable hardship, from the death of his Uncle Ben to the erasure of his marriage to Mary Jane, or the wiping of everyone he knows and loves' memories of him. There is almost no world where the web-slinger knows peace from his life of fighting crime, to the point where it's become a running joke that it's not the Green Goblin, Doc Ock, or even Kraven that's his biggest villain, but the writers themselves. However, one of their newest stories finally imagines a better life for the hero and some much-deserved closure for one of his greatest tragedies.

The story comes from the much-anticipated The Amazing Spider-Man #1000, which hits store shelves today. While the milestone Marvel Comics issue kicks off with the latest chapter in Joe Kelly and Pepe Larraz's run with the character, it serves as a supersized collection of Spider-Man content, including several anniversary tales that reflect on Peter's rich history on the page. Everyone from Frank Miller to Brian Michael Bendis, J.M. DeMatteis, and even current WWE CCO and Hall of Famer Triple H deliver their standalone tributes to the web-head in their own ways, whether by going back to the night Ben died, having Peter reckon with the death of his best friend turned villain Harry Osborn, or even sending Spidey to the old West. Among those, Alien: Earth creator Noah Hawley takes readers forward in time as a much older Peter reflects on life and prepares for an emotional final adventure.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What MCU Superpower Would You Have? Strength · Spider-Sense · Invisibility · Chaos Magic

Eight honest questions about how you actually are: your first instinct when things go wrong, what your friends rely on you for, how you handle stress, what your real flaw is. Answer them and we will tell you which power you would wake up with. The best ones in the MCU are never random, because they always say something about the person who got them.

💪Super Strength(Hulk)

🕸️Spider-Sense(Spider-Man)

🫧Invisibility(Fantastic Four)

🔮Chaos Magic(Scarlet Witch)

FIND YOUR POWER →

01

What is your first instinct when something goes wrong? Go with the honest answer rather than the heroic one.

AGet in front of it. BReact before I have finished thinking. CStep back and work out what is happening. DFeel all of it at once, then move.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

How do you handle being the centre of attention? Every hero on this list answers this differently.

AFine, as long as it is for something useful. BI did not plan it, but here we are. CI would much rather nobody noticed me. DIt depends entirely on my mood that day.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

What do your friends rely on you for? They would all name the same thing about you.

ADoing the heavy thing nobody else wants. BSpotting trouble before anybody else does. CNoticing what everybody else missed. DSaying the thing everybody is feeling.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

How do you deal with stress? Nobody picks the healthy one, and that is fine.

ACarry it quietly and say nothing. BTake on more, which never once helps. CGo quiet and disappear for a while. DLet it out, then clean up afterwards.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

What is your actual flaw? The useful thing here is picking the true one.

AI carry things that are not mine to carry. BI cannot switch off. CI keep far too much to myself. DI feel everything much too strongly.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

What kind of help do you actually give people? Everybody has one default, whatever the situation is.

APractical help, straight away. BI turn up before they have asked. CI quietly remove the problem. DI sit with them in it.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

How do you want strangers to see you? Answer for the first ten minutes, not the first year.

ASolid, and worth relying on. BQuick, warm and switched on. CI would rather they formed no opinion yet. DInteresting, and a little hard to read.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

What would you want a superpower for? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your power.

ATo protect the people I care about. BTo never be too late again. CTo move through the world unnoticed. DTo change something I could not change before.

REVEAL MY POWER →

The Gift Is Given Your Power Is…

Four powers, and four completely different kinds of person behind them. Here is what you would wake up with, what it would cost you, and why the MCU keeps handing it to somebody exactly like you.

Super Strength

You get the power that is really about taking the hit so that nobody else has to. Strength in the MCU always lands on people who were already carrying too much, which is exactly why it suits you.

• Your instinct is to put yourself between the problem and the people, and you do it before anybody has thought to ask.
• Bruce Banner is the most interesting version of this because his story was never about lifting things, it was about control.
• The catch with strength is that people stop checking whether you are alright, since you have made a habit of looking like you always are.
• You would be the one everybody calls at two in the morning, and you would answer every single time.

Spider-Sense

You get the power that never switches off. Spider-sense is a gift and a nervous system on permanent alert, and the people who get it in these films are always the ones who were already worrying about everybody.

• You read a situation faster than you can explain it, and you are usually right in a way you cannot show your working for.
• Peter Parker is the template because he takes on more than he can hold and then apologises for not holding it well enough.
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrived in July 2026 and put him back to being local, broke and permanently on call.
• The cost here is real, since a power that warns you about everything also means you are never quite off duty.

Invisibility

You get the quietest power in the building, and quietly the most useful. Invisibility comes with force fields for a reason, because the people who prefer not to be seen are usually the ones holding a shield around everybody else.

• You notice everything, largely because you spend more time observing a room than performing in it.
• Sue Storm is the strongest member of her team and the least interested in anybody saying so, which is very much your energy.
• The Fantastic Four: First Steps finally gave the family a proper MCU home in 2025 and made her the centre of it.
• Your risk is that being unseen becomes a habit rather than a choice, and the people who love you would like a look in.

Chaos Magic

You get the biggest and least comfortable power on the list, the one that runs directly on feeling. Chaos magic is not really a superpower in the MCU so much as an emotional state with consequences attached.

• You feel things at a volume other people do not, and you have spent years managing that rather than being managed by it.
• Wanda is the best written character Marvel has, precisely because her power and her grief turned out to be the same thing.
• WandaVision remains the high point of Marvel television, and it works because the spectacle is only ever a symptom.
• The warning attached to this one is simple. A power that answers to how you feel is only ever as steady as you are.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

Spoilers ahead for The Amazing Spider-Man #1000

Spider-Man Gets a Proper Goodbye With Gwen Stacy

Hawley's story, featuring art by Patrick Gleason, primarily takes place in a nursing home where Peter resides now that his crime-fighting days are past. He's visited by his son Miles, perhaps named after a certain other web-slinger, and his grandson, who has taken up the Spider-Man mantle in his stead, giving them a particularly close bond. When alone in memory care, however, his existence is rather lonely until a new resident moves in who looks strikingly like his old flame, Gwen Stacy, who he tragically could not save from the Green Goblin. As it turns out, things are more complicated than they seem, and while she is technically Gwen, she's not entirely real. Some digging, with the help of his grandson, to find out where she was taken one night when Peter swears armed men came to kidnap her reveals that a dying Mysterio was behind the ruse to get revenge on him before he passed on. Seeing Peter light up and fight for Gwen, even when his body was frail, made him regret his actions, though.

It all culminates with Peter's grandson arranging a final confrontation between Mysterio and his grandfather where they finally properly meet face to face and bury the hatchet. Instead of using his powers to torment the former Spider-Man, Quentin uses them to bring the very real illusion of Gwen back to life so Peter can give her a proper goodbye. Not only does it give closure to the hero by giving him the space to finally voice his feelings, but it gives Mysterio some redemption by choosing to leave the world with an act of kindness towards his former enemy rather than bitterness. Moreover, the moment cements that, while their time was cut short and Peter would go on to have many a love interest, from Mary Jane to Felicia Hardy, Gwen was always meant to be his true love.

The Amazing Spider-Man #1000 is now on sale. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on all the latest Marvel Comics developments every week.