Originally Posted by
bob.schoonover
Thanks, that's what I was thinking of.
Look, I don't think it'll be the end of the world if the reason doesn't make LOTS of sense, but it should make some - if Spencer's run is going to live or die on the last double arc sticking the landing, the plot should be somewhat sensical. If the whole point was just to undo Sins Past, I could do that without 70+ issues of lead up (I know his run has done other things and I've broadly enjoyed it, so this isn't a hater take, but Kindred needs to have done *something*).
To be more explicit, if Spencer is going to retcon Sins Past into a ruse to torment Peter rather than a straightforward story, let's examine the elements.
Peter being the target of the ruse makes sense for either Norman or Harry, although it's an entirely different kind of gross for each of them. However, since they've both done some pretty awful things in the past, I think we can gloss over that without too much reflection.
Sarah and Gabriel are the most important part of the ruse, in that they have to be convincing to any reasonable level of interrogation Pete has at his disposal (at a time when he was on the Avengers!!), so clone, LMD, or Chameleon, but we need to remember Miles Warren would need to be part of a cloning plot and there's no reason for him to go in on this (especially if the plot is run by Norman). LMD or whatever we're calling Peter's parents is either the most epic callback of all time or lazy writing, so let's go with Chameleons. That part is easy enough as that plot element was just introduced, but also has other complications.
MJ claims to have known about the affair. We have evidence of Mysterio implanting memories in her, so let's stick with that.
Now, we get to the real problem: who is the Mastermind of this plot? If it's Norman, then we have (a) both Norman and Harry using Mysterio to mess with memories in MJ and (b) both Norman and Harry using Chameleon as the provider of fake family members (Sins Past, Peter's parents), presumably without Norman knowing that he's copying Harry's schemes*. That's again a high level of family unoriginality. And while I can obviously buy that Norman would do this to Peter, it's kind of tricky timing in that he couldn't have started this scheme while MJ and Peter were separated, nor would he have started it when he was trying to recruit Peter to be his heir, so there's a very tight window for doing something undeniable complicated to be just super petty.
If the Mastermind of Sins Past is Harry/Kindred, the Mysterio and Chameleon coincidences fall by the wayside and most of the plot actually holds together much better. BND/Clone Harry (whoever) is still overseas in hiding, so he can neither confirm or deny anything he might know about Gwen's time in Europe. Kindred isn't involved in a ton of other plots at the time, and Mysterio reappears just after Sins Past so all that kind of hangs together. The catch here is that Norman has alluded to the events in the past, so it's necessary to explain how Norman came to have an implanted memory about his time with Gwen (and again, let's not spend too much time thinking about the fact that his son was the one who had it implanted).
*if we're taking it for granted that BND Harry is a clone or some such Norman created, Norman can't be aware of Kindred's machinations before at least Big Time started or a ton of BND stuff makes no sense - this argument can be rendered null if BND Harry is some sort of fetch Mephisto created, but that's also . . . problematic for other reasons.