i’ve been thinking about hobie spiderverse since i came out of the movie theater, about how on a superficial level he acts like every other stereotypically alt character, stealing and instigating and bantering and being chaotic and rebellious and looking Cool™ but on a second look it’s so so clear that every single thing he does is motivated by kindness and compassion towards his friends in general and miles in particular, and that’s so viscerally truly punk of him
the already famous palm suggestion that makes miles break out of miguel’s containment thing. miles initially reads this as condescending but hobie’s genuinely trying to help
already he’s looking out for miles by trying to keep him away from hq, a place where he knows miles isn’t welcome and might be in danger
now, they get to hq and he immediately starts lifting stuff to homebrew a watch for miles, a guy he’s known for five minutes (bc you can’t convince me he didn’t already have a bunch prepped for gwen and the other spider-people he trusts). he even lampshades it with the line above.
he’s questioned miles’ motives to join the spider society and he knows they’re the same as his own: it’s literally just to get a watch, to have a means to travel dimentions, to see his friends, to build community. he’s already made the decision to grant that ability to miles without subjugating him to the oppressive restrictions and requirements of the spider society. at this point we know he’s strongly ideologically opposed to the society and he later in this scene admits he’s only there to look out for gwen, just like miles
this one makes me insane. it’s a “are you safe at home in your dimension? do you have one? do you need a place to stay?” bc we know he’s given one to gwen, who’s not safe and does not have nice parents and has been crashing in hobie’s dimension for the previous months
and then he tries again to warn miles off the spider society
and when push comes to shove and all the other spider-people are set on stopping miles from going home and changing his timeline he’s the only one in miles’ corner
btw notice how the palms thing is the first and last thing he says to miles in this film?
anyway. he was in this movie for like 15 minutes tops, showed up exclusively to hype up his friends and protect them by whatever means necessary, adoption papers and illegal interdimensional tech included, and he looked that cool the whole time while doing it. most character ever.
I also want to note that the exact moment that Hobie went from “Oh sure I’ll help this guy” to “This is someone that I will finally blow this place up for” is when Miles saves the police commissioner and disrupts a canon event. Miles doesn’t know what will happen, but he DOES know that someone he trusts (Gwen) tried to stop him from saving someone, and rather than listening, his immediate reaction was “No, someone needs saving, I’m going to save them, I don’t care what it costs me.”
After that, Hobie goes from just friendly banter and helpfulness to being on Miles like glue and hyping him up at every possible moment.
He saw Miles in action for a whole five minutes, and immediately goes “This is what it’s about. THIS kid understands what it means to be a hero fighting an oppressive system. He IS willing to make sacrifices, but refuses to sit back and be told he HAS to make sacrifices. THIS is what Spider-man should be.”
Hobie has a line about the Quantum Mold, saying “It’s a metaphor for capitalism” that is clearly meant to be a joke. But, as you pointed out, all his stuff that is ‘meant to be a joke’ is still actually genuinely sincere. And he is RIGHT, actually. It kinda IS a metaphor for capitalism. The Spider Society has basically gone “These are people that have to die for the greater good. In order to keep the system working. If we don’t stand back and just let them die, the whole system falls apart.” and when that happens, it takes the form of the Quantum Mold. That uh…. that very much IS (or at least can be read quite easily as) a metaphor for Capitalism.
I have no doubt that Hobie is sitting there thinking “If we can contain this stuff, why are we still just letting people die?”, and he sees in Miles someone asking the same question, and willing to fuck around and find out because saving the life of even a single person is far more important than maintaining a system that allows them to die.
