Spider-Man Has a Connection to 'The Darkhold' — Here's How

Spoiler alert: This article contains SPOILERS for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Thanks to the Doctor Strange film Multiverse of Madness, we have seen the MCU take on a whole different direction from the days when Chris Evans was Captain America.

Not only are we figuring out how deeply Wanda Maximoff was hurt by not having her family with Vision, but we see what lengths she's willing to go to get what she wants.

In Multiverse of Madness, we see Wanda using an evil-looking book called The Darkhold, aka The Book of the Damned, to travel between universes to be with her sons.

Although this is the first time we are seeing the book in the MCU, it does appear a few times in the comics. There's actually a deep connection to Spider-Man that moviegoers may not expect.

According to Multiverse of Madness, The Darkhold was created by an Elder God named Chthon who wrote down all of his evil spells on parchment that could never be destroyed. This is what created The Book of the Damned.

In the Doctor Strange movie, we see that no one should read from it because it begins to have an effect on the reader and makes them evil over time. In the film, we see it happen to both Doctor Strange and Wanda.

As for how The Darkhold connects to Spider-Man? In September 2021, Marvel came out with the Darkhold series of comics called The Darkhold Alpha. Here, some of our favorite heroes are brought over to the dark side through the book — and one of those heroes is Spidey.

These comics are currently available in digital and print forms.

Unfortunately, Spider-Man isn't the only one who gets influenced by The Darkhold. Others who got caught under its influence were Black Bolt and Iron Man, and it's all thanks to Wanda herself.

According to the comic series' description, after Doctor Strange gets The Book of the Damned, Chthon finds him. In order to keep everyone safe, Wanda brings together "the world's greatest heroes" and exposes them to the powers of The Darkhold.

Plus, per Games Radar, a personal enemy of Spider-Man's has been exposed to The Darkhold: Carnage, the main villain of the movie Venom: Let There Be Carnage, has also used the book.

Fortunately, at least for the characters in the MCU, The Darkhold is no longer. At the end of Multiverse of Madness, Wanda destroys every copy of it in every universe so that no one can use it for evil purposes again.

However, before the end of that movie, Wanda wasn't the only one to use The Darkhold.

Even though he was warned against it and said he wouldn't use it at first, Doctor Strange ultimately used the book to save America Chavez and convince Wanda to end the terror she was causing across universes.

You can catch Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is in theaters now.