On a relisten, I agree with user @2kkaii ‘s notes! I now believe Orpheus is singing “Is this how the world will stay?” In If It’s True rather than “Is this how the world was made?” like I said in this post. I especially like the contrast to “is this how the world is?”.
All Hadestown West End lyric changes (as of Feb 15 2024)
Many thanks to @ghostlypawn for posting their audio of Hadestown on the West End :) Keep in mind these are from a preview performance and the production wasn't finalized until Feb 21st, so things may have been altered further since then.
Lines in bold indicate changed lyric
Road To Hell
New Hermes line: "You can tip your hats and your wallets / With your pennies and your pearls / To the hardest working chorus / In the gods' almighty world"
Original Bway line: "Brothers and sisters, boys and girls"
If It's True
New Orpheus final verse: "Brother, look around today / Is this how the world was made? / There must be another way / Is it true? Is it true what they say?"
Original Bway verse: "If it's true what they say / I'll be on my way / Tell me what to do / Is it true? Is it true what they say?"
(Note: In the Hadestown development book Working On a Song written in 2016, Anais Mitchell said she felt If It's True as written on Broadway needed to end on more of a political mic drop and commented she may change it someday. Nice to see she got the opportunity.)
Epic III
New Orpheus section: "I know how it is because he is like me / I know how it is to be left all alone / There's a hole in his arms where the world used to be / When Persephone's gone / His work never done, his war never won / Will go on forever whatever the cost / 'Cause the thing that he's building his wall around / Is already lost / Where is the treasure inside of your chest?..."
Original Bway/NYTW section: "What has become of the heart of that man?" up to "What he doesn't know is that what he's defending / Is already gone"
(Note: I think whether you like this change is entirely dependent on your feelings on Broadway's changes to Epic III. In Working On a Song, an early draft of this new verse can be found with Anais' commentary that her intent was to simplify the Epic so that it became a simple gift of empathy as opposed to the intricate poetry and lyricism of NYTW's Epic, something she couldn't quite finish in time for Broadway's opening. It seems like she and Orpheus might have finally finished their song.)
Miscellaneous
All references to Hermes as "mister" or "missus" are altered (ex: "a god with feathers on her feet... Yes it's Hermes, that's me", "excuse me Hermes" from Orpheus instead of "Mister/Missus Hermes")
(Note: May or may not be specific to Melanie La Barrie's portrayal)
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All Hadestown West End lyric changes (as of Feb 15 2024)
Many thanks to @ghostlypawn for posting their audio of Hadestown on the West End :) Keep in mind these are from a preview performance and the production wasn't finalized until Feb 21st, so things may have been altered further since then.
Lines in bold indicate changed lyric
Road To Hell
New Hermes line: "You can tip your hats and your wallets / With your pennies and your pearls / To the hardest working chorus / In the gods' almighty world"
Original Bway line: "Brothers and sisters, boys and girls"
If It's True
New Orpheus final verse: "Brother, look around today / Is this how the world was made? / There must be another way / Is it true? Is it true what they say?"
Original Bway verse: "If it's true what they say / I'll be on my way / Tell me what to do / Is it true? Is it true what they say?"
(Note: In the Hadestown development book Working On a Song written in 2016, Anais Mitchell said she felt If It's True as written on Broadway needed to end on more of a political mic drop and commented she may change it someday. Nice to see she got the opportunity.)
Epic III
New Orpheus section: "I know how it is because he is like me / I know how it is to be left all alone / There's a hole in his arms where the world used to be / When Persephone's gone / His work never done, his war never won / Will go on forever whatever the cost / 'Cause the thing that he's building his wall around / Is already lost / Where is the treasure inside of your chest?..."
Original Bway/NYTW section: "What has become of the heart of that man?" up to "What he doesn't know is that what he's defending / Is already gone"
(Note: I think whether you like this change is entirely dependent on your feelings on Broadway's changes to Epic III. In Working On a Song, an early draft of this new verse can be found with Anais' commentary that her intent was to simplify the Epic so that it became a simple gift of empathy as opposed to the intricate poetry and lyricism of NYTW's Epic, something she couldn't quite finish in time for Broadway's opening. It seems like she and Orpheus might have finally finished their song.)
Miscellaneous
All references to Hermes as "mister" or "missus" are altered (ex: "a god with feathers on her feet... Yes it's Hermes, that's me", "excuse me Hermes" from Orpheus instead of "Mister/Missus Hermes")
(Note: May or may not be specific to Melanie La Barrie's portrayal)
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Why Spider-People Suffer
Subtitled: How “Othering” Miguel Killed Hundreds of Cops
I loved seeing Miguel getting othered by his fellow spider-people so casually during this movie, both intentionally and unintentionally, and I believe it’s the reason he convinced everyone their loved ones had to die.
“Othering” Moments in the Movie
I’ve only seen the movie twice so I may have missed something more subtle, but here are the moments I remember where the main cast othered Miguel:
Gwen (unknowingly) making a joke (from Miguel’s perspective, re: “You’re not funny!”) of the fact Miguel doesn’t have a spider sense by letting him get decked by the Vulture.
Peter B. Parker commenting, “You’re not funny, spider-men are funny.”
Miles blatantly in fear of Miguel, on the tram shouting, possibly half-joking, “You have claws? Dude, are you sure you’re a spider-man?”
Why do these moments matter? Why would comments like these, two from teens, matter to him, an adult? Shouldn’t this be something a “normal” spider-man would let roll off his back? Well, I would argue “death by a thousand cuts” beginning with his…
Backstory.
In the comics, and what it appears to be in the movie too, Miguel isn’t a “natural” spider-man. He was made in a lab that was attempting to replicate a dead spider-man by splicing actual spider DNA with human DNA— and even the procedure being successful on Miguel specifically was more or less an accident. Now, from what I know of the comics, Miguel doesn’t have to ‘re-up’ these spider-human powers, but we see in the movie that it appears that he does have to inject himself with some kind of concoction to replenish these abilities or maybe just to keep him stable— we don’t know for sure, but we do see that he injects himself with something that does some other thing that affects his powers as depicted in the red we see overcome his eyes for a moment. This is obviously something no other spider-men have to do and is just another way he’s “different” than “them” (his own words, used at the same time he’s injecting) and, in fact, some of the most obvious discrepancies between him and other spider-people are with his…
Powers.
Compounding that “otherness” Miguel already feels within spider society, he doesn’t have “typical” spider-person powers, because he wasn’t made the same way other spider-people were. He is a literal spider-human hybrid. The lab didn’t actually know what made the original spider-man, so his powers — talons, paralysis, fangs, eyes turned red by super sight — are derived directly from whatever breed of spider was used in the experiments and they are a lot more off-putting. People, and even other spider-people (re: “Don’t be scared of Miguel, Miles”), are afraid of Miguel, or at the very least are put-off by him. This can be attributed at least somewhat (if not entirely) to his powers. He doesn’t have a very approachable demeanor, but I would hazard that that wall he puts up is in response to the reactions he gets to his powers (“I’m a good guy!” “You don’t look like a good guy!”). They aren’t the pretty, petite, unassuming powers that other spider-people have. They’re very gritty and raw, and they’re lifted directly from a species of bug that people are notoriously afraid of.
And while it’s true that the other spider-people also have some aspects of spiders and are directly associated with it as well, other spider-people have something that Miguel lacks: humor. Miguel is reminded both in comics and in this movie that he’s not approachable, that he’s not funny like spider-men “should” be. They even go so far in the movie as to call spider-person humor a “crutch,” but it's more than just making light of dark situations, humor is how other spider-people connect with their community. This is why, despite a persistent hate campaign from the Daily Bugle, spider-people are able to stay in the good graces of the masses. Spider-people, through humor, are able to reassure communities, console victims, and win over the hearts of millions of New Yorkers. Miguel doesn’t have this “crutch” and because of it, he’s not well-liked by… really anyone. Not even his own mother wants to be around him.
Miguel is perceived to be lacking in almost every aspect of being a spider-man, and this really impacts his views on the importance of…
Canon.
Miguel views canon events as the holy grail of spider-person origins because he didn’t have one himself. I don’t think Miguel fully believes he is a true spider-man. Not only were his (atypical) powers acquired through a (botched) scientific experiment, and not only is everyone constantly reminding him that he’s not a “normal” spider-person, but Miguel’s universe already had its “canon” Spider-Man, and he died.
Or, at least he did in the 2099 comics. We can’t be certain about the movie-verse yet, but on the assumption it and the comics share a backstory, Miguel knows the full extent of his Spider-Man’s life. Beginning, middle, and end. That Spider-Man’s story is over and done within Miguel’s universe, which means that Miguel isn’t a “real” spider-man. He’s a knockoff. He was an accident, a fluke, a recreation.
With this in mind, I feel Miguel’s reasoning for dedicating himself to The Canon is two-fold:
Firstly, I think it stems from the idea that because his universe’s Spider-Man story is “complete” that is how the story must be told. There was a set beginning, middle, and end to the Spider-Man of his universe, and he’s easily able to reference it. There’s no guesswork around his Spider-Man’s story because it’s concluded. And to him, that finality is infallible, so he plays it out over and over and over in other spider-verses.
Secondly (most speculatively, but most importantly), but I don’t think Miguel has told anyone that he isn’t a bitten (or born) spider-person. In his introduction, we don’t get the usual “I’m the one and only Spider-Man” cinematic intro we had with the rest of the main cast (excluding Jess). He keeps his introduction short, sweet, and secretive. This leads me to believe he hasn’t told anyone of how he became his universe’s Spider-Man. He might think that if he did, the other spider-people would shun him. He might think they would hate him. He might think they would leave him.
A very, very prominent theme across many of the main cast’s stories is that they felt alone in the world until they found other spider-people, and I believe Miguel feels this isolation the strongest of all of them. He set up the Spider Headquarters in his own home universe. He recruited hundreds and hundreds of spider-people to join him and it looks like many of them live there for at least some period of time. I believe he’s so afraid of being left out of the social spider network that he has outright lied about his origin story, calling on the only Spider-Man story he knows the entirety of— his universe’s Peter Parker. Then, to cover his tracks he began collecting similarities across every spider-person’s reality, enshrining them in gold, and cementing them as The Canon.
And, unfortunately, what many spider-people have in common is…
Suffering.
Suffering isn’t unique to spider-people. Prematurely losing a loved one isn’t even unique to spider-people. Sadly, it’s not very uncommon at all, and those moments are often defining in people’s lives. They can be more impactful than even joyful moments, and I believe that’s something that Miguel could most easily connect with all of the spider-people he met. Not because they were meant to happen, not because they’re a part of some greater, cosmic prophecy— sadly, tragedy rarely ever has a reason at all.
Miguel wasn’t able to find some incredible, world-defining Canon Event among the many hundreds of spider-people he found. He was just able to find tragedy. The senseless, horrible, incomprehensible moment in all of our lives where we’ve lost someone we cared very deeply for, and no one could tell us why. There was no rhyme or reason, they just simply ceased to exist, and the world didn’t end, and the planets didn’t stop spinning, and no reckoning came. It was just us. Alone with our grief, in a moment where we felt helpless, hopeless, and inadequate; in a moment that is impossible to reconcile with because we want there to be a reason something so awful happened. But there isn’t. The universe is random and underwhelming and every day a few unlucky people will draw a card that ends their game, completely by chance.
But then Miguel came along and he assigned importance to that terrible moment.
He told the spiderverse that their suffering wasn’t random. He told them it wasn’t just another case of being in the wrong place, wrong time. He told them there was a purpose to their suffering. All the pain they endured, it only made them better, stronger, more resilient and there was a reason for it.
And more than that, Miguel told them they weren’t alone. He reassured them that this Thing that seemed to happen to all of them was cosmically indomitable, inevitable, inescapable— it was Canon, they were all in the same story together, never to be alone with their grief again. And that made all the difference.
When Miguel gave them a reason for why they were hurt, it became a rallying point. Not only could they absolve themselves of the pain of having lost someone, they had something abstract and inexplicable to blame it on— Canon.
The Canon Miguel introduced doesn’t have feelings, it doesn’t feel anger or spite or angst, it is just the vehicle that drives events over the course of everyone’s lives, and there’s a comfort in believing that traumatic events are ordained by some unfathomable being guiding you to your end results. It’s comforting to believe that the universe isn’t just random chance.
And to that point, everyone seemed happy to believe in a reciprocal universe until…
Miles.
Miguel sees his own perceived “flaws” in Miles.
Miles wasn’t supposed to become spider-man in his universe.
Miles has an atypical spider-man origin story.
Miles’ “canon” Spider-Man is dead.
For all intents and purposes, he and Miles are likely the most closely related spider-people to one another, but a key difference between them is Miles… doesn’t care. Sure, Miles is lonely in his own universe; and sure, Miles feels overwhelmed with expectations that’ve been heaped on to him; and sure, Miles doesn’t even know he’s an accident. But he’s happy. He’s a happy kid and he made close friends with other spider-people who love and accept him, and trained him, and mentored him, and that’s not something Miguel had, and he’s resentful of Miles for it.
We still don’t know for certain if there were other reasons Miguel isolated Miles, but from the read I have on Part One, it seems like Miguel only used the “original anomaly” excuse to prevent him from interacting with spider-people and spider-people with him. Which doesn’t add up since the “damage” to the multiverse Miles “caused” was over. Outside being an anomaly, Miles wasn’t causing any more harm to the multiverse by just existing in it (that we know of currently). It certainly wasn’t because Miles hasn’t experienced his Dead Police Captain storybeat, because as we saw in the movie, Pav hadn’t experienced his either. There was no good reason to block him from joining the spiderverse and help “fix his mistake.”
Instead, for what appears to me to be no other reason than jealousy (or fear) that Miles was (and would be) so well liked by other spider-people, Miguel isolated him in his own universe for a year and four months, barring him from the spider society Miguel established on his world, and forbade any other spider-people even visit Miles.
I think that’s what it comes down to with Miguel, really. Jealousy that Miles is an anomaly like himself, but unlike him, people don’t joke that Miles shouldn’t be a Spider-Man. They aren’t afraid of Miles. They don’t “other” Miles. They like Miles. No one likes Miguel.
And on top of it all, probably the most infuriating (and frightening) part of Miles to Miguel is that Miles isn’t ashamed. He isn’t ashamed of being an accident; he isn’t pouring over his Spider-Man’s history trying to meet made-up Canon expectations; he didn’t even parody the spider-people who were right in front of him when he was just coming into his own. Miles decided at 14 years old that he wasn’t, and couldn’t, be a Peter Parker copy. He accepted himself as his own, unique Spider-Man, and in breaking that mold and allowing himself to take a leap of faith, he became something incredible.
And I think that scares Miguel, not only because his entire organization is based on the idea that every spider-person must experience specific events, and not because if Miles refuses to follow story beats then the entire multiverse will unravel, but because if Miles is right and the multiverse can be as diverse and varied as it wants to be, then Miguel has hated himself for so long for no reason.
And I think that fear and jealousy and resentment all comes to head on…
The Tram.
Miguel’s meltdown during the tram scene felt like it came almost out of nowhere. The vitriol that he spit at Miles just didn't correlate with what could reasonably be expected of him from simply being annoyed he had to chase some stubborn kid around the city. It was unnecessary, because by then, he had subdued Miles. He was pinning him to the tram, he had already caught him. There was no reason to be so viscous to Miles at that point.
Except Miles had just done what everyone else had been doing to Miguel. Miles had “othered” him.
“You got claws? Dude, are you sure you’re a Spider-Man?”
I think that was the final straw for Miguel. I wouldn’t say he had kept his cool until that point, but he certainly hadn’t set out to hurt Miles— emotionally. In fact, he had previously just been trying to ease him into his Canon and reason with him. Miguel had been trying to console Miles in the same way he had consoled hundreds of other spider-people.
But Miles made a hurtful joke because spider-people make hurtful jokes (a theme, maybe, since hurtful jokes had been what provoked the Spot into a rampage, too: “I’ll become strong enough to be your nemesis. Then you’ll take me seriously.”) and Miguel, who already saw so much of his own story in Miles, was enraged by the fact that Miles would be so cavalier about Miguel when Miles was just like him and he flew off the handle— dragging him down under him, pushing his way into Miles’s personal space, and forcing him to realize just how “other” Miles was, too.
And there’s really no excuse for it. Miguel was clearly in the wrong to do that. No one should be told they were a mistake, or that they’re the reason someone else died— and especially no one should ever be made to believe that the value of their life was less than another’s.
It’s horrible what Miguel said to Miles, and I do believe Miguel was venting his own self-loathing, but it was aimed at Miles and Miles now bears the weight of that hate and there’s no excuse for that.
Conclusion?
I don’t think Miguel is a villain, he’s just a damaged man. That doesn’t absolve him of the shitty things he’s done, especially to Miles, but I do think it helps to explain them somewhat. Ironically, as much as he feels ostracized from spider society, I think he’s just like every other spider-person. He’s looking for friendships and acceptance and his happy ending, and above all, he doesn’t want to be an outcast. Much of that feeling probably comes from his unwillingness to accept himself as he is and pave his own way as Spider-man. I hope in the next movie he begins to consider the similarities he has with other spider-people rather than focusing on the differences.
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