Spider-Man: No Way Home

Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, [Brian Bendis, Sara Pichelli, J. Michael Straczynski,] Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, and Jon Watts, 2021

So the setup for this is that in the previous Spider-Man movie, Mysterio had revealed to the world that Spider-Man was actually a high school kid named Peter Parker. In the first act, Peter goes to Doctor Strange to see whether he can go back in time to undo this, or, failing that, whether he can make the world forget. This had some precedent in the comics: during the “Civil War” event of 2006, Tony Stark had convinced Peter to publicly unmask, which led to villains targeting Peter’s family; ultimately, Aunt May got shot. This led to the “One More Day” arc by J. Michael Straczynski, the author of what are widely considered some of the worst storylines in Spider-Man’s history, in which Peter went to Doctor Strange to beg him to undo the chain of events that led to this. Strange says that even a Sorcerer Supreme can’t thwart fate, and Peter ends up making a deal with Mephisto (i.e., the devil) to get Aunt May back and to make the public forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man so that his family won’t be targeted again. Mephisto’s price is “the one thing in the universe that is truly greater than the sum of its parts and tastier than any single soul I could devour. […] I want your marriage.” Like I discussed in my Hawkeye article, a lot of the top brass at Marvel thought that Spider-Man had been such a successful character because he was a geeky younger guy scrambling for the rent money and plagued by girl troubles, but after years of different writers putting him through the usual narrative progression for such a character, the company was now publishing stories about a successful adult with a supermodel for a wife. Cue the cries of “Back to basics!” While the Peter Parker of the mainstream Marvel Universe (Earth‑616) wouldn’t be set back to age fifteen like the Peter Parker of the “Ultimate Universe” (Earth‑1610), “One More Day” did reset him to an underemployed single guy⁠—not even a divorced guy, since his marriage was not simply ended but mystically erased. This got me wondering about the extent to which what I was about to see was also shaped by extradiegetic considerations. As Doctor Strange starts up his spell, it looks like we might be heading toward an ending in which Spider-Man, or at least the public’s awareness of him, is actually erased from the MCU, much as Thor was recently erased from the MU⁠—but why? Was the contract to bring Spider-Man into the MCU about to run out? Was actor Tom Holland moving on to other things? Since the MCU borrows a lot from the Ultimate line, were they bringing in Miles Morales? Anyway⁠—the spell goes haywire, Strange contains it, and we’re on to the second act…

…in which Peter’s attempt to talk to a college admissions officer is interrupted by an ominous rumbling sound⁠—and then, yikes! a metal tentacle! All right, let’s see the MCU version of Doctor Octopus! And it’s… Alfred Molina? The same guy who played Doc Ock in Spider‑Man 2 back in 2004? Okay, well, I guess they did bring back J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, so maybe they just thought they couldn’t improve on the casting? But this Doc Ock starts reciting lines from the 2004 movie that suggest he’d just now warped in from there. When he gets Peter’s mask off, he is taken aback: “You’re not Peter Parker!”⁠—suggesting that he was expecting Tobey Maguire. Now, the idea of a Doctor Octopus from an alternate timeline showing up in the MCU is not inherently shocking⁠—Loki and What If…? both suggested that as the MCU moved into the 2020s, the Multiverse was going to be a major focus. But this particular version was from a different studio. The two Amazing Spider-Man movies of the 2010s were explicitly a reboot, not a continuation, of the 2000s Spider-Man films, and this MCU Spider-Man series was a reboot of both. Worlds are colliding, Jerry! For the 2004 Doc Ock to show up in the MCU was like if The Dark Knight had begun with local gang leaders speaking in hushed whispers about the Joker and he strolls into their meeting and it’s Cesar Romero. And I finally had a firsthand sense of what a delightful shock it must have been for comics readers of the past who got to experience some of the landmarks in crossovers:

All Star Comics #3 (released 1940.1122). This issue introduced the Justice Society of America, which would be a big deal for launching the first inter-company superhero team, except it’s an even bigger deal for launching the first superhero team, period. Created by Gardner Fox and first published by All-American Publications, the Justice Society paired up All-American heroes the Atom, the Flash, Hawkman, and Green Lantern with four heroes from Detective Comics: the Sandman, the Spectre, Doctor Fate, and Hour-Man. These were characters who had been rolled out over the previous few months, and now they were revealed to all be living in the same reality.
Fantastic Four #4 (cover date 1962.05). The month before Fantastic Four #1 was published, Marvel released ten books, all of them written by Stan Lee: five monster books (all drawn by Jack Kirby), one western (also drawn by Jack Kirby), and four teen girl books. The company hadn’t done superheroes in years. But the success of the Justice Society update, Justice League of America, suggested that there might be a big audience for a revival of the genre, and the early returns for Fantastic Four bore that out. In issue #4, Johnny Storm, a.k.a. the F.F.’s Human Torch, is hiding out in a Bowery flophouse (long story) when he discovers some light reading material: “Say! Look at this old, beat-up comic mag! It’s from the 1940’s!!” It turns out to be about the Sub-Mariner, a character dating back to 1939, and some of the derelicts on the nearby cots tell Johnny that “we got a stumble-bum right here who’s as strong as that joker was supposed to be!” After the “old bum” effortlessly fends off an attack by five men, he sinks into a chair: “If only I could remember who I am!! What I am!! Why have I spent the long years here, in a fog, with my mind a blank??” Johnny then burns off his long beard to reveal the face of Namor, the Sub-Mariner himself, who had last appeared in Sub-Mariner #42, cover date 1955.10. Thus did Stan Lee reveal that all comics published not just by Marvel Comics, but by its predecessors Timely Comics and Atlas Comics, were fair game to be brought into the new Marvel Universe. He and the writers who followed, especially his protégé Roy Thomas, would proceed to weave everyone from Patsy Walker to the Rawhide Kid to Groot (“The Monster from Planet X!”) into the Marvel tapestry.
The Flash #123 (cover date 1961.09). The Silver Age of comics is widely considered to have started with Showcase #4 by National Comics, formed by the merger of the two companies who had contributed characters to the Justice Society. (In 1977, it would officially rebrand as DC Comics.) Showcase #4 introduced a new superhero to join National’s lineup, which had been pared down to Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman: a super-speedster in a red bodysuit, who called himself the Flash! Now, you might say, hang on⁠—the first item above indicates that the Flash was already a member of the Justice Society. But you see, that Flash was nothing more than a comic book character. National took a different tack from the one Marvel took in Fantastic Four #4, which indicated that in the Marvel Universe, Timely Comics was a non-fiction publisher, chronicling the adventures of the real Sub-Mariner. Rather, in Showcase #4, we meet police scientist Barry Allen as he “chuckles over an old magazine”: “What a character Flash was⁠—battling crime and injustice everywhere! And what a unique weapon he had against the arsenal of crime! Speed! Supersonic speed! Undreamed of speed! I wonder what it would be like⁠—to be the fastest man on Earth? Well, I’ll never know⁠—the Flash was just a character some writer dreamed up!” Two panels later, Allen is splashed by a shelf full of chemicals that had randomly been struck by a lightning bolt, and discovers that he has acquired the very same powers he had been musing about. “There must be some way I can use this unique speed to help humanity!” he thinks, before his gaze falls on the comic book. “Hmm⁠—this gives me an idea!”
But after writer Robert Kanigher had very clearly laid out that in Silver Age National Comics, those old Gardner Fox comics were fictional, Fox himself wound up writing the new Flash’s adventures, and in The Flash #123, he has Barry Allen discover that he has “vibrated so swiftly that I passed through some sort of space-warp!” and is now in a parallel world where those Golden Age comics had actually taken place. He knows, from having read those comics, that the Golden Age Flash’s civilian name is Jay Garrick, so he looks up Garrick in the phone book, finds his address, and knocks on his door. And there’s Jay Garrick standing before him, gray at the temples now. Allen explains that there are two universes, occupying the same space and time, but which “vibrate differently⁠—which keeps them apart!” Furthermore, “you were once well-known in my world⁠—as a fictional character appearing in a magazine called Flash Comics! When I was a youngster⁠—you were my favorite hero! A writer named Gardner Fox wrote about your adventures⁠—which he claimed came to him in dreams! Obviously, when Fox was asleep, his mind was ‘tuned in’ on your vibratory Earth! That explains how he ‘dreamed up’ the Flash! The magazine was discontinued in 1949!” Garrick replies, “Amazing! That’s the very year I⁠—the Flash⁠—retired!” Thus did Fox come up with a different relationship between the Golden and Silver Ages of what would become DC from the one used at Marvel: the Silver Age took place on Earth‑1, the Golden Age had taken place on Earth‑2, and from time to time, characters could travel back and forth and hang out with their counterparts.

Marvel ended up launching its own system of numbered universes, as I detailed here, but there’s a difference between the sort of thing the What If…? series was doing, whipping up parallel worlds specifically for the purpose of adding to the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse, and what Spider-Man: No Way Home does, roping in pre-existing material that I’d assumed must be out of bounds. I was surprised enough to see Charlie Cox appear as Matt Murdock, since prior to the Hawkeye series I had seen no references to the five Netflix MCU shows in the movies or on other MCU TV shows, and I’d gathered that they had been rendered non-canonical just like the Helstrom show. But again, the Sony Spider-Man films were movies whose continuity the MCU had replaced. And I suppose something similar was true of Earth‑2 as well, but there are those extradiegetic considerations again. National Comics had the rights to the Jay Garrick stories; all Gardner Fox had to do was get permission from the higher-ups at one company in order to cast the Golden Age material as a different plane of reality in what would become the DC Multiverse. But what we see in this movie had to be the result of negotiations between the MCU stakeholders and a rival outfit whose Spider-Man films had been competing against the MCU just seven years earlier. The non-MCU The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was in theaters at the same time as the MCU Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And the filmmakers are very clever in the way they deploy the clearances they’ve secured. So Doc Ock shows up, and then he’s followed by the Green Goblin from the 2002 Spider-Man⁠—and I thought, aha, it’s lucky for them that the ’02 Goblin wears a metallic mask, so they could put the Goblin in the film without having to get Willem Dafoe! And then a bunch of scenes go by, and we return to the Goblin thread, and they got Willem Dafoe. It turns out they have nearly all the villains from the pre-MCU Spider-Man movies: Thomas Haden Church’s Sandman, Rhys Ifans’s Lizard, Jamie Foxx’s Electro. And yet I still wasn’t prepared for the moment when Spider-Man walks in and pulls off his mask and it’s Andrew Garfield. Bluh! It’s not just a villain roundup⁠—the movie is adding alternate Spider-Men to the mix! And yet⁠—again, showing that the filmmakers picked the right order for the revelations⁠—even with Andrew Garfield right in front of me, I wasn’t expecting Tobey Maguire. I mean, in 2021 Tobey Maguire turned forty-six. And my understanding was that he’d retired from acting in 2014. And yet, at the very moment I was thinking “nahhh”, in walks Tobey Maguire.

As for the actual content of the movie⁠—I dunno, I guess it’s kind of interesting how it foregrounds the ethics of these movies. The basic plot is that Doctor Strange has the ability to send all the non-MCU characters back to their home universes, but for most of the villains, that’s a death sentence, as they were sucked into the MCU the instant before their respective demises. Strange is unbothered, saying that fate cannot be thwarted, but Aunt May insists that the villains need to be reformed, not just sent back to die, and Spider-Man fights Doctor Strange, and wins, to give them this opportunity. As I understand it, the ending sort of ends up taking an all-of-the-above approach: Strange returns, and the villains do get sent back, but they’re reformed first, so… they die in a state of grace or something? I get that this sort of thing was a big part of the plot of Hamlet but I’m not so sure I’m overly concerned with the condition of the Green Goblin’s soul as he warps back to die in 2002. Though now I’m picturing a new Hamlet movie in which the protagonist is joined by a digitally de-aged Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson.

And of course, the fact that the MCU Spider-Man is forgotten by everyone at the end of the movie means that one final, extremely appropriate crossover was left on the table:


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