Nicolas Cage had already played a Spider-Man who sounded like he’d walked out of an old detective movie in the genre-defining Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Giving that idea eight hours of live action was a different proposition. In Spider-Noir, Cage plays Ben Reilly as a down-on-his-luck private investigator in Depression-era New York, with a past he’d rather leave alone. Prime Video even let viewers choose between color and black-and-white versions. The actor had plenty of room to see how far he could take the performance, and it turns out eight episodes was exactly as far as he wanted to go.
Cage told IGN in a recent interview that he was relieved Prime Video passed on Spider-Noir Season 2 because he worried that repeating his performance as Ben Reilly would wear out its welcome. He described the role as “pretty high-risk, tightrope stuff” and said the choices he made could lose their appeal over a second or third season. His reaction to the cancellation was simple: “Whew, thank you!”
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)
01
What is your first instinct when something goes wrong? Go with the honest answer rather than the heroic one.
02
How do you handle being the centre of attention? Every hero on this list answers this differently.
03
What do your friends rely on you for? They would all name the same thing about you.
04
How do you deal with stress? Nobody picks the healthy one, and that is fine.
05
What is your actual flaw? The useful thing here is picking the true one.
06
What kind of help do you actually give people? Everybody has one default, whatever the situation is.
07
How do you want strangers to see you? Answer for the first ten minutes, not the first year.
08
What would you want a superpower for? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your 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.
Hulk · Marvel Studios · Since 2008
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-Man · Marvel Studios · Since 2016
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.
The Fantastic Four · Marvel Studios · 2025
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.
Scarlet Witch · Marvel Studios · Since 2015
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.
Nicolas Cage Wants His Next TV Role To Last One Season, Too
Cage brought up True Detective in the same answer. He’s set to star alongside Antonio Banderas in the HBO anthology’s fifth season, where a single season is the deal going in. That gives him another detective to play and a defined stretch of time to figure out how he wants to play him. It also gives some context to what he meant by calling Spider-Noir a “perfect season.”He got to make the version of Ben Reilly he wanted to make, and he likes where he left him.
Cage has separately said he refused to sign an AI waiver for Spider-Noir and doubts he’ll work with Amazon again. In the IGN interview, his explanation for welcoming the end was about the performance itself. Plus, there’s something fitting about Cage getting a whole season to play a man who’s reluctant to put the suit back on and then deciding he’s happy to leave it hanging.
Season 1, which will be the only season Prime Video releases of Spider-Noir, is available to stream.
