Spider-Man Remastered: Doctor Octopus's Plan to Expose Norman Osborn Comes Together While Miles Morales Proves He's Already a Hero

Part eight of our run through Spider-Man Remastered's story turned out to be one of the most eventful stretches yet, moving from a burning building rescue at the start straight into a full villain roster reveal, a hallucinogenic fight with Scorpion, and a quiet moment that showed Miles Morales is already a hero before he ever puts on a costume. Our overall reaction is that everything is building toward what should be an exciting ending, even if a couple of the fights along the way felt easier than expected.

Doctor Octopus Reveals He Wants to Take Down Norman Osborn's Empire

The biggest reveal came when Peter tracked devil's breath residue to a staging room and found a recording of Otto Octavius talking with Martin Li. Octavius said watching Li target Osborn left him "inspired," and he laid out his real goal, saying "if only they could be made to see the Norman I know," the man he believes hides selfishness and cruelty behind a smiling public face. Rather than attacking Osborn directly, his plan is to dismantle Oscorp's empire piece by piece.

To do that, Octavius recruited a whole team. Scorpion gets his gambling debts erased and his criminal record expunged in exchange for hitting the city reservoir. Vulture, whose own wing technology gave him spinal cancer, is promised an experimental cure. Electro is offered help getting closer to his dream of becoming pure energy. Rhino is sent after Oscorp's shoreline properties. We reacted to how calculated it was, saying "way to get everyone on side," since Octavius is offering each villain exactly what they need most.

We were also caught off guard by the twist involving the supposed "Icarus" device, which turned out to be a total ruse with nothing behind it, meant only to lure Peter away so Li could secure the antiserum without interference.

Miles Morales Proves He's Already a Hero Without a Mask

While Peter and MJ split up to chase leads, Miles was sent to pick up medical supplies and ended up dodging a sniper, sneaking past armed men, and standing up to a group of guards to protect antibiotics for the relief center. At fifteen, with no weapon and no costume yet, he still refused to back down. We called it a defining moment for his character, saying "he's so heroic," and noting that this instinct to help clearly exists in him before he ever becomes Spider-Man.

A Hallucinogenic Neurotoxin Makes Scorpion the Toughest Fight So Far

Most of the other villain takedowns felt fairly easy to us, but the Scorpion fight stood apart. After injecting Peter with a hallucinogenic neurotoxin, Scorpion had every opportunity to finish him off while Peter scrambled across the city to synthesize an antidote from a natural steroid extract. We appreciated that the story addressed the obvious plot hole directly, giving a reason Scorpion did not simply take the kill while Peter was at his most vulnerable. The extended hallucination sequence, including repeated visions of Octavius talking through the parts of himself he normally suppresses, was the most intense stretch of the whole episode for us.

Is There Still Good Left in Otto Octavius?

Afterward we debated whether Octavius was always capable of this. As we put it, "he was so sweet he was like super caring he was just trying to help people and then that thing just switched up his brain," so we reasoned his brain was altered rather than some hidden self being revealed. At the same time, we suspect real resentment toward Osborn was already there, since he probably would have acted on it sooner otherwise, and the neural interface simply unlocked it. We agreed "there must still be a part of him in there somewhere where Doc is still nice," and wondered if seeing Peter rather than Spider-Man might reach him, though that would mean Peter revealing his identity. We also guessed Norman Osborn will likely avoid being publicly exposed by the end, predicting the fallout gets "swept under the rug" the way it might for a politician.

Will Norman Osborn actually be exposed, or will he get away without being unmasked as we suspect?