The same spiders that gave Ezekiel his powers were also given to Cassandra Webb’s mother, right as she was giving birth. The magical spider venom didn’t save Cassandra’s mom, but Cassandra discovers in 2003 — now working as an ambulance driver in Queens and played by Dakota Johnson — that she has ultra-sharp clairvoyance powers. Those powers lead Cassandra into the company of three seemingly random teenagers: the shy Julia (Sydney Sweeney), the flippant Mattie (Celeste O’Connor), and the intellectual Anya (Isabela Merced). In the future, Cassandra sees, these three will grow up to be costumed Spider-Women, but for now, they are mere teens, each one looking for a mother figure in their lives.
All four of the main characters, we learn, have been orphaned or abandoned or are merely neglected by their parents. When they go on the lam, fleeing from Ezekiel, they bond over their mutual love of Britney Spears and Cassandra’s ability to teach them CPR. They converse and share their past traumas. They become three found sisters, cared for by their new reluctant mother. They become a sorority. Ezekiel is a bitter, lonely man. The four Spider-Women are a sisterhood who are stronger together.
One can almost sense that Ezekiel resents the growing power of the Spider-Women. His goal is to murder Julia, Mattie, and Anya before they can take their rightful place in the superhero canon. It’s easy to draw a parallel between Ezekiel’s goal and some of the whiny online discourse to grow out of the darker corners of comic book fandom. One needn’t look too hard on YouTube to find crybaby male critics bleating incoherently about the injustice born by the mere presence of women in comic book movies. Reject women, they whine, before they can rise to power.