With all the talk about the Spider-Man 4 release date and the drama concerning it, I have to say I’m thrilled to see an insider explain how Sony and Marvel will reportedly deal with one of the biggest problems after Spider-Man: No Way Home. That’s the other Spider-Man variants that so many fans love: Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.
They joined Tom Holland’s Peter Parker by accident and Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) put them back where they came from. But it’s very likely that Sony and Marvel aren’t done with them. We’ll most likely see both Maguire and Garfield return to the MCU in the future. Sony can’t help itself, and Marvel can’t afford not to take advantage of this unique opportunity.
But how would you even explain how these three particular variants of Spider-Man meet again in a multiverse of countless Peter Parkers?
After all, this trio did not get together intentionally, as it happens with the protagonists of Spider-Verse. Those Spidey-People can travel to whatever universe they desire thanks to their gadgets.
Maguire, Garfield, and Holland do not have similar tech (not yet, at least). By the way, I’ll refer to the three Spider-Man variants by their actor’s name to make it easy in what follows below.
It turns out there’s an incredibly dumb explanation that might help Sony and Marvel reunite them. Also, it’s rather brilliant. This is where I tell you that big spoilers might follow.
The bad Spider-Man 4 rumors
The fact that this solution leaked already tells me that Sony may have its way. The “bad” Spider-Man 4 rumors claimed that Sony wants Maguire and Garfield to return in the upcoming sequel. They want Spider-Man 4 to be as big as possible, a multiverse story like No Way Home.
The same reports say that Marvel wants a more grounded story, which is what I expect. Spider-Man 4 has to be a sort of reboot of the MCU’s Spider-Man. And we can’t have the same trick, the Maguire-Garfield duo, again so soon.
They’d be better suited in a future MCU movie like Avengers: Secret Wars, where Marvel will bring together all sorts of superheroes to fight the armies of Kang.
Marvel seems to have won the debate, but who knows what will ultimately happen. Spider-Man 4 might feature Maguire and Garfield in some capacity. After all, it’s an MCU movie, and those films have credit scenes.
I am just speculating here to make a point. There’s no reasonable explanation for Maguire, Garfield, and Holland ever meeting again. I said that as soon as those rumors came out.
It makes no sense for these particular Spider-People to meet ever again. Not as long as they didn’t develop some sort of technology that would let them find each other again. And they clearly didn’t do that in No Way Home. We would need an incredibly good explanation for why Maguire would reunite with Garfield and Holland.
Paging Doctor Strange…
This is where a leak from MyTimeToShineHello comes in handy. If the Marvel insider is accurate, Doctor Strange’s spell at the end of No Way Home worked on all three Peter Parkers. Everyone in the main MCU reality forgot that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. They also forgot who Holland is. That was the point of the spell.
It turns out that Strange’s spell might have impacted the realities of Maguire and Garfield. Everyone in those timelines might have forgotten them, but these two Peter variants never wished that to happen.
That’s incredibly dumb, I agree. I don’t even want to discuss the No Way Home plot and the Doctor Strange spells. I’ve come to just accept them. But it’s also kind of brilliant.
Think about it: the minute Maguire and Garfield return home, nobody knows who they are. They’ll go crazy. And that means devising a way to find Holland’s reality and fix their problem by meeting Doctor Strange. Either Maguire, Garfield, or both will find ways to travel between realities. Not only that, but they will have to find each other and find Holland’s Earth.
There’s also a potential twist. The Spider-People from Spider-Verse could help Maguire and Garfield if that animated multiverse is indeed part of the MCU.
Just like that, we have another reason for Maguire, Garfield, and Holland to meet. And Doctor Strange will have to undo his spell when the former visit the MCU’s main reality again. That might even mean having everyone in the MCU remember who Peter is.
I am speculating, of course. But I have to say, I’d watch a movie where Maguire and Garfield would have to invent tech to find each other and then travel to Holland’s world, no matter how dumb it all sounds. And I’m not even a big Spider-Man fan.