Into the Spider-Verse's Alternate Ending Revealed Through Leaked Story Boards

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse recently had some of its roughest, barely readable story boards surface online, and they reveal just how much the filmmakers reworked the movie's final act before it hit theaters. This matters for fans because it shows how close the movie came to having a very different ending, and it gives us a reason to go back and rewatch one of the most acclaimed animated films of the last decade with fresh eyes.

According to a tweet from filmmaker Phil Lord, the team did a big shake up of the story less than a year before release, with changes made after the first teaser dropped and then another round as late as July 2018, after the main trailer had already come out. That means the crew was still tinkering with the finale deep into production.

Decoding the Into the Spider-Verse Story Boards

On these dry erase boards, the red writing represents changes to the final act. The shorthand used throughout refers to specific characters: J or Jeff is Jefferson, Miles' father, Doc refers to Doc Ock, and Olivia or the escapee refers to Kingpin. The numbers are sequence numbers, which is how animated films typically organize and track their story beats.

The board covers the third act, when the Spider Team tries to stop Kingpin's Collider from throwing the Spider-Verse into chaos and to send everyone back to their home dimensions. Lord described these boards as representing a triage situation, sorting out what moments of the finale to keep, what to cut, what to rework, and what order everything should come in. Visible notes include lines like "it's going to be great for KP," "his family is arriving," "reveal spiders," and Peter's line "sorry kingpin the party's over," alongside beats like Doc attacking Peter, Miles saving Gwen, unmasking, and Miles eventually facing Kingpin alone.

The Real Emotional Core Shifted From Miles and Gwen to Miles and Peter

One of the biggest triage points in these notes was figuring out which relationship in the film deserved the most weight. An earlier pitch had Miles performing a romantic rescue and unmasking reveal for Gwen, saving her from something quirky in a cute, drawn out way. In the final cut, Miles still saves Gwen, but it happens much faster and becomes part of a larger group beat rather than its own romantic moment, making their goodbye far more platonic and, in my view, far more cathartic for the two friends.

The boards show the filmmakers landing on the idea that Miles' relationship with Peter B. Parker is the far more important journey for his arc. The two get their own separate debate where they essentially save each other and decide to let each other go, so Peter can return home and make things work with MJ. That decision is punctuated with a callback to Peter's earlier move against Miles in act one, sweeping the leg and grabbing the shirt, only now used in reverse.

Every Character Gets a Callback in the Finale, According to Editor Andy Leviton

Associate editor Andy Leviton shared a later reworking of the final act that helped piece the sequence together, and it shows how deliberate the callback structure is. Notes include Spider-Man Noir using his hat instead of a gun to defeat Tombstone, and joke pitch lines for Noir like "some pig" or "that'll do Pig," playing on whether the reference should be to Charlotte's Web or Babe.

The larger point is that the whole finale is built as a series of callbacks. The lessons Miles learns from his mentor figures, both Peter and Miles himself, come together in the action, with Peter reusing the same kind of movement he showed off in act one, and Miles paying tribute to Uncle Aaron with the shoulder pat and zap.

The Hardest Change to Decode Was the Order of the Final Battle

The trickiest thing to work out on these boards is how the filmmakers reordered the finale's beats. A basic screenwriting principle is that opposing forces should be defeated in ascending order of threat level, ideally in the reverse order they were introduced. On the boards, Kingpin's plan to bring back his wife and son initially seems to be working before it falls apart, which is what kicks off the whole battle.

In the final cut, though, Kingpin's participation in the battle is pushed to the very end. Rather than having Vanessa within arm's reach at the top of the fight, she's brought in later as a final distraction meant to push Kingpin to a breaking point during his confrontation with Miles. That reordering gives the defeat sequence a clear escalation, moving from Tombstone to Scorpion to Doc, and finally to Kingpin, in reverse order of how threatening each villain actually is. Kingpin's threat in that final fight becomes explicit and personal, aimed directly at Miles' family, warning him he'll make sure Miles never sees his own family again.

Miles' Father Was Always Meant to Be the Final Opposing Force

That escalation leads to the one opposing force the film saves for the very end, Miles' own father. The editor's reworked notes include a beat described as "Miles saves Jeff," with Jeff looking up at Miles like Batman. That refers to a deleted scene, viewable in the alternate universe mode on the Blu-ray, where Miles actually saves his dad and then jokingly whooshes upward out of frame.

Instead of keeping that earlier, jokier version, the final cut gives Miles' reunion with Jefferson a much simpler and more heartfelt treatment, built around a concerned phone call, a hug, and an "I love you" that circles back to and resolves the dilemma Miles is wrestling with from the film's opening sequence.

Every one of these boards makes clear that the finale's power comes from constant revision, not a single lucky draft. The filmmakers kept reshaping which relationship mattered most, how each character's callback should land, and in what order the villains needed to fall, all the way up until the film was locked.

Which version of Miles' reunion with his dad do you prefer, the deleted rescue scene or the phone call and hug that made the final cut?