Leak: Across the Spider-Verse has a long middle act set in “Mumbattan,” an alt universe with a mashup Mumbai / Manhattan: Indian peeps, Mughal arches on the Brooklyn Bridge, a train to Bronxnagar, billboards for Zomato, the Indian Yelp.

Scene opening has Miles Morales falling over Manhattan at high altitude. They missed a step not glitching between that and Bombay, which has a similar peninsula layout.

Morales and Gwen Stacy are hosted by Pavitr Prabhakar, the Indian Spidey with great hair (just coconut oil and good genes, he assures them) who finds the hero biz easy.

He balances atop a pillar mallakhamb-style, hangs upside-down with legs crossed, shoots webs with a yo-yo-like weapon. Has an ok Indian accent, voiced by Karan Soni, dorky as usual. The voice doesn’t match the cool character.

Mumbattan starts with a spray of desi-Am jokes: “chai tea” means “tea tea,” I’m not your Eat Pray Love, next you’re going to tell me saffron is so exotic, etc. Definitely desi writers, or Soni riffing.

The Mumbattan multiverse version of Morales’ cop dad is Prabhakar’s girlfriend Gayatri’s turbaned, cop dad Mr. Singh. Pavitr goes from keeping his gf on the down low to her dad congratulating him on his heroics :)

Prabhakar swoops past a vada pav cart and grabs one from someone’s hand like a super-seagull. It’s a good gag.

Eventually all the fun loops back into the main plot: stopping Portal Man from getting to the Mumbattan supercollider. But it’s quite a long, fun part of the flick 🙌🏽