Regardless of being an animated movie, Donald Glover seems (briefly) along with his bodily, three-dimensional physique in a scene-stealing cameo in Throughout the Universe. The second happens on the midpoint of the film after Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) has been taken by Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) to the Spider-HQ. In actuality, HQ is a veritable Citadel of Ricks which exists in a futuristic dimension dominated over by Spider-Man 2099, aka Miguel O’Hara (Oscar Isaac).
Even earlier than Glover exhibits up, it’s a Las Vegas-sized breakfast buffet of easter eggs, full with cameos from ‘90s comics’ greatest drama queen, Ben Reilly (Andy Samberg) and The Spectacular Spider-Man’s model of the character (voiced by Josh Keaton). Heck, they actually have a T-Rex. Nonetheless, the largest shock is that amongst Miguel’s jail of undesirables—“anomalies” who broke the taboo of traversing throughout the multiverse with out Spider-Man 2099’s permission—is well-liked actor and rapper Donald Glover, showing within the flesh and blood. And he’s not simply showing as any character; he’s particularly Aaron Davis, aka the Prowler.
This cameo makes for probably the most unlikely of payoffs to a Marvel Studios plot thread that was seeded means again in 2017 in the course of the MCU’s first solo Spidey movie, Spider-Man: Homecoming. In that film, Glover appeared as Uncle Aaron, the person who would grow to be the Prowler, though within the movie he was nonetheless only a small-time criminal making offers with the movie’s predominant villain, the Vulture (Michael Keaton). Glover’s Aaron even vaguely compliments Tom Holland’s Spidey for serving to clear up the neighborhood as a result of he’s received “a nephew” rising up round right here.
That cameo functioned on a number of ranges on the time. First, it was good for Glover to seem in a Spider-Man film since followers of him throughout his Group days campaigned for Glover to be forged as Peter Parker in The Superb Spider-Man (2012). Glover got here to embrace the assist however didn’t get the position. Nonetheless, he did get a style of on-line fanboy racism when some web dwellers insisted Spider-Man couldn’t be Black. The insidiousness of this argument disturbed not solely Glover, however Brian Michael Bendis who was subsequently impressed to invent Miles Morales within the pages of Final Spider-Man.
Glover’s look in Spider-Man: Homecoming was an acknowledgement of his distinctive historical past with the character, and a seeming suggestion that maybe Miles may someday exist contained in the MCU too.
But six years later, this has not come to go. Actually, Glover’s Uncle Aaron by no means confirmed up in one other MCU film, because the Prowler or in any other case. Nonetheless, many followers would possibly argue that the animated Spider-Verse movies starring Miles have turned out higher than the MCU live-action Spideys, in addition to another massive display variation. And in 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse, Mahershala Ali received to not less than voice Uncle Aaron as a totally realized Prowler.
