Big spoilers from Madame Web ahead!
Following a pair of Venom movies and the meme-worthy Morbius the newest entry in Sony’s live-action Spider-Verse is here with Madame Web. Dakota Johnson stars as the titular character who finds herself protecting a trio of teens from a villainous wallcrawler. Check out CinemaBlend’s Madame Web review for a spoiler-free look at the movie as a whole. Here there will be no such restraint, we’re looking at how Madame Web ends and what happens to Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, and the rest of the Madame Web cast.
The Madame Web movie spends a lot of time contemplating the future. All the conflict comes about because one man attempts to prevent a particular future from coming to pass. And in a way he succeeds. A new future is at hand for the film's protagonists. Here’s what happens.
How Madame Web Ends
Throughout Madame Web, our heroes, led by Dakota Johnson’s Cassandra Webb, have been on the run from Ezekial, a man with superhuman spider powers who sees a future where three teen girls, Julia, Anya, and Mattie, played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor, will kill him. He plans to kill them before they gain the superpowers that lead to his demise.
The finale begins as Ezekial tracks down the girls, who have been hiding out waiting for Cassandra to return from her trip to get answers in Peru. Cassandra arrives just in time, hitting Ezekial with a stolen ambulance, and then using it to rush the girls away while he recovers.
Cassandra, who has been gaining more control over her precognitive abilities, sees a possible solution to beat him by drawing Ezekial to the old warehouse filled with fireworks where she had previously responded to a call as an EMT.
By having the three girls follow her instructions, based on her views of the future, Cassandra leads them up to the roof, where a rescue helicopter is waiting. Unfortunately, Cassandra’s ability to adapt her plans as she sees them go wrong only goes so far. An errant firework knocks the helicopter from the sky, and Ezekial knocks all three girls into positions that leave them in danger of falling to their deaths, all at significant distances from Cassandra, and from each other, making it seemingly impossible for Cassandra to save them all.
How Madame Web Uses Her Power To Save The Girls
Cassandra had been struggling to have total control of her powers, but at this point, things change. We see her begin to access the “web,” a visual representation of her ability to access different points in the timeline. We had seen her interact with her deceased mother earlier with this power, but at that point, the ability seemed to control her.
What we see now is Cassandra using her ability to see the future to change multiple versions of the future simultaneously. Essentially we see three different timelines playing out. In each one, she saves one of the three girls from falling to their death. But rather than simply seeing these as possible futures, Cassandra is actually making them happen, all at once. In this way, Cassandra can be in three places at once, saving all three girls.
Ezekiel then moves to attack Cassandra. Physically she is no match for him, so she's only able to avoid his advance, but she knows what’s about to happen. She keeps her distance until part of the collapsing structure they are on lands on him, pinning him down. Ezekial laments that he was only trying to save himself from the girls. Cassandra indicates that the real threat to him, as he must now see, has always been her. Then it all collapses below Ezekial, and he falls to the street, with another piece falling on top of him, killing him.
Unfortunately, Cassandra is also trapped, the structure falls out from underneath her, but rather than hitting the street, she falls into the water. Another firework follows her into the water exploding in her face and knocking her unconscious. She is pulled out of the water by the girls, who perform CPR on Cassandra as she had taught them earlier. They successfully resuscitate her, but when she opens her eyes, we can see that something is wrong with them.
What’s Next For The Spider-Women
Cassandra Webb is now blind. She’s in the hospital, not too far from a young Mary Parker, who has just given birth to a baby boy. She refers to Julia, Anya, and Mattie as her family, and they clearly feel the same way. In the final scene, some time has passed. Cassandra is healed and at home, but her blindness appears to be permanent. Cassandra is in a motorized wheelchair as the teens come in from bringing food. The new family is happy together. Cassandra knows they’re in for something more.
All of this started because Ezekial saw the girls as a trio of women with Spider-Man-like abilities. We don’t know when or why they gained the powers, it doesn't appear that Cassandra has told them what's in store for them, but as we get a glimpse of the future that Cassandra can see, it’s clear that the powers are still very much in their future. Cassandra even has a superhero costume of her own, as it appears that the four of them will be working together.
What makes it all potentially interesting is that Madame Web is set in 2003, and according to Ezekial’s original premonition of his death, that happened a decade in the future. This means that, if Sony’s live-action Spider-Verse movies are all set in the same universe, whichever Spider-Man universe that may be, then they should already have their powers in the modern day.
Despite the lack of any sort of post-credits sequence in Madame Web, the movie certainly leaves a door very open to a sequel, or to the characters returning in some other connected franchise film. Critics have not been kind to Madame Web but whether or not the movie ultimately sees more follow-up will likely be dictated by the box office.
