Madame WebSave

The Peruvian Amazon, 1973. A research expedition deep in the rainforest near the headwaters of the Marañón River. Dr. Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé, in voice and brief appearance), a heavily pregnant arachnologist, has spent six years studying a rare Peruvian spider species — Spinnerus peruvianus — whose venom contains an unusual neurochemical that the indigenous Las Arañas people use in their traditional healing ceremonies. Constance has been working with one of the surviving Las Arañas elders to document the spider's medicinal properties for Western science. She is on the verge of capturing a live specimen. Her research partner Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) — a wealthy industrialist who has been funding the expedition — has been quietly planning to take the spider himself.

In the rainforest clearing, Constance finally finds the spider she's been hunting for years — a large pale-fawn arachnid resting in the canopy. As she carefully extracts the live specimen for her research, Ezekiel pulls a sidearm and shoots her twice. Constance dies in the rainforest, her unborn child's heartbeat still detectable through her wound. The Las Arañas — a small group of indigenous warriors who have been protecting the spider — emerge from the surrounding foliage. They cannot save Constance's life but they can save her unborn daughter. Using the spider's neurochemical venom as an emergency obstetric intervention, the Las Arañas extract the infant from Constance's body. The baby — Cassandra 'Cassie' Webb — is taken back to civilization via a missionary boat. Ezekiel disappears into the rainforest with the live spider.

Cut to: 2003. New York City. Cassandra 'Cassie' Webb (Dakota Johnson), now thirty, is working as a paramedic for the NYC Fire Department. She lives a quiet, deliberately isolated life — no romantic relationships, no close friendships beyond her shift partner Ben Parker (Adam Scott, in a pre-Spider-Man-uncle role). Cassie has been moving through her adult life with a vague sense that something is wrong but no clear understanding of what. She has been having strange, brief flashes of déjà vu — moments where she briefly seems to remember things that haven't happened yet. She has been dismissing the experiences as fatigue from her demanding shift schedule.

A near-death experience on the job. Cassie and Ben are responding to a Queensboro Bridge accident — a multi-car pileup with several seriously injured drivers. While treating a wounded driver, Cassie is thrown off the bridge into the East River when a secondary collision sends her ambulance careening. Underwater, drowning, she experiences what feels like minutes of vivid visions — visions of her own death, the deaths of three teenage women she has never met, a mysterious black-and-purple-suited assailant, and the deep Peruvian rainforest. Ben pulls her from the river and revives her on the bridge deck. Cassie is fundamentally changed by the experience. The visions don't stop. She can now see fragments of the immediate future — sometimes hours ahead, sometimes minutes — and they always involve specific people whose deaths she might be able to prevent.

Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim) — now in his mid-fifties, having spent thirty years building a corporate empire on the spider's venom and using its abilities for industrial advantage — has been experiencing his own prophetic visions for decades. His visions are of his own death. Specifically: in 2024, he will be killed by three Spider-Women — Julia Cornwall (Sydney Sweeney), Anya Corazon (Isabela Merced), and Mattie Franklin (Celeste O'Connor). All three are teenagers in 2003. None of them have yet developed their powers. Ezekiel intends to find and kill them before their powers manifest. He has been hunting them for years using a network of corporate intelligence assets. His latest information: all three girls happen to be currently in New York City for unrelated reasons. He begins his hunt.

Cassie's visions converge on the three teenagers. She sees flashes of them — Julia at a Manhattan diner waiting for a callback from a college audition, Anya commuting on the subway with her police-officer father, Mattie practicing dance moves in a Brooklyn studio. Cassie understands instinctively that something terrible is about to happen to all three. She tracks them down one by one. Her arrival at each location is preceded by Ezekiel's mercenaries by a matter of minutes. The film's middle act consists of Cassie pulling each of the three teenagers out of an attempted assassination — first Julia at the diner, then Anya at the subway, then Mattie at the dance studio. The three girls do not know each other. Cassie tells them only that they're being hunted. She does not yet explain why.

The four of them flee to a series of safe houses across the city — a bus terminal, a small motel in Queens, a closed Brooklyn diner. Cassie's prophetic abilities continue to develop. She can now see multiple alternate futures branching from each decision; she can briefly experience the consequences of choices before she makes them. She uses these abilities to stay one step ahead of Ezekiel's hunt. Ezekiel, meanwhile, has been getting more violent. He has killed three of Cassie's NYC Fire Department coworkers in his pursuit. He has bombed a residential building in Brooklyn looking for Anya. The civilian casualties accumulate. Cassie realizes that simply running from Ezekiel will eventually get them all killed — she will have to confront him directly.

A pivotal flashback. Cassie, looking through her late mother's research papers (kept by an old colleague of Constance's who survived the Peru expedition), discovers the truth about her own origins. Her mother was killed by Ezekiel. Her birth was facilitated by the Las Arañas using the spider's venom — the same venom that gives Ezekiel his powers. Cassie's prophetic abilities, in other words, are also a side-effect of the spider venom — she was born with them dormant in her bloodstream, activated by her near-death experience on the bridge. She is, technically, a kind of Las Arañas warrior herself. The realization gives her the psychological grounding to confront Ezekiel. She is the daughter of the woman he killed; her abilities exist because of his actions.

The film's climax is set at a Fourth of July fireworks celebration on a New York pier. Ezekiel has cornered Cassie and the three teenagers in a half-finished construction site at the pier's edge. He has been increasing his physical aggression throughout the third act — the spider venom that has been keeping him alive for thirty years has been accelerating his cellular metabolism. He is now physically faster and stronger than at any point in his life. The teenagers — Julia, Anya, and Mattie — have not yet developed their canonical Spider-Women powers; their abilities will only manifest years later in the alternate-future-2024 timeline Ezekiel has been trying to prevent. The teenagers are functionally civilians in this confrontation. Cassie has to be the one who fights.

Cassie's prophetic abilities reach their peak during the final battle. She experiences the next ten minutes from multiple alternate-timeline perspectives simultaneously — she can see every possible action Ezekiel might take and every possible counter-move. She uses these visions strategically: she maneuvers Ezekiel into a construction-scaffolding tower, manipulates the structure's load-bearing beams, and times her own evasion with mathematical precision. When the fireworks display peaks in the harbor, Cassie triggers the scaffold's collapse. Ezekiel falls fifteen stories onto an exposed rebar grid. The fall is fatal. He dies before the police arrive. Cassie, in the explosion's shockwave, is permanently blinded — her ocular nerves having been overloaded by the simultaneous-future-visions during the battle.

The film's epilogue. Six months later, Cassie has been recovering in a Manhattan apartment with the three teenagers regularly visiting her. The girls — Julia, Anya, and Mattie — have grown to consider Cassie a kind of guardian-mentor figure. Cassie, now permanently blind but with her prophetic abilities significantly more refined, has begun coaching them through their dawning superhuman potential. The film's final scene shows the three teenagers leaving Cassie's apartment together, having promised to return next week. Cassie sits alone in her apartment, hands extended toward the kitchen window, sensing the future flow of events through her now-permanent precognitive awareness. The film closes with a brief flash-forward visualization of the three girls — years older, in costume as Spider-Women, fighting alongside each other. The visualization is brief and dreamlike.

Commercial and critical aftermath. Madame Web grossed approximately $100 million globally on an $80 million production budget — modestly profitable on direct box-office economics but well below industry expectations for a major studio superhero release. The film's critical reception was overwhelmingly negative: Rotten Tomatoes 11% (one of the lowest scores ever received by a major-studio superhero film) and a B-minus CinemaScore. The film was widely criticized for its tonal inconsistency, awkward dialogue, and Dakota Johnson's reportedly disengaged lead performance. Madame Web — alongside Kraven the Hunter (2024) — has been widely cited as the major contributor to Sony's announced strategic halt of the Sony Spider-Man Universe expansion in February 2026.