You said it! There were a lot of hard feelings at first while they worked through their shock around the whole thing. There was even a huge argument about the mechanical properties of spider silk and the weight of giant spiders, with a couple of the more technically inclined players saying they should've been able to tell there were giant spiders present by the size of the webs (an argument I eventually won). All in all, I think most of it was simply spawned by the bitter pill of character death they had to swallow, but there was some small part of the group that clung to the idea that they had really done nothing wrong. I'd like to think that's changed, but I'm not so sure...and we're twice as many sessions as this into the campaign, so...perhaps it never will.
One thing this session did change was contribution to Reserve XP, something no one had done up to this point. There was another HUGE backlash over that, but I was able to point to a couple recent Forum threads on our Obsidian Portal site posted a while before this session where I had explained XP, and Reserve XP in particular, so the players didn't have a leg to stand on with that argument. They've certainly found religion there, let me tell you!
Interestingly, Vandelay's player took the hit of Character loss with the most equanimity, and he had been a 1st Level Spellsword with enough XP in the bag to hit 2nd Level. Glutton for punishment that he is, he decided to play another Elven Spellsword, Vandelay's younger brother, Andelay, as his next character. That player is probably the most old-school of the group, even though his preferred edition is 5e, and you can see it in both his playstyle, and his reaction to things.