Spidey stans may have to wait a little while longer for Beyond The Spider-Verse (the film still hasn’t gotten an official release date since it was postponed last summer), but Sony is helping to build a web across the gap with The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story, a new short film featuring everyone’s teen web-slinger, Miles Morales.
In the short—which actually premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival last year but was made widely available today—Miles contends with one of his most challenging enemies yet: himself. More specifically, he’s almost taken down by a vision of his own anxiety and self-doubt, which manifests as—you guessed it—a giant, totally creepy arachnid. It’s a good lesson for all of us to learn: everyone, even the most super-human among us, suffers from the occasional panic attack. For most of us, that probably looks a little more banal than the always-awesome Spider-Verse animation on display here, but hey! If Spider-Man can find a non-magical solution to his moment of stress (we won’t spoil the very sweet ending here), so can any of us.
The Spider Within, directed by Jarelle Dampier and written by Khailia Amazan, was a product of Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks’ new Leading and Empowering New Storytellers (LENS) initiative, a nine-month program that trains and highlights up-and-coming talent from diverse backgrounds.
The short is set sometime between the events of the first two Spider-Verse films, with Miles still attending school like any normal teenager (well, on the surface at least). We’ll have to wait and see if he continues to carry these lessons with him into his next adventure, whenever it finally swings into theaters.