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Madame Web hits theaters soon, bringing with it a new Marvel tale that promises to expand the Spider-Man universe. This fourth film in Sony's Spider-Man spinoff universe follows Cassandra Webb as she battles Ezekiel Sims, a man who shares a past with her, as he sets out to kill her and three other young women as well.
What's so different about Madame Web's Ezekiel Sims is that the character here is presented as a villain, whereas in comics he is a gray character who is protective of Spider-people. He is meant to safeguard the spiderverse rather than harm those who are a part of it, even if his methods can be questionable sometimes.
Exploring Madame Web villain Ezekiel Sims' comic book origins
Ezekiel Sims was created by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr. and first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) #30 in April 2001. According to Fandom, in the comics, Ezekiel would go on to receive spider powers after taking part in a mysterious ritual, which would make him a Spider-Totem—beings who are connected to the Web of Life. This also made him a target of those who were higher up in the Totem hierarchy and put him in direct sight of the supervillain known as Morlun.
Learning of the information, Sims would take it upon himself to protect all the future generations of the Spider-Totem hierarchy and build bunkers that would block out anyone from finding those who were connected to the Totems. He also later founded the WebCorps and was a part of the Spider Society as well.
When Cindy Moon, aka Silk, was bitten by a radioactive spider too, Sims trained her to use her powers and became her mentor. However, when he learned that Morlun was after her, he decided to lock her in a special room that wouldn't let the supervillain find her. This also made Moon hate Sim for locking her away.
Sims also kept tabs on Peter Parker and his development as Spider-Man. He confronted the hero later on and warned him about Morlun as well. Sims possesses the same powers as Spider-Man, and at many times he has tried to be on the right side of history. However, it looks like the Madame Web version will be quite different.
Tahar Rahim plays Ezekiel Sims in Madame Web
Madame Web's version of Ezekiel Sims will be played by Tahar Rahim and will follow the character as he tries to kill Cassandra Webb and Sydney Sweeney’s Julia Carpenter, Celeste O’Connor’s Mattie Franklin, and Isabel Merced’s Anya Corazon, women who all have attachments to the Spider-Verse—an opposite take from how he is presented in the comics.
While Sims would do his best to protect Spider-Totems, here he is actively seeking them out to kill them. It looks like for the film, Ezekiel Sims will be a cross between his character from the comics and the totem killer Morlun, who hunts down people with spider powers.
Previous rumors of Madame Web have hinted at how the plot of the film will follow Ezekiel as he tries to stop Peter Parker from ever being born, which makes Cassandra form a team to put a stop to him. However, we will only know if this is true or not once the film is released.
You can check out Madame Web when it hits theaters on February 14, 2024.
