Headscratchers / Spider-Man: No Way Home

Headscratchers is for post-viewing discussion and is thus Spoilers Off. Beware of unmarked spoilers.

Teamwork

• Tobey’s Peter says he has never worked in a team before, but he actually worked with Harry and they were great together in Spider-Man 3. So, what's up with that?
  • That was one fight, with one person besides him, and said person ended up dead anyway. That's not a great record at team work, certainly not compared to what MCU Spidey is talking about.
  • Plus, in that fight it was easy to divide resources; Peter dealt with the more "standard" threat of Venom while Harry used his explosives and other advanced weapons to take on the larger threat posed by Sandman.
  • When asked about having a best friend by Ned, Tobey's Peter claims that he did have a best friend (who may or may not've been Harry Osborn) but they died in his arms after making an attempt to kill him. This however never happened to Harry in the Sam Raimi trilogy as Harry died a hero by Peter's side. This response to Ned from Peter implies that the Peter portrayed by Tobey in this film and the Peter portrayed by Tobey in the original trilogy follow a different continuity; perhaps one where Harry and Peter's fight first scene in Spider-Man 3 resulted in Harry dying rather than getting amnesia.
    • It is only Tobey Maguire Peter's phrasing that implies this, as Harry did indeed die in Peter's arms after trying to kill him during the events of the Sam Raimi films in a chronological sense, but that would be like saying "Jesus was born and then Obama became president of the United States"; while technically true, it neglects all that happened between those points in time, and if this is the same Peter from Sam Raimi's continuity, then doing that would be a strange thing for him to do!
    • He probably just left out most of the details because it was still a touchy subject for him to talk about.
    • Where is the discrepancy? What he said was true and in order, although if one needs an answer the two above should do.

Memory wipe

• Strange wipes all memory of Peter from everyone on Earth but what about the physical evidence? Shouldn't there still be photos and videos of him lying around, which explicitly reveals his Superhero identity, should provide Ned and MJ with evidence that they know him?
  • Presumably, the spell doesn't just wipe the memories of individual people, but also any trace evidence of Peter's existence. Notice he's studying for a GED in the last scene, meaning his school record must have disappeared.
    • Except if that is true he wouldn't have the necessary documentation to get a GED or an apartment or a job, so clearly some evidence is left over. The most likely reason he needs a GED is that with May gone, and the Starks no longer remembering him, he had to drop out of school and get a job to support himself.
    • Precisely. Taken literally, it seems that the spell makes people who knew Peter Parker forget about his existence. So documentary evidence of his existence remains, but no person who knew him remembers him now. In practical terms, the way this would work is probably like this - if Happy looked into May's background, he'd learn that she had a nephew named Peter Parker whom she was the legal guardian to, but he wouldn't remember meeting this nephew (unless he figures out that the kid he met at her gravesite was this hitherto unknown nephew). Or, Midtown High might have records of a student named Peter Parker, but no student or faculty member remembers interacting with him.
    • With the type of evidence left behind, it's likely that the spell also created a mental block preventing people from noticing the evidence unless it is explicitly pointed out to them by someone who still remembers i.e. Peter.
• It’s kinda the major crux of the movie, and it required making Strange more reckless than a teenager on cocaine. Why didn’t Strange took five minutes BEFORE firing up the spell to explain and work out an exception list?
  • Some of his old arrogance kicked in. "There's a spell you're saying is difficult to do and that I shouldn't try it? Please. I'm a prodigy and a genius. What's the worst that can happen?"
  • There's also the fact that Strange was assuming that Peter would only come to him about doing this if he exhausted any other option, and understood the full weight of what he was asking. Which is why he was peeved when he realised that Peter hadn't realised he could just call up MIT to ask them to reconsider.
    • Even if Peter had exhausted his options and fully considered what he came to ask Strange, he didn't actually come to ask him to erase everyone's memory. His request was for Strange to go back in time and make it so Mysterio never revealed Peter's secret. Which, yes, is an even more irresponsible request than mass brainwashing, but it's an entirely different action to consider. Strange is the one to propose the mass forgetfulness spell and the first time he so much as hints that it will affect the entire world is when he actually starts the spell. It would have been prudent of Peter to ask about the details, sure, but this is entirely on Strange. Even moreso since Peter was asking to undo Mysterio's reveal while Strange was obviously well aware that people such as himself already knew Peter's identity before that. Peter's repeated requests for alterations to the spell were the result of him considering the consequences as soon as he was possibly able. The cherry on top was the way that Strange kept restarting the spell as soon as Peter mentioned another person rather than so much as asking if the list was complete. Peter's not blameless, of course, but it's almost entirely Strange's fault, which makes it all the more tragic that May and Peter were the ones who ended up paying for it.
• So far, it looks like the person "Peter Parker" has been erased from people's memories. Yet Happy clearly remembers Spider-Man and that Spider-Man was associated with Aunt May. So what do Ned and MJ remember? Does Ned remember he was Spider-Man's guy in the chair? Does MJ remember that she was Spider-Man's girlfriend? The ending did not clear this up for me.
  • They would likely remember that they met and befriended someone who's secretly Spider-Man but can't remember the name and face of that person. They may know there is a customer named Peter Parker but wouldn't connect it that mysterious friend of theirs. It's like having a hangover at a party. And it's heavily implied that the memories would come back if someone filled in on the details of what they're forgetting.
    • Gotta say, if I had befriended a superhero but mysteriously forgot his name or what he looked like, I would be seriously weirded out. I'd wonder if some villain had messed with my memory, and I'd wonder if the hero needed my help. The fact that Ned and MJ are happily leaving town suggests they've forgotten their connection to Spider-Man entirely, or else the memory spell gave them some false assurance that Spider-Man doesn't need them anymore.
  • Presumably they remember having had dealings with Spider-Man, but in their recollections, the superhero never revealed his Secret Identity to them.
• So, the reason the spell is messed up is because Peter wants his friends to remember that hie was Spider-Man, and insists on that in the middle of the spell. Wouldn't it be easier to just let Dr. Strange cast the spell normally, then tell his friends that he's Spider-Man later?
  • Possibly explained by what Peter said about Aunt May: When she found out, whatever happened, happened offscreen and it was probably not pretty, hence he doesn’t want to go through all that again. Presumably he feels the same will happen if he tries with his friends too. In the trailers he even said that he didn’t want to hide everything from his friends, but how do you tell someone that they’re Spider-Man?
  • Peter Parker is a teenager. He's panicking, not making rational decisions.
  • Given that the spell was originally meant to erase all memory of Peter Parker being Spider-Man, rather than Peter Parker as a whole, perhaps the spell targeted the records revealing his Secret Identity rather than all of his records. Or maybe Dr Strange helped set him up with some new documentation, (assuming he was also unaffected by the spell).
    • Yet that, (assuming that Strange also lost his memory) still leaves behind the physical evidence that Ned, MJ, Happy, and the Starks have of him, which should, tip them off that there is some sort of discrepancy in their memories, plus if the spell didn't create Fake Memories there would be some pretty big and obvious holes in their memories. Perhaps this would be a subplot in the next movie.
    • The logistics boggles the mind. Hey MJ, remember that trip to Europe barely a few months back? She’s going to be in shock upon realizing she can’t remember even a quarter of what went down during that trip.
    • It's probable that her memories of the trip were altered, not outright erased. So she would remember a version of the trip without Peter.
    • Then again in the comics when Strange did the same kind of spell, it was explained that someone would need to figure it out for themselves, like stalking him and so on. There COULD be a mountain of evidence already out there, but due to the spell their brains wouldn't let them make the connection no matter how blatant said evidence is until they learned it for themselves, or he revealed it to them.
    • There's a possibility that some of this could be explored in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
    • The comic book spell and the MCU Spell may be fundamentally different. As much as it's shown, no one even remembers who exactly Peter Parker is. Happy Hogan can't even remember him as the nephew of May Parker, and if he has to take the GED it means his school records are now non-existent. It can be easily assumed he got new ones taking advantage of the major disruption the Blip caused, making Spider-Man a well known vigilante and Peter Parker some kind of non-person roaming around in the world post-Blip.
    • The fact that Peter still has his old belongings including photographs indicates better than anything that evidence remains.
    • Going off that, the spell was said to only affect memories. It would seem that it'd also have to affect news articles, videos online, pictures, etc. Perhaps Strange kept the original spell intact when changing it into the new spell, but had that one specifically target those things while the new spell targeted people's memories. Considering it's possible Strange could've cast a few spells at once, or one right after the other, this might be the best explanation. Thus, governmental documents of Peter still exist. Think about it, without a valid social security number, Peter wouldn't be able to do the majority of things you should be able to as an adult, as you need an SSN to apply for most things.
    • Part of the spell may include a conditioning effect, that if someone sees evidence Peter existed their minds handwave it away and fill in the gaps with fake memories unless the catalyst for recollection is strong enough. Ned sees his name in a yearbook, dismisses him as classmate he never really noticed. Someone reads Flash's book, they think he's delusional idiot (it's not shown how popular the book got). With a trilogy of films to come, MJ or Ned may become aware of this conditioning and following it up allows them to break through it to fully remember Peter.
    • We have recently seen a similar case in the "Daredevil" comics. Some time ago his secret identity was restored in a similar way. Kingpin was checking his old papers, and check what happens here◊
  • There could be some kind of mental block in place that prevents anyone from actually being able to properly see Spider-Man unmasked via any media produced before the spell was cast. Not to mention the name "Peter Parker" sounds pretty generic for a caucasian male.

MCU Continuity Without Peter Parker

• So Spider-Man still exists but it seems there's no evidence Peter Parker ever existed in this new timeline. Is the Spider-Man in this continuity still part of the Avengers? The events of Civil War and Infinity War/Endgame would have occurred differently without the other Avengers knowing his identity. Tony Stark would not have been able to recruit Spider-Man if he didn't know who he was. And Tony and Peter's Father/Son like relationship ended up being the key motivation Tony needed to reverse the events of Infinity War. So in this new reality did Endgame never occur and the effects of the Blip still persist?
  • Peter Parker makes his own suit so presumably he's lost access to all the Stark tech and the Starksuit he had previously, returning to his roots.
  • You would imagine if Peter Parker goes to find Dr. Strange and explained what just happened, Dr Strange would be fairly accepting. After all, this is just another Tuesday in Dr. Strange's world.
  • He could have still been there to help in the Endgame fight and he wasn’t pivotal to Civil War, Infinity War or Endgame and maybe he tagged along on the ship in Infinity War if he was part of it.
  • The spell is explicitly said to affect memories, but not change the past. All the events seen in the previous MCU movies still happened as they originally did, it's only the people In-Universe who now remember them differently. Also, the spell erased the memory of Peter Parker not Spider-man. By the end of the movie Jameson makes clear he remembers the fight at the Statue of Liberty happened, and he blames Spider-man for it. It can be presumed that everyone remembers Spider-man participating in the events of Civil War, Endgame etc., and thus can infer that he was an Avenger, but they probably don’t remember him ever taking his mask off, or learning his real name.
    • The series Tiger & Bunny gave a really good example of the above. The antagonist uses his memory manipulation abilities to make everyone who knows one of the hero's secret identities still remember working with the hero, but in their minds he made it part of his persona to never reveal who he was.
  • Exactly, it's a memory spell not a reality rewrite, given that Ned and MJ, who were both blipped, are still around, as is Peter himself for that matter, plus Strange and Wanda as shown in the teaser for Multiverse of Madness, so the Blip clearly wasn't undone. The only person this could seriously mess up as a result was Tony because a lot of his actions in his final years involved knowing Peter personally but Tony's dead so that makes it a moot point.
  • Why would OP think that the spell changed time? Strange specifically said he didn't have the Time Stone anymore and it's revealed the spell would only affect memories.
  • Tony did know who he was. Everyone did know. They just don't anymore.

Sandman

• Why is Sandman constantly transformed in sand until he's cured? He often turned back to human form in his own movie, and it would have been cheaper not to portray him with special effects.
  • Honestly it seems like they just didn't want to deage Thomas Hayden Church. His only appearance cured is just footage from Spider-Man 3 edited into the shot. Same with the Lizard.
  • Additionally like how Electro seems to be in better shape due to the different rules of the MCU, Sandman might have been left stuck in Sandform when he crossed over adding to his desperation to get home and willingness to be cured.
• Because of COVID travel restrictions, they apparently couldn't get Thomas Haden Church back in person. So they had him record his lines, and just made his appearances in the movie all digital. When they did the scene where he reverted back to human, they just took and reversed clips from his transformation in Spider-Man 3
• It doesn't seem like he was displaced during the events of Spider-Man 3 or immediately after them. This troper got the impression that Flint had been on his "get back home to my daughter" mission as a fugitive for a while, and got pulled into the MCU right before he got his chance. His powers seem to be on the fritz, the sand form looks really unstable. It's possible that it's just because of the subtle differences between the universes but it seemed like he needed that cure more than he thought.

Eddie Brock and Venom

• What in-universe reason brought Venom to the MCU? Dr. Strange says that the botched spell brought people who already knew Peter Parker was Spider-Man, but neither Eddie nor Venom ever knew a Peter Parker or a Spider-Man. How does Eddie's transportation to the MCU work? He doesn't know who Peter Parker or Spider-Man is until he arrives. Venom seems like he might know it going by how he reacts but if that's the case, why was he not transported to the MCU by himself? Or is that just coincidentally part of that smallest fraction of knowledge he imparted on Eddie that he just happened to do a second before Strange cast his spell?
  • The symbiote actually says in their own movies that its a multiversal hive mind — it just takes one Venom symbiote anywhere to learn about Peter Parker and Spider-man, and all of them know it, the fact that they were the one's dragged into the MCU was random chance.
    • So would that be the doing of the version of Venom from Spider-Man 3?
    • Possibly, but it could theoretically be any version of Venom throughout all the different Marvel continuities and adaptations.
  • Venom was bonded to Eddie, as seen with the other villains having access to their gear, anything they were touching at time of transport was brought along for the ride, so why not someone bonded to the target too?
  • Let's hope that the sample of hive-mind knowledge Venom shared with Eddie did, indeed, include an awareness of Peter Parker, and that it's only that sharing of knowledge with a host that permitted them to be caught up in the spell. Otherwise, if all it takes is for the symbiote to know about Peter, then the MCU universe could've easily been overrun by millions of Venom's kind, from a lot more than three continuities.
    • Given how many characters have become symbiote hosts, there's a good chance we'll be seeing something like this in the near future.

Redeemed villains are sent back when?

• Would the redeemed villains be sent back to the point of their supposed deaths or would they be sent back to the present when the events of the Raimi and Webb films had already concluded?
  • Considering they never question what could happen to the other universes if they go back alive, the movie probably takes the easy route (not that that’s wrong) and does the second thing you suggested.
  • Given the rules for branching timelines established in Endgame it's possible that they return to the moments they were taken from and this causes the timeline to branch. So, for instance, Norman returns to 2002 and this creates a new branch of the Raimi-verse timeline where the Green Goblin basically disappears and Norman Osborn never dies. That said, this issue only really affects Norman - Otto Octavius ended up being redeemed anyway in his original timeline, and if he's returned to his final battle with Spider-Man it's likely he'd still end up pulling a Heroic Sacrifice to prevent the destruction of New York City. Flint Marko, Curt Conners and Max Dillon's returns to their respective universes wouldn't particularly change any established continuity.
    • Right before he's sent back, Otto is seen holding an arc reactor. Arc reactors aren't just unlimited energy devices, they can also store massive amounts of energy. Who's to say that runaway fusion reaction from his tritium-powered device in the Raimiverse can't just be stored in an arc reactor?
    • To be fair, depending on exactly when Otto is sent back, he might have enough time to shut off the Reactor before it goes critical, meaning he doesn't need to sacrifice himself to stop it. Not to mention, since he's had a day or two in the alternate universe, he's probably already devised some ideas on how to deal with the problem for when he returns.
    • Fair enough. In which case, the timeline branches off from 2004 and there's now a reality where a reformed/recovered Otto Octavius is still alive.
    • Otto specifically stated that the last thing he remembered was having 1 of his tentacles around his Peter's neck, so he's from after the new Tritium reactor was going supernova. Odds are, maybe he could've channeled most of the energy from that thing into the arc reactor and dispersed it. With the amount of lightning energy Tony Stark collected from Thor in the first Avengers and Endgame (JARVIS says up to 500% normal power in the former), plus the advancements Stark probably made before his death to the mini arc reactor technology, who knows exactly how much energy that thing can hold? Especially if it was helping Electro channel his powers.
    • Alternatively, he could still go with the "drown a mini star in nearby river" plan, which evidently was a success. Only this time, no longer being suicidal, he breaks the supports in a way that lets him escape with his life. And, if he and his Peter are in step faster (no long conversation while he regains control over his arms, has his Heel Realization, figures out what to do, etc), he and Spider-Man might even work together.
    • And this is if the events of Spider-Man 2 even happen at all. With Norman Osborn now presumably still alive at the end of Spider-Man 1, he would still be in charge of Oscorp instead of Harry, and his own keen mind (and knowledge of what happened to Doc Ock after being told in the MCU), he might be able to prevent Otto from making the fatal experiment in the first place.
  • It's possible that they are sent back to that exact moment in time in their respective movies and it doesn't branch the timeline. That could explain why Otto regains control from the claws at the end of Spider-Man 2 and why Osborne tells Peter "Don't tell Harry" in a seeming moment of lucidity.
• Is it possible that these are actually not the exact same villains we saw in their respective movies and variants from a different timeline where they got cured?
  • Possible, yes. Narratively satisfying, no. While the argument can certainly be made, cues both in-story and out indicate that these are the genuine articles as we remember them from all those years ago (minor cosmetic changes be damned).

Saving Norman screws up the timeline of the Raimi movies?

• Presumably after being redeemed/cured, the villains are sent back to the point of their deaths. My issue is with saving Norman since the timeline of the Raimi movies could be adversely affected. If Norman survives, Harry would have no vendetta against Spider-man and he likely would not have become the New Goblin. However, that also means no one would have came to Spider-man's rescue during his showdown with Sandman and Venom in Spider-man 3 and he would have potentially died. Unless in this new universe, Spider-man only needs to deal with Venom since Sandman was also cured but wouldn't the cured Sandman only arrive near the end or after Spider-man 3 when he learned that Peter was Spider-man?
  • Who's to say that the Harry situation in Spider-Man 3 didn't help to act as a stressor that helped exacerbate Peter's increased aggression and dependency on the Symbiote. At the very least, Mary Jane would be in Peter's life and might help him recognise how bad he's getting sooner, so maybe when Peter finally got rid of it, Eddie Brock might not have present to become Venom. Don't underestimate just how much of a domino effect that could be caused.
  • It’s also possible that the timeline is unchanged, and Norman will be transplanted into the present day with a fresh start, as he’s a new entity of sorts. Yes, that idea has its own problems, but at least it leaves the timeline intact.
  • There's no Sacred Timeline anymore. The likeliest (and saddest?) answer is that essentially everyone goes back to different timelines altogether. Norman goes back to 2002, Otto goes back to 2004, Flint goes back to 2007, Peter "2" goes back to... sometime after that. Same for the Webb-verse characters.
• Is it possible that these are actually not the exact same villains we saw in their respective movies and variants from a different timeline where they got cured?

Did MCU Peter even have an Uncle Ben?

• When Tobey’s Peter mentions his Uncle Ben, Tom’s Peter never even brings up that he had one too, and he doesn’t even seem to have a grave next to May.
  • Ben is never actually specifically referred to in any of the films, or at least not in dialogue. The closest examples are vague mentions of something unfortunate previously happening to Peter and May, but it's otherwise never explicitly said to be Ben's death. The only real concrete hints that Ben ever existed in the MCU up to this point are some specific props that imply his existence —a wedding ring May wears around her neck and a briefcase taken by Peter in Far From Home with the initials BFP on it— but again, he's never been specifically referred to in unambiguous terms. He'll possibly be a character in Freshman Year depending on how long ago Peter became Spider-Man and if Ben was still alive at that point but they could just as easily decide that May is the MCU's counterpart to Ben and disregard the aforementioned objects or contextualize them as not alluding to him. (i.e. the ring belonged to her mother, the initials are somebody else's...)
  • Pretty sure Tom’s head turning was meant to imply that it got his attention and Andrew brought up Gwen instead of his Ben. Plus he was directly mentioned in What If…? (2021), which admittedly took place in a different timeline, but one that seems to have only diverged from the Sacred Timeline during the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Ant-Man and the Wasp, so that probably applies to the Sacred Timeline Peter as well.
    • He also notes that like Tobey he lost Uncle Ben. And MCU Peter barely reacts to both saying the same name.
    • It got his attention and he could have been internalising through thoughts about his own Uncle Ben because he is going through too much at the moment to talk about him.
  • It's possible that he did have an Uncle Ben that died due to circumstances that may or may not resemble those of most iterations of the character.
  • The lines in Civil War that Peter says to Tony imply that he'd learned the "With great power comes great responsibility" lesson. Maybe not in those exact terms, but he clearly learned it. Those lines were clearly put in by the screenwriters to let people assume that Uncle Ben existed, but died already. Unfortunately, every single solo MCU Spidey film seems really scared to mention Ben by name at least in passing in dialogue. However, apparently there was an idea for May to mention that Peter's suit in Homecoming was Ben's but it was cut. In Far From Home, there are the suitcase initials and What if...? has Peter explicitly state Ben's name. So, my assumption is that Peter did have an uncle Ben, one that instilled into him life lessons that set him on the hero's path and set his moral compass. However, he didn't say the famous phrase at all.
  • Another possibility is that it was actually Aunt May who told Peter the famous phrase and she herself picked it up from Ben prior to his death. So, if Peter was following the mantra of great responsibility, he may not have realised that it originated from Uncle Ben in the first place, which would explain his surprise when Tobey-Peter and Andrew-Peter repeat it as well.

Wait, why and how did Electro get pulled in?

• It's established in the film, by Doctor Strange, that the reason that these villains were pulled in from other realities is that they knew Peter Parker was Spider-Man. However, in the final battle, Electro makes it clear that he didn't even know what Andrew Garfield's Spider-Man looked like, expecting him to be black. So, how and why was Electro pulled in from his universe if he didn't know that his Spider-Man was Peter Parker?
  • He may have heard Peter's name being mentioned at some point, and never really made the connection.
    • It's also possible he heard Spider-Man is Peter Parker without actually knowing who that even was, yet it was enough to bring him over.
  • One of the more possible explanations (taken from Film Theory) is that sometime offscreen, Harry told Electro about Peter’s relationship with Spider-Man. After seemingly being defeated, Electro opens his eyes and continues fighting right after Gwen shows up and starts talking to “Peter.” Max may have been crazy, but he was still smart enough to get a job at Oscorp, so it’s entirely possible that in that brief moment he put together what Harry and Gwen said and realized Peter Parker and Spider-Man are the same person.
  • Another possibility; Electro’s dialogue when he is recounting what he remembers before coming to the MCU makes it sound like he’s talking about something that happened AFTER his battle with Spider-Man. So perhaps Electro only appeared to die, but his consciousness still survived, absorbed into the power grid. If so, he could have overheard when Green Goblin shows up and discovers Peter’s identity. Or conversely, Electro mentions that he was in the grid absorbing information, so perhaps he simply absorbed the information “Peter Parker is Spider-Man” from some online source.

Otto Recognizes Norman

• When Green Goblin shows up on the bridge, Otto instantly recognizes him as Norman. How did Otto know that the Green Goblin was Norman Osborn? Green Goblin's secret identity was never made public knowledge and Harry didn't discover it until the very end of Spider-Man 2.
  • The glider and suit were shown to be Oscorp tech in Spider-Man 1, which narrows down who would be wearing it by a bit.
  • Given that Norman Osborn died under mysterious circumstances the same night as the last Green Goblin sighting, and that Otto Octavius seemed to be acquainted with Norman at the very least (which might also explain how he came to be working with OsCorp later), it's possible that Otto figured out that Osborn was the Green Goblin a long time ago, but kept his theory to himself.
  • It would make sense that Otto figured things out on his own after Norman's death or was just able to recognize his voice because he more than likely interacted with Norman previously.
  • That doesn’t explain how Flint Marko also recognised Osborn as the Green Goblin.
    • Flint knowing the Green Goblin's true identity is easier to explain than Otto knowing it - at some point after Spider-Man 3, following Harry's death, it's possible that the late Norman Osborn's secrets became public knowledge.
    • Flint could have deduced it because of his fight with Harry Osborn/New Goblin, provided that the news at some point mentioned that he died helping Spider-man as well as the Green Goblin's brief reign of terror. If there are two guys using the same super tech in the same city and one of them is revealed to be the owner of the local arms company, what are the odds the two are related in some way? Moreover, Harry was vocal that his dad was murdered by Spider-man, who Flint knows is a good guy. So he concludes that Norman was the Goblin all along.
  • In most incarnations, Otto and Norman have either a We Used to Be Friends, Friendly Rivalry, or outright frienemy-type relationship anyway. Why should the Raimiverse versions be any different?

The implications of the ending

• Strange cast a turbocharged version of the initial spell. It’s supposed to wipe out knowledge of the whole Spidey=Peter. But what it really does is effectively make Peter Parker an Un-person. Ned simply don’t even acknowledge his best friend for years prior to the whole radioactive spider thing. That alone is chilling. Had Aunt May survived, she would probably have forgotten she even had a nephew. Now the true horror: it should affect at the very least Maguire-Spidey’s verse and Garfield-Spidey’s verse. In Maguire’s case, it’s implied he’s been going steady with his MJ for a while…he’s going to go back to his universe to a girlfriend that has utterly forgotten Peter Parker is someone that exist.
  • The MCU is the source of the multiversal rift, so closing it only there made it stop spreading. No need for other universes to forget about Peter Parker.
    • It is evident that the spell has specifically turned the MCU Peter Parker into a magnet for these multiverse rifts, not Peter Parker as a whole. Otherwise, the other versions of Peter Parker would forget they're Peter Parker as well since apparently, they qualify as people who know Spider-Man and Peter Parker are the same person by the spell. Thus, to get rid of the rifts, you must get rid of the magnet.
    • There's nothing to say everyone in the multiverse has to forget Peter Parker exists and the film never states this. The original spell explicitly didn't target a multiversal range either, it only did so when it went haywire due Peter's meddling. The second spell was done by Strange (largely off-screen and in silence, mind you, so it's unknown what he added or not to the spell lines) and it was purely his doing and working as intended. There's no reason for it to target the entire multiverse. At worst, the spell should logically make the multiversal visitors forget MCU Peter Parker exists (and thus this entire adventure becomes The Greatest Story Never Told), but even that is an assumption and it's unknown if Strange cast the spell in a way to differentiate this.
    • The Multiversal visitors are likely exempt from the spell. In-universe, the spell only seemed to apply to the MCU, and they aren’t native to the MCU. Out-of-universe, it makes the redemption of the villains and the character development of the other two Peters All for Nothing, so it's likely that it wouldn't be undone.

Through Spider-Man

• If everyone forgot who Peter Parker is, was there really any harm in Peter telling Happy that May was his aunt when he asked how he knew her? It’s not like Peter telling Happy that she was his aunt would make him remember that Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
  • No, but Peter was probably worried that Happy would realise something is up, and be worried about his living situation if he knew that May's brother-in-law and his wife were dead.
  • Presumably for the same reason he opts not to try to reconnect with MJ and Ned and just leaves them be for their safety. He doesn't want Happy to have to worry, especially after already losing Tony and May. It's also possible this would cause Happy to look into Peter's history and realize something was not right depending on how much of the paper trail was left. "Wait a minute why does nobody seem to remember this kid exists even though he clearly has a ID history I can follow." "Whoa whoa, why was this kid working with and clearly important to Tony and why don't I remember it?" It's possible he'd rather Happy just think he's a random guy and not look too much into it.
• What does Happy think Aunt May's connection to Spider-Man was, given that he just accepted a random kid ALSO knew her through the web-slinger.
  • Let's not forget May and F.E.A.S.T, who's to say Parker didn't supposedly know May through Spider-man through that? Or at least that's what the connection Happy made anyway.
  • Happy has worked with superheroes before and isn't dumb, it's hardly a stretch to imagine that he put 2+2 together and realized the "random kid" was probably Spider-Man out of costume, but since they were both mourning at a grave, pressing the issue wouldn't really be appropriate.

Multiversal visitors

• If at the beginning Strange accidentally brought to MCU universe all people who knew Spider-Man was Peter Parker including those who were supposed to be dead, shouldn't that also brought, for example, Gwen Stacy form The Amazing Spider-Man films, Mary Jane Watson from the original trilogy and not only the villains? Regardless plot armor and the fact that not everybody in the multiverse was teleported at the beginning. This could include Uncle Ben too, as he seemed to suspect about Peter.
  • Near the end of the movie as the universal walls are breaking apart, there are silhouettes of various Spidey mythos characters such as Kraven and Scorpion. Had things kept going, the characters you mentioned likely would've eventually come over as well.
    • It’s also worth mentioning that the corrupted spell was initially allowed to go for a few seconds before Strange sealed it in an exotic engram. In those few seconds it’s still pulled in a grand total of 8 people (two Spidey, 5 baddies and Eddie Brock).
  • Maybe it did bring more people, remember it was only because Peter was actively looking that he found Max and Flint, and it was only because Ned was trying to find his Peter that the other two ended up getting pulled into the fight. If civilians like Mary Jane and Gwen found themselves transported to the MCU as well, then there was no real way for the heroes to notice them, prior to the final battle they had no way of knowing where anyone was, and even during the final battle, where they at least know where a version of Peter is, they have no way of getting there. They may have just been wandering around for a few days.
  • He didn't bring in all the people who know that Spider-Man is Peter Parker. It was just a few of them who "slipped through the cracks" before he managed to shut down the spell.

Masks

• More than ever, Spider-Man (the 3 of them) was seen without his mask even as a superhero (many this time more justified) à la Tony Stark (see Endgame poster).. Why would they even bother to put their masks on while jumping and doing the triple attack?
  • Because they are used to it? The mask isn't just for identity concealment...there's a psychological component to it as well that allows them to separate Spider-Man from Peter. The masks also presumably offer a degree of protection to their faces while in the field.
  • MCU Peter's mask has been previously shown to help him focus.
  • Before the Statue of Liberty battle, the villains had no idea that there were multiple spider-men. Staying in costume helps to keep the villains confused about exactly how many people they're fighting.

Peter and Mary Jane

• Was it ever mentioned in the actual movie whether or not Tobey's Peter had a family with Mary Jane? And did Andrew's Peter ever get together with his universe's Mary Jane which was supposed to be played by Shailene Woodley?
  • Nothing is confirmed either way in the movie itself. As far as Andrew's Peter possibly being with his universe's version of MJ goes, it seems unlikely given how he still seems to be consumed by guilt over Gwen and how he refers to the latter as "his MJ".
    • Didn't Tobey's Peter actually mention he has a family at one point, possibly referring the one he started with MJ?
  • He might have just been using "my MJ" to simplify it for the others. Shailene Woodley's MJ could still exist, and she and Peter might just not have become more-than-friends yet.
    • Garfield Peter was using "my MJ" as an analogy to Holland Peter who Gwen Stacy was to Garfield Peter. Gwen was the love of Garfield's life, as MJ is Holland's.
  • Tobey’s Peter does mention having an MJ, getting a grossed out look from Andrew’s Peter, as he thinks he is talking about the underage MCU MJ. He then clarifies he means “his” MJ.
  • Andrew mentions he "doesn't do Peter Parker stuff anymore". He seems to have left the regular identity behind, and be acting as Spider-man full-time (something that Peter in the comics did for a while in the 90s).
    • As of this film's ending, the MCU Peter Parker is an Un-person doing Spider-Man stuff full-time. It sets up a nice parallel to Garfield-Peter, this one got guidance and support at the right moment so hopefully he won't get all vengeful and non-punch-pully.
  • Isn't the Shailene Woodley MJ's scene deleted? If something didn't make it into the final cut of its own film, it probably isn't canon. Or maybe not canon yet, maybe they could meet up and get together after this whole situation although it would be pretty weird now that this Peter has seen two other Peters in relationships with girls named MJ.

There are no versions of Norman Osborn and his son in the MCU?

• When Norman meets Peter at F.E.A.S.T. He says that he tried to find if there was a version of him and a version of his son in the MCU, but he could not find them, because it seems that there are no versions of Norman and Harry in the MCU and it seems that the Oscorp company does not exist either in that universe.
  • Norman says that Oscorp doesn't exist thought it might not be made yet or under a different name. As for Harry, Norman cuts himself off before revealing what he found about Harry (which might've been intentional on the writer's part). Plus, Norman might be going under a different name or he couldn't find anything on himself since he's not famous without his company, therefore it would require more deep digging since he's not a huge celebrity that you can just google. Also, even Harry could be going under a different name, probably similarly to the comics under his mother's maiden name, due to his strained relationship with his father which is a trend in lots of media (or multiversal)
  • There is a part in the movie where Peter was going to say something to Norman, but Peter is interrupted by Aunt May. Maybe a version of Norman Osborn isn't very well known in the MCU, or maybe he's long dead.
  • Given the sheer variety in the variants it's entirely possible that the MCU Norman has a different name, heck Tony Stark (or even Howard) could have been Norman's counterpart.
  • He might have only looked for his home and the Oscorp building where they would be located in his world. Both of them had a completely different location in Peter 3's (Andrew) universe, so the same could easily be true for Peter 1's (Holland). It's also possible that it was actually The Goblin personality talking and he was just making it up to gain their sympathy.
  • Nothing's necessarily set in stone with Oscorp or a version of Norman in the MCU. Oscorp may be in its infancy, or be in another part of New York State, or even the country. Hell, Even Tony Stark had multiple places where his company operated. Plus, it seemed Norman only physically checked for the Oscorp building, as well as his old pent house building. It's entirely possible that the Osbornes are located in another part of the US at the time this movie takes place and a future MCU Spidey movie will establish them. Hell, considering there'd probably be an enormous possibility for a company to overtake Stark Industries, especially after the Blip, it'd be a perfect setting to introduce Oscorp as a more recent company in the MCU. Peter could possibly meet an MCU version of Harry in college (as well as Dr. Connors and Octavius) and meet a new, younger version of Norman through him. Hell, they could use it for some decent comic relief and drama in a future movie, given neither Norman nor Raimi Peter mention Harry by name and if Harry goes by his mom's maiden name like someone above suggested, it could be pretty well executed. Hell, they could also introduce Mary Jane and Gwen Stacy. There could be a future movie making Mary Jane and Michelle cousins by marriage or something and joking about their initials being the same. They don't have to make them love interests or anything, but letting Peter have new friends wouldn't be a bad thing. He kinda needs them right now anyways given how he's on his own. Honestly, don't expect stuff never to happen in the MCU just because prior adaptations did them or because they say something at one point. The MCU has had retcons before and has been ok. They'll find ways to do these things, mark my words.
  • It's a multiverse, there are literally infinite possible explanations; maybe Norman's great, great grandfather got ran over by a horse and carriage the day before he met Norman's great, great grandmother and so Norman never existed. Maybe, like how MCU Jameson is reduced to running a conspiracy news channel out of his basement, MCU Oscorp is Norman selling Pyramid Scheme merchandise out of his garage. Maybe it is a decently successful company that just doesn't have the publicity of Stark's and we haven't heard about it like we didn't hear about Hammer or Rand's companies until they became relevant, and Norman just didn't find it because he's lost, confused, and doesn't know what a smartphone is because they haven't been invented yet in his universe for him to look up Oscorp on the google machine. The only thing we can say with any reasonable degree of certainty is that if a variant of Norman exists in the MCU main universe, then his son isn't a close childhood friend of Peter Parker, because one has to imagine Peter would at least mention "hey I knew a guy named Osborn when I was a kid" or something to that effect.
  • Wanda and Pietro's father isn't Magneto, so it's pretty clear that some characters simply don't exist in this world.

Lizard's voice

• When Lizard is trapped inside one of the cells below the Sanctum Sanctorum. He meets Max Dillon, Lizard speaks to Max in his Dr. Connors voice and not in his Lizard voice, the voice that Lizard uses, sounds identical to the voice that Connors hears and discusses when he discovers that Andrew's Spider-Man is Peter Parker in the sewers.
  • It's implied going into a different universe causes some minor changes to occur. Hence Electro's lack of teeth imperfections and combover when he reverts to his human form.
  • The voice is still under a voice filter. It didn't sound much different to the voice he had in The Amazing Spider-Man.

The impressive unimpressive secret identity

• Why is everyone in this world so obsessed with the fact Peter Parker is Spider-Man? They live in a world full of super heroes, most of which not only don't hide their identities, but many are even prominent figures.
  • Simply because Spider-Man doesn't show his face. People are just obsessed with the identity of those who don't show their face, just look at faceless YouTubers and how..."interested" certain people are regarding their real identity.
  • It's possible it's because Peter's just a random guy the paparazzi can harass. He's not a Billionaire with infinity resources and ways to thwart the press like Tony, or a respected American icon like Captain America. And his power is strong but subtle so they're not terrified of horrific retribution from someone like Wanda or Banner. They can hound Peter all day and there's little he can do about it. And since public opinion is very much against him because of Mysterio they want to keep pressing him. Or really just to keep it simple, because there's a huge media figure (Jameson) who's constantly ranting about him day and night. The other heroes don't really have a guy in the media out to get them like Peter does.
  • Spider-man has a bunch of conditions that make him a special case. For one, he's the first minor superhero to get a lot of media attention, that alone would cause a TON of controversy around his identity reveal. Plus, he's being investigated for the alleged murder of Mysterio, with Jameson running an active smear campaign on his person. Then there's the aforementioned factor that he hid his identity to begin with serving as an amplifier. No one is shocked that Iron Man is Tony Stark anymore because they found out not long after they found out Iron Man existed, but at first there was a huge commotion and federal investigation. Peter is practically going through a worse version of what Tony did in Iron Man 2, but without the resources to minimise the damage that does to those around him.
  • It's less that "Ooh, now we know a superhero's secret identity!" and more that "This Peter Parker has been outed as Spider-Man and is at the center of a major criminal case involving massive property damage, loss of life, and is allegedly the mastermind behind all of it." Any public figure, no matter how used to them being public figures the public is, can find themselves one of if not the hottest topic of conversation by getting embroiled in something appropriately high profile and bloody.

Sandman knows how Norman died?

• How is Sandman aware that Norman died being impaled by his own glider? Only the Osborn butler knew he was impaled since he personally cleaned the wound. He certainly didn't say anything to the media about it, as he took his sweet time telling just Harry. So how does a common crook like Flint Marco know about this private information that has no relevance to him?
  • Sandman almost certainly comes from sometime after the events of Spider-Man 3. It's entirely possible that, following Harry's death, the truth about the Green Goblin became public knowledge.
  • It's likely that the Osborn butler - assuming the "figment of Harry's imagination" theory is wrong - had only refrained from telling the full truth to the public out of respect for Harry's feelings, and had no further reason not to set the record straight once Harry was dead.

Strange memories

• Both with the first spell and the second spell, Dr.Strange implies that he'll forget Peter with everyone else, but when first bringing up the spell he makes a reference to a Christmas party he'd used the spell to erase before, making it clear that he remembers it. So what's the deal, does the caster remember what's being erased, did Strange make an exception that he remembers the party (making him seem like more of an idiot for not considering that Peter would want exceptions made as well), or is it like a Fidelius Charm where one person has to remember, in this case Peter? And more importantly, does Strange remember?.
  • He may have erased the memories of everyone who attended the Christmas party (including himself), but not his knowledge that the party had taken place. The fact that he didn't remember anything that happened at the party would lead him to realize he'd cast the spell.
  • Strange shows that the spell can be tampered with as well, it just couldn't in that case because they were going for the nuclear option to fix things: everybody forgets, including the caster. Presumably in situations where the multiverse isn't in the firing line Strange can simply add a line to the spell to make sure he won't forget.
    • It is possible Strange realized he NEED to be included in the memory wipe... because otherwise the corrupted spell will keep pulling in alternates Dr Strange who know Spider-Man identity. As in, an infinity of Dr Strange in the grand scheme of things.
  • It's strongly implied that the first spell can be fine-tuned so only certain people remember the information that is to be forgotten, and that the spell was messed up only because Peter wanted Strange to change it in mid-cast. So perhaps Strange only wiped the memories of the party for uninvited party poopers.
  • Maybe Strange was yanking Wong's chain about a "Christmas party" that'd never actually happened, just so Wong would get off his case about him using the spell.

Knowledge of Nick Fury's activities

• How does the federal agent at the beginning know that Nick Fury has been in space for at least a year? Fury's activities aren't exactly something that he would make public knowledge like that...
  • There's nothing to tell that agent had just federal clearance. Could have been a SWORD agent liaison.
  • The agent was actually from the Department of Damage Control, which Homecoming established to have been created and funded by Tony Stark in the MCU. They probably have a bit more knowledge about Avengers-type stuff than a regular federal agent, being from the department that is meant to deal with the damage they cause.

Spell Range

• Strange said that the spell would make it so that no one on 'Earth' would remember Peter Parker. Was he being literal in that it would only affect everyone on Earth, or would it also work across the whole universe? And if it's the former, what if someone Peter met who would've been offworld during the time the spell was cast (Fury, Thor, Carol, the Guardians) came back only to find out the world, including people they know (Strange, Wong, Talos, Happy), had forgotten who Peter Parker is?
  • Universes in the Marvel franchise usually get called Earth-number. Strange probably meant Earth in that sense, so they would likely have their memories changed as well.

Why did Peter’s body move when his astral self is taken out?

• Presumably, it was Spider-Sense shenanigans, especially since you can see the wavy lines if you look closely. One of the biggest problems with Spider-Sense is Peter's consciousness. If he's completely unconscious, that just leaves the Sense in charge, even when Peter himself isn't under threat.
  • Definitely implied to be the Spider-sense going into overdrive.
  • In FFH, Peter's problem is he thinks too much to fully use his spider-sense. So with his conscious mind removed, his body can use the ability to its full potential. IE, Peter is much more powerful than he realizes.
  • Even assuming that the Spider sense can work independently of Peter's consciousness, why he is still able to move the box out of Doctor's Strange's hands? It's not like he's in trouble; Doctor Strange is just trying to take the box. Even Garfield implies later on in the film that it takes more than an inconsequential event towards Spider-Man for the Spider-sense to trigger.
    • The Sense is the Spider-People’s most powerful ability and the least defined. It can be consciously amped up to prevent a Spider from ANY negative outcome and not just physical harm. They can also suppress it as well (for instance 616 Peter has to dampen it so he can play games of chance with his friends and not cheat).
    • It's also not a uniform ability for every Spider-Man that has it. How it works and what triggers it can vary across universes and individuals who possess it, e.g. in the Spider-Girl timeline Peter and Mary Jane's daughter May has her own Spider-Sense that was stronger in some ways than Peter's was. So we might speculate that Andrew Garfield's Spider-Sense and Tom Holland's similarly function differently.
    • Peter had just spent the last 2 minutes desperately trying to stop Strange from getting the box. It's not hard to imagine that the Spider Sense got unconsciously "programmed" with "don't let Strange get this box". Presumably it's doing stuff like that all the time, adapting to help Peter do whatever it is he's trying to do in the moment. The "avoid danger" bit is simply the thing we notice most often because it's the one "built-in" concept that never turns off.
  • The Spider-Sense mostly operates on what is recognized as a "threat," though this recognition is complex. For instance, it has been stated the Spider-Sense can warn about a villain in a civilian identity or disguise, but one posits that Peter has to know a given villain is a villain, a "threat" to him, for them to register, but once he does, it registers them even if they try to hide. On the other hand, back in the original Clone Saga, The Jackal had an advantage against Peter's Spider-Sense, the Sense would only warn Peter just as the Jackal was actively attacking, not about his presence or intent, because the Jackal was Miles Warren, a college professor Peter considered to be a friend. In this specific case, two thing should be clarified: from Peter's perspective, Doctor Strange is a "threat," in that he wants to take the box Peter has and do something Peter is morally opposed to. This registers him on the Spider-Sense. Second, just because Peter has been pushed out of his physical body doesn't mean he's "unconscious" in the normal sense. He's not asleep or knocked out, his astral form has been pushed from his body. Depending on how that specifically works and what state it puts the astral traveler's body into, Peter's body may still be conscious, but only in the most rudimentary sense. More akin to a deep state of meditation than being asleep. In that sort of state, the Spider-Sense might still be able to react and control Peter's body until he gets back to it and becomes fully conscious again. Most works depicting astral projection do make a big deal about the connection between the astral and physical bodies. It's also possible that being plunged into an astral state actually heightened the acuteness of his Spider-Sense, through some bizarre interaction of the rules of the astral realm, the mechanism of the Spider-Sense, and the connection between astral and physical bodies.

Strange can't be bothered with one button press.

• Early on Strange implies that all the multiversal visitors need to be brought together for some sort of ritual to undo the spell - but then... it turns out to be as simple as pressing one button on the spell inhibitor device. There doesn't seem to be any sort of maximum range or need to know who and where has been brought over. So what was even the point of Strange taking on Lizard in a duel or pulling Peter into fixing it all if all he had to do was press one button?
  • As Strange states, he's basically figuring this out on the fly. He tells Pete to go gather the errand supervillains before they make any more damage while he goes out to figure out how to undo this mess. He later returns from some sort of off-screen mystic quest with the spell inhibitor device (which he calls the "Machine of Kadaver"), and even then Strange's device seemed to need a certain number of visitors from other dimensions to "calibrate", as he says he needs to "finish the ritual" before pressing the button (When Strange gets the box he noticeably spends a minute with the box floating and adjusting before the button pops up). Long story short, Strange had an inkling he might need all of them gathered, but for the most part it was a "Keep them from killing a bunch of people while I try to find a way to send them home".

Peter's activities during the ending time skip

• What was Peter doing in the months between the memory wipe and when he met MJ again at the donut shop? He couldn't finish high school and he just got his empty apartment by the very end of the movie. And where was he living and where did he get money from? It's very clear that he was pretty much broke by that end scene.
  • Probably going through all the trouble of establishing a new identity for himself from scratch.
  • It's not months, just a few weeks. Jameson says that it has been weeks since the Statue of Liberty incident. Also, the bulk of the movie takes place in November (the Halloween decorations are still up but the trees still have their fall colors) and after the time skip it is Christmas season (the Christmas tree is already at Rockefeller Center). So it would have taken Peter that long to adjust to his new situation, logistically.

Ned the Sorcerer Supreme?

• Ned despite not having any training in magic, he was able to use a Sling Ring and uses it to summon both Peter from Raimi-verse and Peter from Webb-verse.
  • At one point, Ned says there is magic ability in his family. Although there is a possibility that he said it as a joke, it is like anyone in real life who says that his family had royal ancestry, and that does not mean that they will suddenly be able to hold royal positions.
  • Keep in mind that it took some time to even get the hang of creating portals so it’s not like he is a full fledged Master of the Mystic Arts now.
  • Also, he did not summon the other Peters from their respective universes, they were already lost in the MCU Earth.
  • My understanding of magic in the MCU is that anybody could do it if given the training and paraphernalia so specifically regarding the sling ring, Ned is shown to have accidentally conjured the first portal the first time and just repeated what he did to do it again. (He is also shown to not know how to close it, which conveys that he is by no means a master at magic.)
    • Compounding on the above, remember when Strange learned to use the sling ring. The Ancient One had to make Strange really desire to go back to Kamar Taj. Ned really desired to see Peter again. Plus, he had the ring and he made the gesture. That's all it took.
  • First and foremost, the other Peters had already been transported to the MCU including Hardy Venom. There may have been even more people. So Ned was just opening portals to his NYC. Strange being unable to use the Sling Ring was actually seen as odd by the others in his film. Strange's personality prevented him from opening up his mind fully to magic. Ned though doesn't have this problem. So a basic spell was feasible for him.
  • When Ned comments that he's been opening portals to Strange, Strange does seem somewhat impressed, so he might just be a bit of a natural (presumably due his magical bloodline and willingness to believe in sorcery).
  • Basically, Dr. Strange and Ned are Luke and Rey. Luke and Stephen both need to significantly alter their worldview to allow the mystical power to work through them, because the lives they've led before embarking on their journey taught them not to believe fairy tales and hocus-pocus. Rey and Ned are far more credulous, believing a lot and prepared to believe a lot more, and appear to learn faster simply because they get to skip the breaking through the mental blocks that hampered Luke and Stephen.

Osborn Split personality

• Why is regular Norman no longer a dick? His split personality is even more extreme here than it was in Spider-Man, where it was more pronounced after he took the formula than in 616 comics canon.
  • He went through all the trauma of realising he has a split personality and having to fight against it, as well as ending up in a universe where he's a literal nobody. Kind of a humbling situation, all things considered.
  • The Norman in the first film never showed him as being an evil man. An intense one but not evil. Not like his comic counterpart. At the very least, it's shown how frightened he is when talking to the Goblin persona. So one way or another, Norman has been humbled. Of course most of the film it might be Goblin acting like Norman. That may explain how nice he's being.
    • That last part is unlikely since Peter's Spider-Sense went off a short time after Goblin's personality took over, plus the Goblin would've had no reason to help fix Otto's inhibitor chip. The rest is more likely true, he was simply humbled by the experience of the split personality.
    • In the original Spider-Man, there were some scenes where it wasn't clear whether it was Norman we were seeing or the Goblin, but on alanysis it seems Dafoe took the split personality thing a lot further than most viewers realized. It seems he actually switches from Norman to GG mid-sentence in "Don't let him take me again!". In this film they seemed to make it much more clear, Word of God says whenever we see the crooked yellow teeth it's the Goblin and whenever it's the healthy looking white ones it's Norman (though to be fair, that was from the original Spider-Man 1 movie too).
  • In the original, Norman Osborn and Green Goblin's goals aligned. Norman had his doubts, but the Goblin regularly solved the problems they were both facing and hurting the people Norman was mad at, Norman was pretty much just an unstable genius with a bruised ego being seduced by the monster that the formula generated in his own mind. Here, Norman is separated from everything he cared about back in his world. No enemies, no Harry, and his Spider-Man is nowhere to be seen. He can't find his company or his son and someone else (cough-Bishop-cough) is living in his penthouse. Not to mention he just got pulled out of 2002 into the 2023 of a ridiculously high-tech universe so even as "something of a scientist" he's completely lost. And then he learns that the Goblin's actions lead to his death. He has a lot of reason not to want to work with the Goblin anymore, don't forget he was always horrified of the things the creature did.
  • Not to mention, even if he did enter the MCU still aligned with the Goblin's goals in any way whatsoever, the Goblin might have done some pretty horrific things since entering the new universe that woke Norman up in a big way. Heck, the Goblin blew up a bridge full of people who Norman never met and has no reason to hate - and we saw kids on that bridge earlier. Seeing innocent people in an innocent universe being killed by the Goblin's indiscriminate bloodlust might have given Norman an offscreen Heel Realization.

Tentacle AI

• Given that Spidey had already overwritten the Tentacle AI and stopped them "listening" to Octavius why was he still a villain until they put a new inhibitor chip on him?
  • Maybe because Spidey only took external control of the tentacles, meaning the A.I was still active in Octavius's head.
  • When Otto is finally healed, he mentions the voices in his head finally stopping. They seem to have reframed the whole situation to being Otto himself going crazy from all the noise in his head, rather than the tentacles controlling him. On one hand, this makes more sense, as the tentacles had no reason for being evil in the original movie, and Otto's actions serve only to fulfill his own ego. On the other, it makes the scene where he fights back against the tentacles and goes back to being Otto in Spider-Man 2 make a lot less sense.
    • The tentacles are controlling Otto. But not in a "We command you". But all the noise is akin to schizophrenia. He just can't think straight which feeds into the ego. They arms probably have programming to complete whatever task Otto set and they aren't "evil". But they do whatever it takes.
    • The tentacles also weren't "evil" in the original movie; they were just determined to carry out their intended purpose, which was to operate Octavius' fusion reactor. Problem is, being an unfeeling AI made them not care about the cost or danger of doing so.
    • They don’t have a motivation for being evil, yes. They do, however, have no motivation for not being evil. Humans, and indeed a lot of animals, all possess some degree of empathy. The tentacles, presumably, don’t. Therefore, they lack any reason to care about collateral damage or hurting people, making them motivated solely by the desire to fix Octavius' machine. They are evil by virtue of being perfectly willing to do 'anything' to complete their goal.

With great power comes great responsibility phrase

• Andrew's Peter goes along with Tobey's in saying that Uncle Ben said, "With great power comes great responsibility," even though he didn't actually say it for him. Why?
  • Ben said words to that effect without using the phrase explicitly.
    "[Your father] believed that if you could do good things for other people, you had a moral obligation to do those things! That's what's at stake here. Not choice. Responsibility."
  • Yeah, Andrew's Peter was basically agreeing "Yep, that's pretty much what it boils down to."

Max and Dr. Connors

• The thing about Foxx's Max Dillon is that he was a nobody in Amazing Spider-man 2. Here, Connors is talking to him like he is an old high school buddy or something. They seemed chummy with one another. Connors from the first Amazing Spider-man doesn't strike me as a guy who would give Max the time and day.
  • Considering Max and Curt both worked at Oscorp, it's entirely possible that the two of them could've met up and had a few lunches together.
  • Connors was also shown to be a Nice Guy prior to his transformation, so he may have shown compassion to Max while everyone else ignored him.

Timeframe of this movie and Hawkeye

• Given that both this movie and Hawkeye both take place during the 2024 holiday season, it's implicitly implied that both the show and this film were happening around the same time as one another. Yet there's some weird continuity snarls that are kind of bothering based on the timeframe. If they're happening at the same time, why does New York's weather look very not-winter like for most of this film compared to Hawkeye? One could claim that it's because this film takes place before Hawkeye to remedy that, but if that's the case, how come Yelena still expresses interest in seeing the "new and improved" Statue of Liberty, when it should be already destroyed due to the events of this film?
  • Weather in New York can fluctuate wildly in this time of year, and that's discounting that this movie takes place with two more years of climate change and who fucking knows how the blip affected the planet's ecology.
  • A month has passed after the main events of this movie, so they could have returned the shield to the Statue's hand. Even if they didn't, the Statue remains gilded which is an improvement too.
  • The bulk of this movie takes place in early November (MJ's boss is telling her to take the Halloween decorations down), so it's a good seven weeks or so before Hawkeye begins.

Where is Pepper?

• For some reasons, Happy is the only Stark Industries employee ever appearing, and while he is far from being a top executive, he seemed to be under a lot of scrutiny from the law. Did Pepper abandon her job as CEO after Endgame to focus on raising Morgan? If so, who is Stark Industries new big boss?
  • There's a good chance she left her job after Infinity War. She and Tony were already living a very secluded life during the Blip, and it's incredibly unlikely that she just returned to the job after Endgame. As for who is in charge now, who knows? If it's relevant to know, it'll probably be revealed during Ironheart.
  • Assuming that she is still CEO, she's probably dealing with the legal and PR fallout of Stark Industries creating weaponized drones that were used in a terrorist attack.

Sandman, ally or enemy?

• Why is Sandman helping Electro, who very much does not want to go back to his universe, Lizard and Green Goblin? Marko only want to go back to his daughter, he should be helping the Spideys and asking them to hurry up and press the magic button.
  • Lack of trust. He feels that even if he helps them there's no guarantee they'll actually push the button to send him home, and there's very little chance the Spideys would trust him because of his desire to be sent home at all costs.
  • He's not helping them. The villains in the finale were all acting independently, they all wanted to get their own hands in the box, and just happened to show up at roughly the same time. Flint wanted to get to the box to press the button and get home, the others wanted to destroy it and stay alive. And considering that Electro didn't become a huge threat until Sandman was dealt with, it's fair to assume that Flint's sandstorm was actually weakening Electro for as long as it lasted (which means the Spider-Men were kinda dumb for dealing with Flint before Electro).

How is memory wipe a problem?

• Peter messes up with the spell, because he doesn't want his loved ones to forget that he's SM. Notwithstanding how them knowing increases the risk of his repeated exposure, since a secret known by more than 3 people is no longer a secret, how come Peter didn't realise he could simply tell them if he wanted? He's meant to be smart, isn't he?
  • He's also a teenager who panicked. Simple as that.
  • In the scene proper he talks about how he can't "put Aunt May through that (revealing his secret identity) again". He's presumably concerned about the psychological trauma damaging his relationships (the discussion notedly starts with him wondering if MJ will still be his girlfriend given their relationship kicked off with the sharing of his secret identity).
  • Even if he tells them again, the moments they shared before would have been lost. Which, in MJ's case in particular, is almost their entire relationship, since she only got closer to him when she started suspecting he was Spider-Man.
    • Though if it's Spider-Man drew her to Peter Parker, then she would have an easier time reestablishing her romance with Peter. Though for Ned, that would be harder since he knew Peter well before he found out about his identity as Spider-Man.
    • It's a bit more complicated than that. MJ was pretty heavily implied to have fallen for Peter long before she figured out he was Spider-Man, so losing those memories of him would definitely be a major blow.

Will the Avengers remember Spidey?

• Are the Avengers going to remember Spider-Man? Yeah, the very existence of Peter Parker is all but wiped out from everyone's mind at the end of the film so all people know about Spider-Man but nothing about his secret identity. However, Spider-Man participated in the Avengers Civil War, Infinity War and the Battle of Earth in the behalf of the Avengers, so are they at least going to remember him as their teammate but will forget about his civilian identity?
  • Considering that even Strange said that he would forget, yes the Avengers will remember Spider-Man helping them but not that he is Peter.
• The wording was a bit inconsistent, but at one point Strange said that everyone on Earth would forget. It is possible that the Guardians or Captain Marvel could remember him (it's not clear whether Thor knew the kid's name or not)

Tobey's Spidey can't die from being stabbed?

• How does Tobey's Peter survive Green Goblin's stab? Regardless his healing factor, it's implied in the original trilogy that Spider-Man can still be killed by any normal means (like when Venom tried to garrote him). He was nearly killed by the Goblin's glider in the first film and Venom tried to stab him with New Goblin's glider in the third film, which killed Harry when he sacrificed himself to save Peter.
  • Surviving a stab wound is not rare at all, super powers or not. You could also make a case that with the spider sense, he knew the stab wouldn’t be fatal.
    • He was shown surviving Harry stabbing him in Spider-Man 3.
• In movies, heroes survive stab wounds and gunshot wounds all the time. Even heroes who don't have enhanced durability and healing like Spider-man. Across various media, Spidey has survived much more severe injuries.
• Despite what TV might tell you, very few wounds are instantly fatal. Humans are surprisingly robust. Abdominal wounds can take days to kill someone, and it's usually less a result of the wound itself and more stuff from inside one's body leaking into places it shouldn't normally be, causing toxins and infections. Add in superhuman toughness, and Tobey Peter might easily be able to wait to get back to his universe, change his clothes, and then go wherever he needs to go to get his injury taken care of. That's not saying that a stab can't kill him: puncture his lungs he'll have minutes, puncture his heart he'll have seconds, puncture his brain and its pretty much over (though even then, not necessarily), just that a stab in the back in what looks like the left kidney area isn't going to be immediately fatal, even for the average person, let alone a Spectacular Spider-Man.

How will the lives of the villains improve now?

• If all the villains were returned to their respective universes, how are they going to return to normal lives? Let's see their cases: for Norman; he is publicly dead, so explaining his resurrection is gonna be tricky, in addition it's unknown if Oscorp is still active after Spider-Man 3 (it could have been closed down since 2007), in case Norman wants to retake his company. All that aside, Harry is dead, so Norman will not be able to patch up their relationship, which is what he mostly wanted. Now Doc Ock: like Norman, he doesn't have any family left, as his wife was killed thanks to the fusion reactor, and after all the crimes he committed, no one will want to hire him as a scientist. He can also easily be arrested for murdering the doctors during his stay at the hospital and possibly some cops while robbing the bank, for destroying the bank and the coffee shop, and trying to kill Aunt May and a train full of people. Now Sandman: he is still a criminal wanted by the police and will serve time once he is apprehended due to accidentally murdering Ben Parker. And the Lizard: the Tumblr campaign done to promote The Amazing Spider-Man 2 confirms that despite his claims of being controlled by the serum, he was still sent to prison for murdering Captain Stacy and trying to transform all New Yorkers into reptilian humanoids. The only villain who has any chance to return to a normal life by this point is Electro, as Oscorp covered his death and could just retract their previous claims and say that Max took a long vacation. Max can even get Alistair Smythe fired for causing his transformation, which nearly landed Oscorp in trouble in the stock market.
  • Each villain is from a different timeline of the Raimiverse and Webbverse, which means Norman will return to the time period where he is still alive, possibly erasing all events of Spider-man 2 and 3. It's basically Endgame time-travel logic: anything that happens in one person's timeline won't affect the other. When Norman goes back home, he will face the 2002 younger Tobey Spider-man, not the older one from this movie.

How does Norman Osborn go through a severe beating without a mark on him?

• In their final confrontation, Peter is repeatedly punching Norman in the face, and isn't holding back, yet Norman is never knocked out, nor does he show any signs of injury. Even with his strength and durability enhanced, Norman should be showing some cuts and bruises.
  • He didn't have much in the way of bruises in the first Raimi film when he fought Peter. On top of that, the serum that turned him into the goblin was a body-enhancer drug that made him physically better than a man would be at his age. It could also be a healing factor. We don't know what his is, but this would explain how he didn't show any bruises.
  • It could always be a contract thing. Maybe William Dafoe has stipulated they aren't allowed to blemish the moneymaker.

Let us attack this super teenager who just murdered the all-powerful Mysterio!

• Some of the New Yorkers thought it was a good idea to try to capture (and harass) a super strong teenager who supposedly murdered Mysterio, a supposedly magical powerful being from another universe? The detective seems awfully smug and cocky when he was interrogating Peter. This kid could break every bone in their bodies if he was an actual villain.
  • Humans are stupid, news at eleven.
  • It's hardly the first time in the MCU regular powerless humans have been surprisingly dumb about giving a hard time to superheroes that could easily break them in half. They're just dumb like that, and unfortunately going through the Blip hasn't made them any smarter.
  • How did Coach Wilson know about what happened in London with Mysterio? He wasn’t there nor did him and Beck meet, so how could he have possibly known about that?
  • The attacks took place in a very public place with many witnesses and there was major news coverage.
  • The detective has leverage in the form of May and his friends, and the mob would probably be ecstatic if he retaliated.

Mid-Credits Scene

• Why wasn't the bit of Symbiote returned to its universe along with Eddie and Venom?
  • Presumably it was too small to count as "Venom". The spell was set to reverse the initial effect - send back people it has summoned - but it wasn't precise enough to clean up bits they had left, because where would it stop? blood stains? exhaled air? half digested food? Of course with the hive mind memory, this bit could grow into a full Venom, as soon as it finds a host.
  • Just like Carnage, that offshoot is a separate individual from Venom. The spell sent all of the invaders back to their home universes, but that symbiote was born in the MCU; thus making it unaffected by the spell.

Spell plot hole

• Doctor Strange's spell at the end of the film makes everyone forget about Peter Parker. He emphasizes that this spell really affects everyone and there are absolutely no exceptions this time. This means that Peter Parker himself should be affected like everyone else. Yet in the aftermath of the spell, he clearly remembers events and relationships that other characters don't, knows who he is and knows that he is Spider-Man.
  • Likely an in-universe example of Developer's Foresight so that Agamoto or whoever created the spell wouldn't end up giving themselves amnesia when casting it.
  • There is also a slight implication in the teaser for ‘’Multiverse of Madness’’. That Strange either will remember he cast a spell he really shouldn’t have cast, or that he will be remembered. Possibly, the spell isn’t supposed to affect the caster like the others.
    • The spell does affect the caster. Strange makes that clear in the beginning: "Everyone is about to forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man...including me." And the original question here is why Peter Parker remembers himself, not why Strange remembers Peter (which he doesn't).
  • Presumably the spell cannot actually make someone forget about themselves. It can make you forget specific events, and it can make you forget about specific people that you've met, but it can't erase your own self-identity and turn you into a total amnesiac. Thus, Peter Parker is immune to the spell (in this specific instance).

Wong being the Sorcerer Supreme

• Strange states that the reason Wong got the title is because he has seniority due to the former having been blipped for 5 years. But, didn't Wong already have seniority? He'd been with the Masters of the Mystic Arts for some number of years before Strange showed up. The Ancient One never named a successor, so why did Strange assume he was even in the running?
  • They might have been joking around.
  • It's not necessarily a seniority thing. Strange became the Sorcerer Supreme because of his mastery of the Time Stone and besting Dormammu; during the Blip when it was assumed he was dead and gone, Wong might have been the most capable sorcerer left on the planet. So he becomes Sorcerer Supreme, and since the title seems to be for life once Strange comes back it's still Wong's position until he dies/chooses to pass it on.
  • The mechanics of inheritance are never specified. Strange lost the station when he was blipped, assuming he even had it in the first place, and it passed on to Wong. If it's anything like the comics it wouldn't revert back to Steven automatically; there have been periods where the world has had no Sorcerer Supreme at all.

Peter getting into, and paying for, college

• It was mentioned that even if Peter was accepted to MIT he (and M.J.) would need scholarships to afford it. Seems funny that Tony had the forethought to leave Peter an orbital drone super weapon but not some money to pay for his education, as well as a really strong reference letter to help get him into any school he wants. Even if Tony didn’t, one would think that it might occur to Pepper. Even Happy probably would have suggested it to Pepper if for no other reason than to please May. Bottom line is that Peter should not have to worry about getting into or affording the school of his choice considering his close relationship with Tony Stark. There’s ways that money could have been left to him confidentially if there was concern about people wondering why Tony Stark left a sum of money to some random kid from Queens, and a reference letter could have been based on Peter’s “internship”.
  • Maybe Peter doesn't realize he should call Pepper, especially while Stark Industries is presumably still dealing with the legal fallout of Mysterio. And Happy was too busy with other stuff. Maybe May and Peter never told him, or he didn't realize there was actually a need. As for Tony's end...yeah, the guy lacks proper foresight. Peter was absolutely not ready for EDITH, at least not without Karen to help. Maybe Tony told Fury to fork over the glasses when Peter was much older, but Talos screwed up.
  • Could be that May wound up using whatever college stipend Tony left for Peter's education to hire Matt Murdock to be their defender. Lawyers that good don't come cheap, and even if he kept them both from going to prison, there were probably some hefty fines levied against Spider-Man for property damage, etc.
  • Matt tends to work within his clients' means, so he probably wouldn't have accepted Peter's college fund as payment if it were offered (it needing to be applied to the payment of fines is entirely plausible, though). The more likely explanation is that Tony simply didn't think of it. He just doesn't get a lot of "normal people" stuff, including Social Security Numbers, so probably just didn't think ahead that Peter would need his help getting into college, or that he wouldn't be around to supply it as and when it happened. Yeah, Peter could have cashed in his relationship with Tony through Pepper or Happy, but A) if he didn't think of following up on a rejection letter he probably didn't think of calling his moneyed friends, and B) even if he did think of it, he probably felt it in poor taste, "Mr. Stark, may he rest in peace, was so good and cool and friendly, he really would have wanted you to pay for my college."

Where did Otto go?

• Maybe the attack from Electro knocked him out until that fight was over, but where was he afterwards? It seems Electro's attack failed to destroy the new inhibitor chip, and he seemed to be all on-board with helping Peter after receiving it, so why would he leave?
  • Police and explosions. He dipped, and waited for the opportune moment to intervene. Probably took a while to find a boat too.
    • Yeah they fixed his morality, but he still has the instincts of a supervillain. He's sneaky, deceptive and cunning, and he makes tracks when he sees cops. Remember Superior Spider-Man? Good Doc Ock is still Doc Ock.

Why did they shoot him?

• Peter was just kneeling as he tragically watched his Aunt die in his arms and that SWAT team just proceeded to open fire on an unarmed teenager. What the hell was that about?
  • Sadly, some cops are trigger happy. Given Peter's powers and the fact that many people believed he was a murderer, they might have been particularly jumpy.
  • Further, they instructed Peter to surrender or they would fire, and waited some time for him to respond. As for why they threatened to fire in the first place, presumably they thought he was in league with the supervillains (they didn't really see what had happened).

Create a hologram or illusion of Spider-man to fool the world

• Does Dr. Strange have the power to create illusions? Why not create a fake Spider-Man and have him web-sling across the city while Peter is in school? Would it have fooled Jameson and the world?
  • The genie is out of the bottle. Immediately after he was outed there were already helicopters following Peter home. Plus he never even denied being Spider-man, only murdering Mysterio. That sort of thing has worked in comics before, but the MCU is somewhat more grounded in reality, and once people know what to look for there's likely just too much evidence (even if only circumstantial) to convince people that he isn't Spider-man.

Illegal photo

• How is Jameson able to get away with using a school photo of Peter for his reports? Peter is still a minor and it's unlikely that Jameson asked the Midtown School for permission to use it.
  • Peter is a senior in the movie. Depending on when exactly the photo was taken, he could have been 18 and legally an adult.
  • In Far From Home which took place only two weeks prior, he said he was 16 and in this movie he said he was 17 but could’ve gotten the number wrong.
    • Only the opening act takes place in the weeks after Far From Home, the main plot takes place several months later in November after Peter's birthday.
    • The question was specifically referring to the use of Peter's picture in the opening, which was only two weeks after Far From Home, so Peter would still be 16 when they showed his photo on the news.
    • Maybe Jameson weaseled his usage of the photo by exploiting a not-yet-plugged loophole about the legal status of blipped minors? Same as how Flash tried to acquire alcohol in the previous film by showing the birth date on his passport, before the rest of the class outed him as chronologically five years younger than it indicated.
  • Out of curiosity what are the specific laws in question and the penalties for violating there of? Is it something Peter and May would have to sue Jameson over or is it something the authorities would fine him for? Either way unless it's specifically the kind of thing that's going to get him arrested, there's nothing to say that he wasn't penalized in some fashion for it, but the popularity from breaking the story and support from believers allowed him to ride out and brush off the consequences.
  • During his broadcast, he specifically refers to Peter as a 17 year old.
  • Depends on the laws of this fictional version of New York. And whether or not he's willing to risk lawsuits over it (happens regularly in the real world, even in things like advertising which have much less of a fair use argument than something claiming to be news). Also, the school might not have a say, if the photographer holds the copyright and a photo release form letting them use it however was signed.
  • Laws need to be upheld in order for them to mean anything. Either Peter or Midtown High going after Jameson would lead to a high profile court case they couldn't afford and would just feed into Jameson's narrative, all while accomplishing nothing.
  • There is nothing to get away with. It is not illegal to broadcast a picture of someone who has been accused of a crime. There is no copyright tort committed either. News reporting is a clearly established part of the "fair use" exception to copyright.

Tobey's Spidey and Andrew's Spidey have not experienced something like this before?

• Why are Tobey's Spidey and Andrew's Spidey so surprised of meeting each other and traveling to other universes? Didn't they meet first in the original Spider-Verse comic when they joined the Spider-Army fought the Inheritors on Earth-001?
  • That's clearly not part of the MCU canon.
    • The MCU exists within the Marvel Multiverse, so it's technically canon. Tom's Spider-Man even appeared in Spider-Geddon.
    • Perhaps they were alternate variants of those specific iterations.
    • Maybe the ones we saw in the comics were from the tie-in comics of the movies?
  • Could be that this is set before any of the Spider-Verse comic events for all of them. Time is relative for these things sometimes.
  • "See, I have met other Spider people before, but they always looked like being inside cartoons, anime or even comic books. This is the first time I met other Spider people that look like, you know, people!"

Why was Dr. Strange in such a pissy mood?

• What is his deal that made him so short-tempered? Is it because he's no longer Sorcerer Supreme after being dead for five years? Because by this point he's had time to get over that. Pretty much the entire plot could have been avoided if Strange had properly explained the spell to Peter BEFORE he started casting, and he should have anticipated that Peter would to want some people to remember him since the spell would go far beyond making everyone forget Spider-Man's secret identity. If he had slowed down and explained the spell to Peter, he could have added exceptions at the time of casting instead of rushing through it and botching. It seems out of character for him to be so unprofessional.
  • According to the WandaVision team he was originally supposed to have (largely unsuccessfully) tried to stop Wanda by creating hundreds of commercials and sending them to her. It was changed at the last second due to COVID. It’s possible the original screenplay had his frustration with the Maximoff situation be the source of his grumpiness.
  • Strange doesn't really get pissy until Peter starts messing up the spell. Note Strange's line, where he says that he forgets Peter is just a kid because of all the amazing things he's done. Given that another frequent question is why both Peter and Strange collaborated on such a reckless course of action that created such a monumental disaster, it seems likely a lot of Strange's bad mood is anger at himself for not taking a moment before starting the spell to make sure it went off correctly, which Strange is displacing onto Peter as simply a convenient target.
  • The simplest explanation is probably just that Strange is kind of an asshole. He's undeniably a hero with good intentions in the big picture, but his origin story made it very clear that he's also a dick in small-scale social interactions. He seems to be showing improvement due to his career as a superhero but part of him is probably always going to be that rude hotshot surgeon from his past life. It's worth noting that he's also always been very arrogant, which probably explains why he thought he could just casually throw together an explicitly very dangerous spell like that. When faced with the reality that they're more fallible than they thought they were it's normal for people like that to lash out at anyone else they can place some of the blame on.
  • Strange is a busy man with a lot of stressful responaibilities who tried to do a kid a favor, only for said kid to blow it all up and increase Strange's workload by orders of magnitude. It'd be normal for a man to get pissy in that situation.
  • Strange started out pretty friendly with Peter (he insisted on not being called "sir" at first). He only got frigid after the spell was botched and it was established as having multiversal-wide repercussions. On top of the potential unravelling of reality itself is seconds later Peter mentioned that he never even though to try any number of mundane solutions that would have zero consequence. That's enough to sour anyone's mood.
  • Strange points it out himself; Peter could have just as easily pled his case to MIT before asking the former Sorcerer Supreme to brainwash the world, not even touching on how close the spell skirted the multiverse.
  • Peter doesn't ask him to brainwash the world (he asks for time travel), Strange volunteers to brainwash the world with a spell that skirts the multiverse. Strange is the one with the knowledge of what's concerned and the risks and the one who is responsible here, not Peter.
• That was Strange being pissy?? Compared to how charming he usually is in social interactions, some viewers might consider this to be his nicest film! He even sort of admitted to Peter that he's one of the people who loves him.

How does Peter afford his new apartment?

• NYC rent is notoriously pricey even for people with degrees and full-time jobs. How is Peter, an 18-year-old kid studying for his GED since he was un-personed out of high school thanks to Dr. Strange's spell, able to afford a Manhattan high-rise with no roommate at the end of the movie? Even if he received an inheritance from Tony and/or Aunt May, would he have access to those funds (or even any preexisting accounts in his own name) after all records of his existence have been wiped clean? The only possibility is Dr. Strange figuring something out.
  • It works if you assume that people forgot about Peter Parker, while documentary evidence of his existence remained. So it's possible that there are documents which prove that Peter Parker is May Parker's legal heir, and that he is thus entitled to whatever money/assets she had (not that it'd likely be much), even though no one actually remembers meeting or interacting with this nephew.
  • Maybe, but Jameson specifically says at the end, "If Spider-Man is such a hero, then why doesn't he take off his mask?" Meaning to some extent, the spell has effected physical records and not just people's minds. The only solution is, the spell only erased evidence tying Peter Parker to Spider-Man, but left his mundane identity records alone. But if that's the case, then why did he have to drop out of school? Even if his teachers no longer remember him, he'd still have his student ID and appear in his class rosters. Unless he chose to drop out because he couldn't bear to be around MJ and Ned without them remembering him...
  • The spell was specifically targeting human memories. However, it also seemed to affect news articles and videos containing the info that Peter was Spider-Man, as otherwise a bunch of people would be able to quickly put 2 and 2 back together. This would leave Peter's legal information intact. Otherwise, he wouldn't be able to do much in the world, like get a GED or rent an apartment because he has no SSN. Hell, he wouldn't even be able to get a decent job without one either if he intends to get paid, which would then need him to open at least 1 bank account somewhere. It'd cause a domino effect. On top of that, we see him moving all of his things in boxes into his new apartment, which are shown to contain everything from May's apartment that was his. He'd probably sell off the non-important stuff May had, like her clothes, jewelry, material possessions, electronics that Peter wouldn't keep, non-essential stuff or stuff Peter couldn't use. Her will would probably still exist with everything most likely going to Peter as well and, if not, her belongings would go to her next of kin, which would also be Peter. She'd probably also leave him some money, or have some money in her bank account left, so he'd start out by getting a cheap apartment. He'd probably be kicked out due to the owner of the lease being deceased and the building owner would give him till the end of where the last rent payment would give him. Peter might also get the security deposit back, which would also help. Peter would have a decent amount of time to find an apartment, pay to move his stuff, see about getting his GED, etc. Logistically, there's a LOT that they implied happened at the end of the movie that would lead you to think that he's gonna initially be ok for a bit. Peter's really smart with math, so he could easily divide his money where it'd need to go. If he gets his usual job at the Daily Bugle (assuming it's still a newspaper thing in addition to Jameson's broadcasts, or has an online article publishing component), or something, it'd help. Or, he could file for unemployment. Which, given he's probably gonna go to college as well as just lost his only guardian, would probably be a viable choice for him to at least pay his rent. If he invests his money well as well, he could coast off that for a while. Maybe he'd also get some financial aid. Though, that's depending on if he goes to college right away. Which, he might not given he needs to get himself situated first with his new status quo, which would make sense. Lots of people do that.
  • Given that he had a fair amount of fancy Stark Industries stuff at their safe house (even if it got blown up the stuff is probably at least somewhat resilient) and at their own home (which he could get into with his powers and it's not technically stealing since it IS their stuff even if he can't legally claim it) it's possible he pawned alot of that stuff off to get some petty cash. That Lego Death Star is worth a few hundred even used for example and he only seemed to have kept one of the figures.
  • Maybe he took a bunch of photos of Spider-man and sold them to J. Jonah Jameson. Or maybe he got a job as a pizza delivery guy (at a place that's willing to overlook his lack of paperwork). He's got superpowers. He's smart. He's willing to work hard. He figured something out.
• The fact that he was able to get an apartment at all should be enough evidence that Peter Parker still legally exists.
• Exact Words, people. The spell made everyone forget "who Peter Parker is", not "that Peter Parker exists". All those public news articles and social media posts only involved Peter Parker's name and face through Spider-Man, but a social security number is assigned at birth or something (non-American troper here) and the legal records of May being Peter's legal guardian would probably still be there.
  • IIRC, the actual exact words were "It will be like you never existed". So yes, everyone does forget that Peter Parker exists. That's why MJ doesn't recognize him at the end (not even just as a non-Spider-Man classmate). But it's possible that some documentary evidence does still exist.

Why not forget Spider-Man?

• The spell stops the rifts by having the Peter Parker half of Spider-Man completely erased for peoples' memories. Why not the other half? It would have worked out better: Peter could have his friends and move on with his life, he could drop Spider-Man for an indefinite amount of time, and the superhero could be reintroduced with a fresh start, which is favourable to a kid being ghosted. Of course, nothing indicates the spell was controllable at that point, but there's also nothing suggesting the contrary.
  • The spell needed to make people forget about Peter Parker, not about Spider-Man. It was people who knew that Peter Parker was Spider-Man who were threatening to break through into the MCU, with Peter Parker being the important part.
    • But why was it the important part? The spell was targeting "people who know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man". If you made them forget who Spider-Man was, (but not Peter Parker,) they'd no longer "know Peter Parker was Spider-Man", just as much as if you make them forget the "Peter Parker" half of the equation.
  • The fact that Strange doesn't suggest an alternate course of action strong implies that this was the best option available. For whatever magical reason, he couldn't do what you suggested. It might be because many millions, if not billions of people are aware that Spider-Man exists, but only a couple hundred people know that Peter Parker exists without the Spider-Man connection. Erasing all memory of Peter Parker is probably a lot easier than erasing all memory of Spider-Man.
  • In all likelihood, the spell wasn't formed with the idea of dual identities in mind.
    • Apparently, it does as everyone remembers Spider-Man with Happy going so far as to recall his adventures with him but they forgot Peter. Logically, the spell would have worked fine the other way around.

Otto and Connors

• Why doesn't Otto react to seeing the alternate Dr. Connors being the Lizard, given that he knew his universe's Curt Connors?
  • It's possible that he made the connection but simply didn't bring it up, and chalked it up to yet another one of the 'fascinating' parallels between worlds (much like how Osborn reacts to learning about an MJ who's not Mary Jane). Or maybe he did bring it up off-screen. There are a lot of such connections that could have been made among the villains - for instance, Connors and Dillon reacting to another version of Norman Osborn whose company they worked for in their reality (with Connors likely being personally acquainted with his universe's Norman) - that probably weren't explored for lack of time.
  • Might've been in the script or deleted scenes that was left out of the theatrical cut for whatever reason. We'll have to wait to see on the home releases.

Seeking help from Doctor Strange after the Memory wipe

• Why didn't Peter Parker seek Doctor Strange after the memory wipe? Even if Doctor Strange doesn't remember, he is the person most likely to believe him (even if not right away) and help Peter Parker organize his life. Not only that, but telling Doctor Strange that there was a problem in the multiverse could stop future problems. Finally, Peter Parker knows that there are absurd threats in the world, where half the world has literally disappeared because of Thanos, so having a contact for these situations is an excellent idea.
  • Last time he asked Dr. Strange for help, he put the multiverse and his closed ones in danger, which is why he didn't try to reconnect with his friends in the end after seeing MJ with her injuries. And the whole point of being Spider-Man was to be a friendly neighborhood hero, not go out with wizards and gods to fight Avenger level threats.
  • The main point of the film is that Peter was trying to live two lives unsuccessfully, and needed to choose to be either Spider-Man or Peter Parker. His conversation with MJ made him realize there was no clever way for him to have his cake and eat it, too, and that he needed to own the consequences of his decisions. Going to Strange would be him entering into his life as Peter Parker after he decided to focus on Spider-Man. While Peter could have used help getting his ducks in a row, Spider-Man doesn't.

He didn’t Marry Mary Jane?

• You can see on Tobey Peter’s hand that he has no ring so he and MJ (his MJ) didn’t get married. Very strange considering last time they showed him he was planning to propose to her, and he already made it clear that they’re still together. It’s very surprising how they haven’t already tied the knot.
  • The film leaves it vague as to whether or not they're married. If they are, then it might not have had his ring on him, likely for easing of slipping on his suit if the need arises.
  • A guy who refrains from carrying ID to ensure his secret identity can remain a secret, thus protecting his loved ones, isn't going to wear physical evidence that he has loved ones when he's trying to be anonymous.
  • Some people do habitually not wear their wedding rings, especially if they have a job where even that minor bit of jewelry would be detrimental. In Tobey Peter's case, especially given how often his suit gets damaged, not wearing the ring is perfectly sensible. There might also be a host of reasons why Peter and MJ are not fully married (though they might be Common Law married), again explaining the absence of a ring.

Is the plane in Electro's universe going to crash?

• They may have cured Electro, but the plane in his timeline might be in serious trouble. In Amazing Spider-man 2, the electricity in the plane only returned AFTER Max overloaded and died.
  • The power came back on just before he exploded. Depending on when exactly he was taken, the power might still have returned in time.

Nick Fury and Talos

• The DODC agent interrogating Peter and the others rebutted the latter's claim by simply saying that Fury has been off-world during the whole Mysterio ordeal. The problem is, both Nick Fury and Maria Hill were impersonated by Talos and his wife at that time, presumably, specifically to cover the fact that Fury is elsewhere (probably because his presence is still a very strong factor or something). If the DODC agent knew that Fury was actually off-world and knows that Peter was actually there with Talos-as-Fury, why would he counter Peter's argument with this fact? It's also a bit unbelievable that he wouldn't know that Talos was secretly running around as Fury during all that time, as "Fury" and "Hill" seemed to go around a lot for 'official' business, and even with a full team with them.
  • Talos hasn't been doing a very good job masquerading around as Fury, and he knows it. I mean, it's embarrassing for a shapeshifter... Last we saw of them, Talos was asking Fury how much longer this has to go on. Maybe SWORD came clean and told the people with high-enough security clearance that the real Fury is off-world? Damage Control was Stark-level important, and they are dealing with a case relating to a huge terrorist attack from two weeks prior. It seems like a big enough deal to warrant that.

Not even a try to find Gwen

• When preparing the cures and devices for the villains and forming the battle plan, both Peter-2 and Peter-3 already roughly know why and how all those multiversal visitors including them were pulled to the MCU. Why wouldn't Peter-3 just simply thought and asked if his Gwen is also somehow pulled (alive and well) to that world, just like the dead villains? Especially since he already knows how easy it is for Ned to just conjure up a portal while wishing to find the person.
  • Because it wouldn't be his Gwen. His Gwen is dead. This is the multiverse, not time travel. Any Gwen that came through would be from a different universe to the one Peter 3 is from.
  • Unless she was pulled through before her death, like many of them seem to have been. Death clearly isn't a barrier to the spell.
  • Yes it is, because none of them were dead yet. Furthermore, those aren't the original villains from the universe Peter 2 and Peter 3 are from. They're technically variants from different universes that were created when they were pulled in by the spell. Their timelines split from Peter 2 and 3's from that point on just as the timelines created by the time travel in Endgame split from the Sacred Timeline the moment the time travelers arrived in the past. They villains not the exact same people shown at the climaxes of their originals films same way Thanos at the end of Endgame isn't the exact same version of the character we saw in Infinity War, as they've experienced different events from the earlier versions.
  • Also, the more obvious answer: He's still grieving her. He's gotten to a point of embitterment over her death that he's no longer pulling punches on the people he fights. That's a HUGE thing for Spider-Man, as we well saw in the final fight between MCU Spider and Goblin. If he's that far gone, he wouldn't think to look for or bring her into this situation...because he's still mourning her.
  • Because he knows Parkers aren't that lucky. The spell pulled through the worst of the worst of the cinematic Spider-Men's villain rosters, and what little good luck a Peter Parker has pulled through two other Peters to help with that. Anyone else who got pulled through before Strange shut the spell down is probably someone they don't want to find.

Do the villains keep their memories of the movie events?

• If they get to keep their memories, couldn't they prevent their deaths from happening (retreat or change their tragedy)?
  • That's kind of the whole point of the movie. Even if they don't remember these specific events, the point was that they were "cured" of the things that made them villainous, so upon their return to their home universes, they'll have the opportunity to choose a path that does not lead to their death in battle with Spider-Man. A Norman Osborn free of the Green Goblin won't cue his glider to attack Peter from behind, which Peter dodge so that it kills him. Doctor Octopus freed from the control of his AI arms might find a way to stop his fusion reactor without dying in the process. Connors returned to human form won't fight Peter as he tries to cure Connors' widespread lizard serum. Max drained of his electric powers won't need to be overloaded to the point of destruction to stop his attack on the power plant. The only one who doesn't directly benefit is Flint, but by removing his sand powers and with Tobey Peter to try and help him out, maybe he'll find a better way than crime to try and provide for his family and see his daughter.

So Mysterio won?

• At the end, everyone forgets that Peter Parker exists, so Mysterio's video was likely altered or ceased to exist just like Flash's book, but The Daily Bugle still annoys Spider-Man by calling him a menace. Considering that Spider-Man's past actions are still remembered, does this mean that Mysterio's "heroic feats" are remembered as well? Him stopping the Elementals didn't involve Peter Parker in any way.
  • Even before the spell there was a split of supporters and how Peter got the legal charges cleared suggests that it was shown in court that the Elementals were illusions and believers of Mysterio are dead set on believing. The ending suggests that the Spider-Man related events still happened only without anyone knowing who he was.

Memory wipe Part 2

• Besides the Obvious (they would be no movie) why didn't Strange make everybody forget MYSTERIO'S existence. Even ignoring what occurred during the casting, it would've been easier and quicker to make everybody forget the existence of a guy who was only public knowledge for a few months than somebody who's been acting as a hero for nearly 3 years (and would've been public knowledge for about 8 when you consider the Blip).
  • Strange was doing what Peter asked, and Peter simply didn't think of it. Him being Spider-Man was plastered everywhere and was more on his mind than Mysterio specifically. Also, Peter originally asked to make everyone forget that he's Spider-Man, which is only something that largely happened at the same time people found out about Mysterio, so the time isn't an issue.
  • Not precisely. Peter's initial request was for Strange to alter time so that Mysterio didn't reveal Peter's identity, which Strange can't do because he doesn't possess the Time Stone anymore (though he is still wearing the Eye of Agamotto, though without the Time Stone it remains unclear what powers it may or may not possess). It's Strange who comes up with the idea to use a memory erasing spell, and he fixates on "the knowledge that Peter Parker is Spider-Man is the problem." Yes, if Strange and Peter had sat down for thirty minutes and talked over their options, they could have arrived at something better. But Peter is a teenager who knows nothing about magic, so he defers to the much older and (presumably but mistakenly) wiser Strange in that regard. Strange is lapsing back into a bit of his old arrogance, seeing the immediate solution he came up with as the best and only one, not pausing to consider before going through with it to talk to Peter about all the angles and ramifications. It's a stupid mistake on both their parts, but a believable one given their established character traits.
  • How would it help if everyone forgot about Mysterio's existence? People would just be saying to themselves "I remember that Peter Parker is Spider-man...though I can't remember how I originally learned that. Well, whatever. The point is: Peter Parker is Spider-man!"

Andrew's Peter stopped pulling his punches?

• He made that statement after he described how Gwen's death broke him, but that couldn't be true, because technically if he punched someone at full strength, it would kill them. They already made it clear that none of the Spider-Men are killers.
  • Force is a gradient, not Black and White. Just because Andrew didn't kill anybody that doesn't mean he didn't use more force than was required. For example he may have been giving multiple broken bones rather than sprains and bruises.
  • He was probably also speaking metaphorically.
  • Spider-Man has to be careful not to break bones or knock somebody's head off. Not pulling punches doesn't mean he's always hitting with his full force, just less careful about how much force he puts behind said punches. It's easy for him to break a normal person's...anything if he hits them, and now...he cares even less if he does. Plus, even with an enhanced physiology, throwing your entire weight into every punch you throw is exhausting because it takes effort to go all out. Thus, he's most likely operating more within that 40-80% strength range instead of his normal...let's guesstimate and say 20-30%.
  • Probably more like 2-3%. According to most stats, Spider-Man's basic strength is sufficient to lift ten tons. 20% would be hitting someone with around two tons of force, still more than enough to be messily fatal. It's also unclear if he's mostly fighting regular criminals or supervillains, though the only supervillain he alludes to is Rhino. If he's fighting people more in his league, he may be going closer to the high end of the 40-80% range, caring less about protecting the villain from getting hurt then about ending the fight.
  • Maybe he killed his Harry Osborne in a blind rage some time after the events of TASM 2 and it was part of how seriously messed up he was.

EDITH's Records

• At the start of the movie EDITH is confiscated when Peter is brought in for questioning, but wouldn't there have been records of her activities/orders in the Stark systems? When Peter gave control over to Beck, there was no record of him doing so or the orders he gave?
  • Maybe they did. Matt didn't explain why he thought it would be easy to get Peter off the charges. It's entirely possible that, after sorting through all of EDITH's logs, there was more than enough evidence to cast reasonable doubt, even if it wasn't quite enough for Damage Control to just drop the case without a lawyer badgering them.

Memory Wipe: Part 3

• Is the Runes spell REALLY just a memory wiping spell? Not only does it actually erase memories, but it also erases physical evidence as well. Plus, after it is casted, everyone returns to their original universes/timeliness, as though their own reason for traveling actually got erased as well, making it seem as though it was less of a brainwashing spell and more of as an "ultimate" retconning spell that for some reason, Doctor Strange watered it down to being a simple brainwashing spell (when it is clearly more than that), most likely because he does not fully understand the spell himself.
  • The problem is that the first spell was badly botched, resulting in the unforeseen effect, of which the spell is not normally capable, of drawing from the multiverse everyone with the knowledge that was meant to be erased. What Strange is doing at the end is less "casting a spell to send everyone home," more "overwriting the botched spell with correct version, negating the effects of the botched version." Once the new spell takes effect over the old, the effects of the old spell cease, and since it was the haywire effects of the old spell drawing the multiversal visitors in, they return to where they belong.

Sandman's Survival?

• So, Sandman was turned back into Flint Marko while inside the new, incomplete, Statue of Liberty, while Electro was still slinging around bolts of electricity. How exactly did Marko survive being inside a large copper conductive that didn't appear to have any insulation?
  • It is possible that he still retains a small amount of his powers which allows him to withstand the electricity for a while.
  • Or once the loose sand had drained away, he found himself an internal stairway's landing to crouch on: one with a rubber no-slip floor mat, that wouldn't conduct a charge.
  • He would survive because of how conductive the statue itself is compared to the human body. Electricity takes the path of least resistance (when it's not being directed at someone by Electro, at least), and that's the copper in this situation. It's similar to how you're relatively safe from lightning inside a car - it'll go through the metal on the car instead of through you.
  • It's also worth mentioning that sand - as in pure silica - is actually a poor electrical conductor, so as long as he stayed in the sand and stood away from the walls, the sand would've insulated him.

Weird retcon

• The film reveals that in the Raimiverse, everyone discovered that Norman Osborn was the Green Goblin after his death, so this means that Harry already knew the truth and was just dead set on believing that Spider-Man killed his father unprovoked. However, if everyone knew about the truth, then how was Harry allowed to inherit Oscorp and keep his father's business active? Seriously, Harry should have been the most hated man in New York City after it was made public that his father was the Goblin; it should be like the equivalent of being the relative of a deranged terrorist after 9/11 (which likely happened in the Raimiverse due to the absence of the Twin Towers). However, no one seems to care about this, and even then people still speak positively about Norman, like how one of the attendees of Doc Ock's experiment assures Harry how proud his father would have been of him. That aside, Oscorp should have been immediately closed down due to the bad publicity they would have received, as the Green Goblin's equipment belonged to them. One can wonder why the army didn't force them to cease operations and why Quest Aerospace didn't sue them, given how the Goblin was responsible for General Slocum's death and the destruction of one of Quest's facilities.
  • The film doesn't explicitly state that's the case, at least not until the time Sandman comes from. As for Octavius knowing, he might have put two and two together since he seemed to have worked with Norman in the past and might have recognized the equipment as Oscorp.
  • Norman attacked his own employees upon becoming the Green Goblin, and stole the glider and other equipment. Oscorp as a whole can't be held responsible for a raving lunatic's crimes, merely because he happened to run it; sure, the company probably got sued and investigated, but that's not sufficient to shut it down. And Harry can't be disinherited just because Norman lost his marbles; if anything, Harry will probably end up owning Oscorp sooner in the altered history, as de-Goblinized Norman is likely to surrender and be incarcerated/committed, leaving the company in his son's hands.

Goodbye Peter Parker… and Spider-Man.

• Shouldn’t Doctor Strange’s second spell to make everyone forget Peter Parker also mean they would forget Spider-Man?, after all he doesn’t stop being Peter Parker just because he is in the Spider-Man costume.
  • The spell was about erasing knowledge and records of Peter Parker, not facts and events, and people's minds were apparently adjusted to make what they still remembered make sense to them. The fact may be that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, but if that knowledge is erased then to everyone's remaining knowledge he will simply be Spider-Man.
  • A guy who swings through the sky in coloured spandex is going to get a lot more attention than an introverted schoolboy.

Web fluid origins

When the three Peters are discussing how Tobey's is able to generate his own web fluid, Andrew's mentions how much of a hassle it is when he runs out and has to make more in a lab. But in The Amazing Spider-Man, it's shown that his web fluid is made by Oscorp—they genetically modified spiders (the same ones from which he got his powers) to produce it as a product they could sell. The only one we've seen making web fluid in a lab was Tom's in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Was the line in the script originally meant for Tom but mistakenly given to Andrew?

• It's been nearly a decade for Andrew's Peter, whose to say he didn't start making his own web fluid at some point in the intervening years?
• Especially since Oscorp's probably a deep downward spiral, what with one CEO dying, the successor going insane and becoming a homicidal monster, and some nebulous bad guy repurposing a bunch of their top-secret failed tech to equip supervillains (which may or may not have been successful). Andrew Peter would probably realize he'll need to figure this out on his own instead of relying on buying/stealing the stuff from a company whose doors are likely to shut soon. And it was his father's research that made this possible in the first place, so. . .

Ned and Spider-man 2’s convo

• When asked about his best friend by Ned, Tobey says “He died in my arms, after he tried to kill me”. Which is a bit weird because Harry actually died trying to save him.
  • It still happened shortly after he tried to kill him, Tobey just left out the extra stuff that happened in between.
  • Given Ned was pestering Peter-2 about minor details when he was busy trying to figure out how to cure Norman Osborn's affliction without having the original enhancement serum to work off, he probably said that as a passive-agressive way to shut Ned up.

Fusion Reactor and Ock's arms

• When Goblin shows up to the statue of liberty and snatches the box, Otto grabs the glider to prevent Goblin from running off with it. Goblin then severs one of Otto's tentacles. Assuming each character gets sent back to the moment where they left off in their universe, and Otto goes on to do what he was originally going to do. Redeems himself by bringing down the fusion reactor into the river. Would Otto still be able to bring down the reactor with just 3 tentacles? Spider-Man was too busy saving MJ from the collapsing building to help Otto bring down the reactor and he was using the support of all 4 tentacles to bring down the reactor.
  • Take out 3 supports and the fourth will be unable to hold the weight and collapse.
  • He is taking the Arc Reactor with him, which can also absorb energy (like, say, from Mjolnir's lightning). Otto seems to have a good understanding of what it is, so maybe he can defuse the fusion reactor differently this time?

Why didn’t the MCU Spider-Man Villains appear in the film?

• Only the Raimi-Verse and Webbverse Spider-Man Villains appear, except for the MCU Ones. Why didn’t any of them, such as The Vulture, Tinkerer, or Mac Gargan join the villains in taking down Spider-Man?
  • Vulture and Mac Gargan are probably still in prison, and the former has no desire to kill Peter. Tinkerer isn't really a threat on his own, and didn't seem all that malicious.
  • Plus there's no reason they would even be aware of each other and seek each other out.

Cure ex-machina?

• The rational decision was to send them back to their deaths, just as Doctor Strange told Peter, but then suddenly Peter is able to pull off a cure for their evilness, He's super smart, but that seriously threatens the willing suspension of disbelief even for a superhero movie. It doesn't make much sense, what stops Peter from inventing a cure for whatever villain shows up in the next movies? Why couldn't he figure this out in past Marvel movies? How about the Cap America's friend Bucky? That would solve Civil War's Tony subplot with him pretty quickly. Tony Stark, another genius, could even have helped Peter, together, they could make some cure even stronger.
  • Thing is, a cure was not an option for most MCU villains. They're hypocritical, vindictive, jaded, etc. but not usually insane, and when they are insane it's not the sort of insanity that can be fixed with an antiserum. They CHOOSE to be villains of their own volition. In contrast, the villains from the other universes were all to some extent victims of circumstances beyond their control (some more than others) or accidents, unintended results, etc. That said, the movie would have benefited from explaining more why Peter believed it was even possible to cure them as it's not established just when he found out the details of what led to the insanity and altered personalities of most of the villains in this movie. As for Bucky, him not being in his right mind was not going to stop Tony from trying to get vengeance after watching him murder his parents, and Bucky does eventually get cured of the Hydra programming.
  • Not to mention that, as far as curing physical changes, that would only apply to a handful of them, since many of the past MCU villains are either aliens whose abilities are intrinsic to their biology or unpowered humans who use technology and/or mystical artifacts.
  • Peter didn't really made any cure alone, every time he had help of someone just as smart. He fixed Octavius' chip and elaborated a nullifier for Electro with Norman's help, and for the others he got help from the other spider-men. Raimi Peter had known the Goblin and spent years thinking about a cure, and Amazing Peter had explicitly already cured Lizard, so he just had to recreate the antidote.
  • Plus, technology in the MCU is evidently decades beyond what exists in either the Raimi or Amazing 'verses, having had numerous aliens, an outed Wakanda, and a far greater number of indigenous super-geniuses stimulate its scientific advancement. Villains native to the MCU who can be cured by that kind of technology probably are cured off-camera, but nobody from the other Spideys' universes actually had the means to undo the transformations of Electro, Sandman or Norman, or to nullify Octavius's robot arms long enough to talk sense into him.

No other help?

• It might be just a case of Superman Stays Out of Gotham, but why do none of the other superheroes of the MCU (aside from Daredevil and Strange) do anything to help Peter? Even then, the lack of their voices of support seems to be quite a slap in the face to Peter (especially considering how willing Strange was to initially help Peter).
  • Given how divisive many of the Earth heroes are to the public, them voicing support could have done more harm than good. Besides, the charges against Peter were dropped, the rest was a PR problem and personal issues that none of them could have done much about for him.
  • And who will vouch for him, exactly? Superheroes will not do just because of their shared hobby, they need to know Peter to confirm that he's a good guy. Captain Marvel, for example, can not do it: what if he did kill Mysterio as the press says? It wouldn't be the first hero who kills, Ronin and Punisher have already been on that path. So, who interacted with him for at least a sustained amount of time? Iron Man, who is dead. Nick Fury, who was actually a Skrull. Dr. Strange, already in the film. The Guardians of the Galaxy, in space. And if "Team Iron Man" counts, Black Widow is dead in Vormir, Black Panther might have already passed away, original Vision was killed by Thanos, Theseus Vision is MIA, and War Machine is on military missions and perhaps did not even notice.
  • Also keep in mind that the existing heroes that could vouch for Peter aren't necessarily fans of him. Sam, Bucky, Scott, Wanda, and Clint all fought Peter in Civil War, and got in legal trouble for it. While they probably aren't so vindictive to be glad that Peter is in similar hot water, he's probably not very high on their priority lists after that.
  • Beyond serving as character witnesses, there's really nothing the other Avengers can do, since none of them were there to witness the events. Sam seems like he'd definitely give a speech in support of Peter's character, but he didn't see Spider-Man murder or not murder Mysterio, so he can't say that he knows Peter didn't do it, only that he believes he wouldn't. Words of support from people like Sam Wilson and Bruce Banner might be why public opinion on Spider-Man is pretty split, with some believing he's okay because the Avengers say so, some believing of course the Avengers would say he's okay because they're all screwed up and stick together to hide it. It wasn't mentioned in the film due to a combination of difficulty and expense getting the actors in for glorified cameos, and it just not being relevant because it doesn't really impact the central problem.
  • Honestly, this is a problem in nearly every MCU film. There are many superpowered characters, and they have many reasons to get involved in each other's business. But playing that realistically would be bad on multiple levels. For one thing, you'd slowly get into a mode where every movie has basically the same cast of characters, which would get repetitive and would also throw off all the narrative arcs you want to craft. It would also get stupidly expensive. So we're left to assume that most of the time, most of the other heroes are just busy with something offscreen.

Still complicated with Mary Jane 13 years later?

• It's clear Tobey's Spider-Man is meant to be older and likely Tobey's actual age (Ock even mentions Tobey Peter has "All grown up") which makes it strange that Tobey Peter would say his relationship with Mary Jane is "Complicated". Would he really still be having relationship problems with her 13 years later and not have it sorted out?
  • If character and actor are meant to have to same age, then it's 46. The age when people may have a midlife crisis (and this being Spider-Man, that's guaranteed). Perhaps the relation has a crisis because of that. In any case, remember that "...lived happily ever after" is just a trope, real people (husbands, relatives, friends) may have relation crisis at any point, regardless of the time they have been together.
  • In the comics, their relationship is constantly stressful even years later due to the inherent risks of being or being with a superhero. By "complicated", he probably meant something similar is going on here. The fact that they're still together is a testament to the idea that they already have sorted it out... at least as best that Spider-Man's love life can be.
  • Given Peter's middle-aged now, it's probable his Aunt May is now dead. The comics and Into the Spider-Verse both established that losing the last of his family took a toll on his relationship with MJ. There's also the outside possibility that like in the comics, they tried to have a baby and it was a stillborn. Things like that can put a strain on couples no matter how devoted they are to each other. On a final note, it'd not too out there to imagine they've had to deal with a certain silver-haired homewrecker in black spandex.

Lack of Spider sense?

• Shouldn’t Tobey’s spider sense (or even Tom’s for that matter) have sensed that the goblin was going to stab him?
  • Given the Goblin was right behind him, Tobey may have just not had enough time to react. Age and/or fatigue from all the fighting might have slowed him down just a little bit too. As for Tom, does his spider sense react to danger not aimed at him?
  • Tobey's Peter has been living with his Spidey sense for a long time, maybe he's accostumed to it in a way that he can ignore it if the danger isn't immediately lethal?
  • Or maybe he did sense the threat, but stayed put anyway because moving aside would've left Tom directly in the blade's path. Tobey's already had a bitter enemy die that way, and regretted it; he may have consciously opted for Taking the Bullet over letting the same thing happen to his new young friend.

Tom, Attempted Murderer?

• Is anyone going to bring up the fact that Tom would have murdered Osborn had Tobey not stopped him from stabbing Goblin with the glider? While the Goblin absolutely would have deserved it, there's an innocent person in there, and since Andrew had the serum, he was perfectly capable of killing the Goblin persona without hurting Osborn. Even if he wasn't thinking straight for obvious reasons, and he calmed down after Tobey stopped him, Tom being willing to essentially kill an innocent person to kill Goblin seems extremely out of character.
  • Yes, that was the point. They literally make that point in the film itself, it's why Tobey stopped him from going through with it. He's enraged by the death of May that he simply wants Goblin dead and doesn't care that Norman would get caught in the crossfire.
    • In addition to the loss of May, MJ had nearly died about two minutes earlier. He's not in a good mood.
  • He wasn’t thinking straight, he was straight up looking at the face of the man who murdered his beloved Aunt, which consumed him with vengeance. It took being stopped at the last minute to regain his sense of reason.
  • Yes, it would be OOC... and O.O.C. Is Serious Business
  • Public opinion already painted him as a killer and he can't prove a negative, so...

No PTSD?

• Seems rather strange how when Goblin showed up in the final battle, Andrew didn’t have a trauma button seeing a psychopath on a glider with pumpkin bombs just like the one who killed his girlfriend.
  • Some people handle traumatic experiences in different ways.
  • Also, Norman's costume and glider have somewhat different designs than the ones used by Andrew-Spidey's old enemy. They're analogous, but not a close enough match to freak him out: more like a bad parody of his Goblin than a direct copy, from his perspective.

Don’t make me a murderer, Pete

• Electro says this while trying to get Peter to hand over the box implying that he would be his first kill, but since he was pulled right before he died in ASM 2, he already had drowned Dr. Kafka and zapped that bodyguard to Menken by that point in the movie, making him a murderer and his point redundant.
  • He probably just meant it in the sense of “Don’t make me kill you.”
  • Who says that Dr. Kafka drowned? He may have been rescued offscreen, considering that Marton Csokas was interested in reprising the role in the planned sequels. As for Menken's bodyguard, he may have just been knocked out with Electro's electricity, as Menken is later zapped and survives.
  • The bodyguard was killed. You can see a hole in his chest after Electro zapped him. Same thing about those guards that were trying to take Harry as he begged for Electro’s help.
    • When Electro warned Peter to not make him a murderer, maybe he meant that he didn't want to kill a really innocent person? Dr. Kafka, his guards and Menken's bodyguard were all unsympathetic assholes who had wronged either Electro or Harry. From Electro's point of view, Spider-Man would be the first victim he would have that didn't wrong either him or an ally of his.
  • He could have simply been speaking of his time in the MCU proper. There's no indication he actually killed anyone directly since he swapped universes.
  • Max's marble collection doesn't seem very complete now, does it? Maybe he just doesn't remember he has already killed, or maybe he didn't know he had killed the bodyguard in the first place?
  • People find self-justifications for their own misdeeds in all sorts of ways. Max might well have classified the bodyguard's demise as a him-or-me situation, hence more of a self-defense homicide than an outright murder, at least in his own mind.

Why didn’t MCU Spider-Man encounter Venom?

• You know that Venom (along with Eddie) ended up being transported in the MCU in the film, right? So, how come Peter didn't even think about finding the sixth visitor?
  • Strange's count was apparently a bit inaccurate, seeing as Peter-2 and Peter-3 were transported by the spell as well, which would put the number up to at least 8. As for why Peter didn't check, he may have considered looking after he cured everyone else.
    • Strange only said that Peter interrupted the spell six times, not that six visitors came through, so neither of them knew the exact number of people who came through.
  • Because they never knew how many people got transported, and since Venom was far away from New York when he was caught, none of the heroes even knew he got there. Strange never needed to reunite all the intruders, he only asked Peter for time so he could find an artefact to send them back, regardless of where they were. There could have possibly been even more people brought in, but Peter only found seven of them because:
    • The intruders were actively seeking for Spider-Man, like Doc Octopus and Norman.
    • They were specifically summoned by Ned using the sling ring, in the case of the spider-men.
    • They made enough fuzz to attract attention, like Electro absorbing the energy of an electric station and getting Peter and his friend's attention (and possibly Sandman's).

Why bring Lizard too?

• From all the villains, Lizard was one of the most hostile to the idea of being cured, and different from Octavius, he couldn't be easily contained, so why did they let him stuck inside May's van, from which he escaped as soon as he got the opportunity, instead of keeping him trapped in Strange's dungeon until they figured out a cure for him too?
  • He was more of a Sour Supporter than outright hostile at first and only escaped when the situation went south.
  • Apparently they were assuming he'd cooperate because otherwise they'd push the button and send him back to his death. Granted, it still would have been safer to leave him in the dungeon. In fact it would have been safer to leave everyone in the dungeon and bring the fabricator there. But they didn't think of that.

Peter's 'Vigilantism'

• So the Feds accuse Peter of being an illegal vigilante, when Tony Stark personally sponsored him and he was a known public figure who had never any issue working with the police, so where did his Spider-Man identity suddenly become illegal?
  • Considering all the other charges were dropped pretty quickly, I imagine that was one of the arguments Matt used to get those charges removed as well.
  • Without knowing the exact language of the Sokovia Accords, it's impossible to know how legal Peter's actions were in any given event. It's quite possible there are some loopholes to still charge registered superpeople with illegal vigilantism if it's a kind of vigilantism the people who wrote the Accords don't like.

They all have to die… why?

• Why was Strange so uncompromisingly against giving Peter’s plan to cure the villains a chance? Once they rounded up all their multi-dimensional visitors and had them safely contained they could try to cure them all and then if that failed then just send them back anyway, what did he have to lose by trying?
  • Strange seemed to believe that changing them was impossible, he had no way of knowing their madness was something that could be cured in the first place either, and since they were only in his universe to begin with due to a mistake his priority was putting them back to eliminate any chance of something more going wrong. Keep in mind he had no idea just how many people came in from other dimensions, the ones that were caught were just ones that had caused trouble so far, and if more dangerous ones were lying low then it was risky to keep waiting to send everyone back.
  • Keep in mind that Strange has already seen the effects of time loops (in his own movie) and potential futures (in Infinity War, he went through 14 million scenarios to try and beat Thanos). Given that he's also no longer the Sorceror Supreme, and that this is a spell he's not supposed to be casting, he really understands the multitude of ways trying to change the past can ruin the world.
• Strange's first impression of them was the crazy hostile dinosaur dude who pretty much refused to talk until much later. Considering the nature of the extra-dimensional creatures he normally deals with, maybe he just didn't humanize them enough? Peter saw each of them as a person, driven insane through some Freak Lab Accident. A nudge from May and he couldn't bear to watch them all get sent back where they could be wasted. Strange is a Master of the Mystic Arts, they're the order that wouldn't even consider destroying the Time Stone while an alien terrorist with a planet-decimating fleet was after it. Strange has just screwed things up by botching a spell the Sorcerer Supreme told him not to use, maybe he's just trying to stick to the rules and prioritize The Needs of the Many by dismissing Peter as Just a Kid.
• Death is not required. Sending them back is. That they'll die afterwards sucks, but isn't strictly part of the plan.

Jurisdiction and Extradition

• Given that Mysterio's death and the other things for which Peter was framed happened in London, why then wasn't he extradited to the UK to be tried there, since they would have jurisdiction?
  • You can contest extradition, in which case there are additional court hearings and it may take months before you're actually taken out of the country. Presumably there were extradition requests going on in the background but then the entire case slowly collapsed and the prosecutors just dropped the charges (at least for the time being).

Future knowledge and timeline shenanigans

• The villains all got taken from their timelines just before they died. Tom-Peter tells Strange that it wouldn't be right to send them back because then they'd all just die. Strange doesn't deny it but decides to send them back anyway to stop the spell from causing any more problems. So it's established that pressing the button sends you back to the time you came from, right? If that's the case, couldn't Andrew-Peter tell The Lizard to pass a message along to the earlier version of Andrew-Peter, from his first movie? Something like "Make sure Gwen Stacy doesn't wind up in the situation that leads to her death."? Likewise, Tobey-Peter could tell Doc Oc to pass a message along to an earlier version of Tobey-Peter, something like "Make sure that Harry doesn't wind up in the situation that leads to his death."
  • Well, they didn't exactly have a lot of time to prepare before everyone was sent back — perhaps they'd have thought of this if they'd succeeded in curing all the villains without the Spell being released. But honestly, the butterfly effect probably already takes care of it. The circumstances in which Harry and Gwen died were quite specific, and the presence of a redeemed Lizard and redeemed Ock in those two new timelines will very likely change the course of the respective Spider-Men's lives in ways that would render foreknowledge about Harry and Gwen's canonical deaths moot.

Just take a video

• If your memory is about to be erased, the obvious thing to do is grab your phone and take a video of yourself explaining this whole memory-erasing situation. You could even get a shot of Peter in the Spider-Man suit without his mask. Then set an alarm for sometime tomorrow with the label "YOUR MEMORY HAS BEEN ERASED. CHECK RECENT VIDEOS ON THIS PHONE. THIS IS NOT A JOKE." It's worth a try at least!
  • Given the spell would be rather pointless if it didn't also erase all video and written evidence of Peter Parker being Spider Man, it's safe to say this idea wouldn't work.
  • They would also be more likely to think such a thing was a prank.
    • But the fact that you wouldn't be able to remember recording this video of yourself would strongly suggest that your memory had actually been tampered with.
    • If they assume it's a prank, they might just delete it without bothering to look at it. And even if they did look at it, they would more likely suspect some kind of special effects trickery than that their memory was actually altered. And this is assuming that the video evidence was't undone by the spell, since if it wasn’t, then people would be able to find out that Spider-Man’s real name is Peter Parker just by watching all the old news footage. As that didn’t happen, it can be assumed that the spell accounted for that.
  • Presumably the spell affects perception. People can see a video of Spider-Man without his mask and they can see Peter in person, but there's a mental block that keeps them from making the ultimate connection.

Why Matt?

• Obviously out-of-universe it's a fanservice/continuity nod thing, but in-universe, Matt's always pretty local to Hell's Kitchen rather than Queens and is one lawyer among many why did the Parkers end up with him? Especially when logically the entire presumably massive legal department of Stark Enterprises should be looking out for him and Happy?
  • Who's not to say Stark Enterprises (who's already in a legal hell of its own given their drones were used in the attack) already heard of Matt and recommended him? Or that he, as a person with secret powers, specifically went after a guy whose struggles with heroism are similar if not worse than his own?

Age of Tobey's Spider-Man

• Tobey's Peter was meant to be about 18-21 or so during the original trilogy but Tobey was several years older than the characters age. Is Tobey meant be playing younger than his age her or the same age? If so wouldn't that mean he would be pulled like 30 years after SM 3 which would make the "complicated with MJ" line and the fact he doesn't mention fighting any new villains kind of odd?
  • He was 18 in 2002 and this movie is set round about 2024, so he'd be about 40 assuming he was pulled from 2024 in his universe. Given the Avengers aren't in his universe, we can probably assume his world's threat level never got any higher than what was shown onscreen.
  • Things might be complicated with MJ for any number of reasons unrelated to the stuff we saw on film.

Electro's cure

• Did Peter go back to the apartment to get Electro's device? May couldn't have put it in the bag because Dillon was wearing it when everything went down.
  • He built a new one with the other Peters' help. The new cure works in seconds rather than several minutes like the first one did.
  • Except he clearly pulls the trashed old one out of the bag, specifically pointing it out as Dillon's cure and talks about 'repairing' it not recreating it.
    • He probably went back to the apartment to get it, unless May had time to grab it off the ground when Electro threw it.

Ungrateful Citizens

• Why is it that Spider-Man's detractors seem to forget that Peter fought Thanos in "Infinity War" and was there and helped to save the universe in "Endgame". Are people that ungrateful?
  • You're assuming the average citizen knows that battle on another planet even happened, let alone that Spider-Man was involved. Those detractors of Spider-Man may also argue past good deeds don't negate bad things he supposedly is doing now.
    • We at least know that the average citizen knows it happened since in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness which takes place shortly after this movie, Strange is asked if giving up the Time Stone on Titan was the only way so presumably details about the battle became public knowledge, including those who were there and thought Thanos.
    • The only one who directly mentioned Strange giving up the Time Stone is Wanda, who, being an Avenger, would probably be privy to details the general public isn’t aware of. When Dr. West mentions if things had to happen that way, it’s in a more general sense of whether being snapped away for five years was the only way to save everyone, and it’s Strange himself to brings up more specific aspects by saying he made the only play he could. Plus even if Strange’s part in what happened on Titan is known, that doesn’t mean that Spider-Man’s part is.
• Do you remember what Green Goblin told Peter 2 in the first Raimi film? "In spite of everything you've done for them, eventually they will hate you."

Max and Peter Parker

• How did Electro know Spider-Man’s identity but not know that he isn’t black?
  • At one point in time he thought Garfield Spider-man was black. Not that he found it out the moment Garfield unmasked in this film.

What did Green Goblin and his villains expect to do breaking out?

• Green Goblin lays low within Norman Osborn as Peter Parker tries to cure the villains. Inevitably, Green Goblin breaks loose and incites his villains to turn against Peter Parker and wreak havoc across New York. But this plan does not seem to take into account the Box that would send them home to die which was currently with MJ and Ned. The villains initially played along because it was either that or dying but they do not seem to make any effort to find the Box until Peter Parker used it to lure them to the Statue of Liberty. Shouldn't the villains realize that if anything happens to Peter Parker, his friends would just use the Box to send them home to die?

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