James Oconner 
Anil Krishna 
Jonathan Millar 
Spider-Man: Amazon Is Developing a New Series Based on the Wild Clone Saga
© Marvel
The Spider-Man universe may be getting another TV series, and this time Amazon and Sony are digging into a part of Peter Parker’s history that is still capable of starting arguments among Marvel fans decades later. A new show is reportedly in development based on the infamous Clone Saga, one of the most complicated storylines in Spider-Man comics and, depending on who you ask, either a fascinating experiment or an absolute publishing nightmare.
The project is still in the early stages, so there aren’t many story details yet. A writer is already attached, though, which suggests things are moving beyond the very early idea stage. And considering just how much material the Clone Saga contains, there’s a lot here that could be changed for television.
Amazon Is Taking on the Clone Saga
According to Deadline, Amazon is nearing a series order for the new Spider-Man show, with Kelvin Yu reportedly handling the writing. Yu has plenty of television experience, having worked on Bob’s Burgers and served as a writer and producer on American Born Chinese. The bigger question, obviously, is what exactly Amazon and Sony plan to do with the source material.
The answer is the Clone Saga. If you’re familiar with the Spider-Man comics from the 1990s, you probably already know why that news is interesting. The story revolves around Peter Parker discovering that a clone of himself exists, but things get considerably messier from there. Ben Reilly and Kaine Parker eventually become central figures, and the story spends a lot of time playing with questions about who the “real” Peter Parker actually is.
For now, it’s unclear how closely the series will stick to the comics. There have been suggestions that the show could use the basic idea of characters discovering their true origins while taking the story in a completely different direction. That might actually make sense. Trying to reproduce the entire 1990s Clone Saga on television would be… a lot.
What Exactly Was the Clone Saga?
The roots of the Clone Saga go back much further than the 1990s. In The Amazing Spider-Man #149, published in 1975, Professor Miles Warren, better known as the Jackal, creates a clone of Peter Parker. Spider-Man is suddenly confronted with someone who looks exactly like him, and the story initially appears to wrap things up without much fuss.
Marvel, however, wasn’t done with the idea.
Nearly two decades later, the Clone Saga returned in a much bigger way, running through the comics between 1994 and 1996. This time, the story didn’t just involve Peter discovering that he had a clone. It started messing with the very idea of who Peter Parker was. The clone eventually returned under the name Ben Reilly, while another of the Jackal’s creations, Kaine, entered the picture as well.
And that’s where things got particularly complicated. Ben eventually became the Scarlet Spider and developed an identity of his own, while Kaine took a much darker route. Over time, he moved from being an enemy of Spider-Man toward something closer to an anti-hero, giving both characters lives and personalities that went beyond simply being “Peter Parker’s clones.”
Could the Amazon Series Change the Story Completely?
That’s probably the most interesting part of this news right now. The Clone Saga is so huge and tangled that a straight adaptation would be difficult, to put it mildly. A television series could take the central idea—Peter Parker discovers there are other versions of himself—and build something much cleaner around it.
Ben Reilly and Kaine also give the show a chance to explore characters who have never really received the same mainstream attention as Peter. Whether the series makes Ben the Scarlet Spider from the beginning, reworks Kaine’s origin, or simply borrows pieces of their comic-book histories remains unclear.
The new project also fits with Sony and Amazon’s continued interest in expanding the Spider-Man corner of Marvel beyond the movies. There have been reports of several Spider-Man-related series in development, although that doesn’t necessarily mean every project will actually make it to the screen. For now, the Clone Saga show is still just taking shape, but even the idea of Amazon tackling this particular piece of Spider-Man history is enough to make things interesting.
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