Fridge / Spider-Man: No Way Home

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Fridge examples for Spider-Man: No Way Home.

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Fridge Brilliance

• Why does Peter still frequently wear his mask when going into battle as Spider-Man even though his identity is public knowledge? When he debuted in the MCU in Civil War, he explained to Tony that the goggles he wore (now replaced by the eyes of his mask) help him cope with the enhanced sensory input that comes with this powers. His mask has always served a practical purpose aside from concealing his identity.
• Matt Murdock:
  • Why was Matt Murdock/Daredevil willing to be Peter’s lawyer? He could tell his client was telling the truth and was innocent of the charges based on listening to his heartbeat.
  • Likewise, after clearing Peter's name, Matt suggests that Happy get a very good lawyer for when he's questioned about the missing Stark technology, but doesn't offer to represent Happy himself. Matt can tell by Happy's reaction that he did have something to do with it.
  • Another point is also simply the fact Peter, like him, is a vigilante superhero, and so legal charges for/against him set a precedent that could affect Matt Murdock and others like them. Matt to his credit is no doubt doing this for the greater good of helping a kid who needs it, but if Peter was charged with anything that relates solely to his actions as Spider-Man, it could be used to set a legal precedent to lay charges against any superpowered individual who tries to help people. Him working on this case would also give him an idea of the challenges from the law or public opinion might ensue should he (or any other superheroes) be sued or find their secret identities uncovered, helping prepare him for these worst-cast scenarios.
  • How does Matt know May Parker? Because Nelson, Murdock, & Page have probably been the primary legal counsel of F.E.A.S.T., an honest charity for the poor May runs in New York City and the exact type of organization they would partner with post-Blip to help their own neighborhood. It's likely how Matt got involved in Peter's case, due to overlap between his and May's clients.
    • Perhaps in favor of this, when Matt reveals that he thinks the charges won't stick, while Peter says, "Thank you, Mr. Murdock," May says, "Thank you, Matt," indicating a level of familiarity.
    • And depending on how much of Daredevil (2015) is made canon for the MCU, Nelson & Murdock did defend the Punisher.
• During their brief fight, Strange has the edge over Peter in the Mirror Dimension, until the latter starts recognizing the place's geometry and uses it against Strange. Even disregarding that said dimension is based on the real world, we learned from the Ancient One that science, facts, logic, etc are as much an aspect of magic as, well, magic that doesn't follow any rules or sense. Therefore, it's entirely reasonable that even while manipulated by magic, the Mirror Dimension would still follow a sense of geometry (and/or other aspects).
• In the previous Spider-Man Home films, Tony Stark and Talos/Nick Fury both took their time to mentor Peter Parker in their own ways. Stark took on a bit of a fatherly role, while Talos was more of a Sink or Swim Mentor. Dr. Strange ends up being a foil to them, however, because he views Peter as a peer after their experiences fighting Thanos and saving the Earth. As a result, he forgets that Peter is still a kid and doesn't always think things through. Dr. Strange's ruthless pragmatism also makes him way less patient when Peter makes a mistake or tries to defy him. He also does what Tony or Talos didn't: spell it out for Peter that trying to balance his civilian and superhero life has only caused him more problems.
  • This itself is brilliance: Strange is the only one who could understand this. Tony never even tried to balance his civilian and superhero lives. Talos, aside from the fact that he's obviously not a superhero, is also a shapechanger. He's used to absorbing himself entirely in one identity/role and letting it take him over. Strange, meanwhile, has seen for himself (and will continue to in his next movie) the difficulties of balancing both lives.
  • This is deconstructed by the fact that Spider-Man balancing his civilian and superhero lives actually ended up saving and redeeming the multiversal villains, showing why this is important and while his mentors may have a point, it ultimately doesn’t prove them right in the end.
• Doctor Strange's decision to help Peter Parker make the world forget about his identity, despite how dangerous the spell is (which ends up being due to Peter's interference), proves that Karl Mordo was right: many sorcerers are reckless with magic. Mordo left Strange after he manipulated space and time to defeat Dormammu, feeling that the natural law should be respected, and Strange here does exactly the opposite, even if he has good intentions.
  • Ironically, Mordo's decision to frak off... means he isn't able to ACTUALLY stop the problems with magic, and has left Strange without someone besides Wong to keep an eye on him, and Mordo is busy going after harmless things.
• The title of the movie "No Way Home" holds a symbolic meaning at the end with Peter completely alone without anyone knowing his identity, including Ned and MJ, and the death of Aunt May. There is both literally and symbolically no way for Peter to go back home.
• The spell Strange casts takes on the visual properties of a gyroscope. This device is used in navigation, stability and inertial guidance, traits that assist in affecting or manipulating reality.
• This film shows off what really makes Raimi's Goblin dangerous. It's not the strength, or the glider, or the pumpkin bombs. It's his brain. He's all of Norman's intellect, strategic thinking, manipulation, and charisma, with the brakes cut. (This is pretty consistent with his comics and The Spectacular Spider-Man incarnations.)
  • Green Goblin's ability to either pretend to be Norman Osborn or take control of Osborn's body is emphasized in this film, acting as a further contrast to Spider-Man's conflict over his secret identity: while Peter is a hero who's perceived to be a monster, Osborn/Goblin can act sane, but hides a monstrous persona, showing how he's a foil to Peter. Similarly, the new inhibitor chip allows Doc Ock's mind to overcome the tentacles' AI, and he also pretends to be on the villains' side only to help the Spider-Men against them, heightening the film's motif of conflicts between public and secret identities.
• The initial absence of the other heroes before Peter asks Strange for help; with Matt Murdock having cleared Peter of the actual charges, Peter's only real "problem" is his public image, which none of the Avengers can help with beyond speaking up in his defense, which people are already doing.
  • It may even be that Peter explicitly asked the other heroes not to try and defend him that way, as he wants to avoid their names being tarnished by active association with him on this controversial issue.
  • It could also be the same reason as the previous movie. The other heroes are still preoccupied picking up the pieces from Avengers: Endgame to be of much help here other than Strange. The Avengers are still mostly defunct because of the losses they took, Thor, Nick Fury, Captain Marvel, and the Guardians are in space, Rhodes and Sam are busy working for the military, Ant-Man and Wasp are on the other side of the US, Wanda is still coming to grips with the Westview incident (and not exactly flavor of the month because of it), Vision is still MIA, Clint is retired, T'Challa may have already passed away at this point, Bucky is moving on from his past (and for obvious reasons, probably doesn't have much of a public image), Bruce is still recovering from his injury, Shang-Chi was introduced to some of the other heroes at the end of his movie but doesn't know Peter, and Steve is either retired or dead, and Falcon and the Winter Soldier implies that even if he isn't actually dead, most people think he is. None of them are really in a position to help him beyond voicing their support in the press which they probably already do. And as it was, the only ones who really knew him at all were Tony, Strange, Quill, Drax and Mantis. Tony is dead, Strange already is helping and the Guardians, beyond being far away from all of this, can't really offer any help beyond maybe taking Peter off-Earth to space with them and he obviously doesn't want that.
• What did Goblin do when he really wanted to hurt MCU Peter? Attacked his heart. Again.
• Why was Goblin so intent on breaking MCU Peter? Well, he saw Raimi Peter as a substitute son, but failed to turn him. Why not mess with the substitute for the substitute? If he's fated to die anyway, why not try to cheat fate by goading MCU Peter into killing him?
• Why is Green Goblin so much more vile in this film than in the original Raimi film? Well, in that film, Goblin was Norman's outlet for attacking those he felt wronged him, giving the villain clear targets to aim for. What we see in this film is what happens when Norman has no "dragons left to slay," as it were, so Goblin goes after everyone else.
  • This is also why Norman is meeker and more afraid of the Goblin here despite being shown going along with the Goblin's schemes in the original film. He can see the short-term benefits of making Spider-Man join him or be eliminated from New York City. But as time went on, Norman slowly starts to realize this whole business only benefits the Goblin and not himself once he discovers that Peter Parker is Spider-Man and he's ordered to kill his loved ones. When they end up in the MCU, a world where Oscorp and his identity are virtually nonexistent, the Goblin is unconcerned of the whole ordeal for Norman, only seeing it as another world for him to conquer. This is when Norman truly realizes just how self-serving the Goblin really is.
  • Another factor in Norman's new characterization is that he's probably come from the point where Peter-2 is beating him. In other words, he knows he was only moments away from a death he fully deserved.
• Peter is insistent on wanting to help the villains and not send them to their home universes to die. This isn't just because he wants to save them, but it's personal for Peter. He's recently been slandered in the media by Mysterio framing him as a mass murderer, and even if Peter knows he's innocent, it's something that's on his mind, the perception that Spider-Man is a killer. Then he meets these villains from the multiverse and learns they all died fighting Spider-Man. Not only that, but crucially, Peter isn't given context for their deaths — Sandman's Exact Words are "impaled by the glider [Norman] flew around on... and Doc Ock, drowned in the river with your machine", and Electro's syntax is ambiguous but he mentions Spider-Man overloaded the power grid and this led to his death. As far as Peter has reason to believe, his counterparts are murderers who kill their villains. He wants to fix the mistakes of his other selves and help people instead of hurting them.
  • Alternatively/additionally, he knows how it feels to have even an unintentional death on your conscience, and doesn't want his other selves to have to deal with that.
• Why is Green Goblin okay with getting killed in the climax, but not at F.E.A.S.T. earlier? Because he will only accept it if a) he can take Norman with him, and b) that death hurts someone.
  • Parker killing Green Goblin is basically what Goblin's plan is, to turn him into a killer, someone who doesn't get held back by morals.
  • To elaborate on the "taking Norman with him" part, killing the Goblin himself is understandable if not outright necessary—unless the Goblin is killed (either physically or by the antiserum), he will never be contained and will continue to cause chaos. But if Peter kills the Goblin in a physical manner, Norman Osborn (who is uninvolved in the Goblin's crimes) also dies because it's his body as well. It's not the act of trying to kill the Goblin that is pushing Peter to the edge of corruption, it's the fact that his intended method of doing so would also kill an innocent, which the Goblin almost certainly knows and is exploiting. This would also be why Raimi-verse Peter wants to stop MCU Peter—it's not the Goblin he's trying to save, it's Norman. By using the antiserum, Peter gets to kill the Goblin without killing Norman, which is the decidedly more moral option.
  • Raimi-verse Peter also knows that even if the Goblin deserves to die, Peter deserves better than to become a murderer.
• Why is Sandman among the villains despite the fact he was alive in the end of his movie? Think about it, he can't keep human form and seems to struggle to stay together. His powers were becoming unstable and would have died without Peter.
  • This is most likely the case because, unlike the other villains who faced Death of Personality rather than or before death, Sandman wasn’t pulled into the MCU as a villain and is from after the final battle of the third movie.
  • Speaking of, why is Sandman selected as the villain from Spider Man 3 to be immigrated to this movie? Because its version of Venom was an absolute monster with no redeemable qualities and Harry Osborn's Green Goblin is made composite with Norman Osborn. Flint Marko has enough internal conflict, sympathy, and potential consequences should the heroes fail to represent Spider Man 3 in this movie (while he's still managed to bury the hatchet with Spider-Man after the events of that film, his hasty eagerness to get back to his own universe endangers the process of the heroes trying to cure the other villains).
  • Plus, the spell pulled in "people who know Peter is Spider-Man." For all we know, other people from different universes were pulled in as well, then sent back, and we just never saw them.
• Why would the other Spider-Men be sucked into the MCU along with the villains? Who knows Peter is Spider-Man better than Peter himself?
• When Peter accidentally teleports a tree into the Sanctum, Ned nervously checks it isn’t a villain, and Electro bemusedly confirms that it’s just a tree. In the MCU, there’s an alien who takes the form of a sentient tree. It was never confirmed in the Webb Verse that aliens are real.
• Why would there be an Oscorp in the MCU? If anyone's noticed, there seems to be an awful lot of megacorps in the MCU so any Osborn that would take a crack at getting into the space would find themselves crushed by some pretty stiff competition.
  • Or it'd be bought up outright by one of the really big ones. Heck, maybe MCU-Norman sold it to Stark decades ago and retired.
• Andrew and Tobey's respective arrivals inform not only their character, but also play on the fan perception of their portrayals:
  • Andrew arrives through the portal in full costume and demonstrates his powers when MJ asks him to, nodding to both his reputation as "the best Spider-Man" and again showing how he is more willing to show off his abilities (see the basketball/Flash humiliation scene from The Amazing Spider-Man and the "all thumbs today" scene from The Amazing Spider-Man 2).
    • As explained in this review by The Reel Rejects, the timing of Andrew's appearance is rather brilliant when one remembers the "hope-bringer" theme from the Amazing films, given that the scene comes right after the extremely tragic, hopeless sequence of Aunt May's death.
  • Meanwhile, Tobey's Peter arrives through the portal in plain clothes and does not reveal his powers until Andrew provokes him into a brief battle. This nods to Tobey's reputation as "the best Peter Parker" and displays the absolute seriousness with which this Peter handles his secret identity, even if it's to his own detriment (as demonstrated throughout the majority of Spider-Man 2).
  • In addition, the places they enter from reflect the tones of their films. The Amazing Spider-Man Series attempted to be more "grounded", so Andrew's Peter is introduced running through a dark alleyway. Meanwhile, the Spider-Man Trilogy was more operatic and often incorporated the visual imagery of New York City into promotional material to connect Spider-Man with the city more intimately, with the first film specifically being emblematic of the post-9/11 solidarity that was prevalent for over a year or so after the attack. So he enters through the portal from a rooftop where the Empire State Building is visible.
• Tobey's Peter briefly mentions that he was able to "work things out" with his MJ and, prior to the final battle, he spends most of his time in civilian clothing, which calls back to his opening monologue in Spider-Man — as far as the MCU is concerned, Raimiverse Peter is "an average, ordinary guy, not a care in the world... [in love with] the girl next door".
• Why does Peter-3 never wear civilian clothing (outside of his lab coat while recreating the Lizard cure) in contrast to his other variants? Because he doesn't have any civilian clothing in this universe. All the multiversal visitors of the MCU are shown with nothing but the clothes on their back (and in some cases, even less), which indicates that Peter-3 must have been pulled in while in the midst of heroing, without anything else to put on.
• In the condo, Electro muses about his potential power in the new universe, but Sandman thinks he is talking about the condo. This illustrates how Sandman just wants to go home to his daughter: he didn't consider anything other than his immediate environment because he has no greater goals or desire for power like Electro does, he's just waiting for his ride home.
• Strange and Peter's conflict could be deemed a representation of the conflict between leaving the old characters behind and giving them their due. Strange views the previous villains as pure mistakes that need to be fixed, whilst Peter sees the chance to help them grow, also a conflict between abandoning them and doing something different (as the prior two MCU Spider-Man films have done with new villains like Vulture and Mysterio), or giving them time and closure (what this film ended up doing). Finally, you have the presence of characters from both acclaimed Spider-Man films and divisive ones, making the conflict one between keeping what worked and fixing what didn't vs just shunting them all off and acting like they don't matter.
  • Strange is also used to facing enemies who are pretty much complete monsters (Kaecilius, Dormammu, Thanos, probably plenty of other literally inhuman threats). Peter's first major villain had a moment of genuine human connection with him and he was involved in the intra-Avengers Civil War, not to mention that he's a street-level hero who primarily deals with normal criminals. He's more used to opponents who aren't totally evil.
  • Which ends up paying off in Strange's character development in Multiverse of Madness.
• Spider-Man's victory at the end was the same kind of victory Mysterio got in the last movie: goal achieved, but at the cost of destroying a major part of the character's identity (Quentin Beck, the public face of Mysterio, dies, and Spider-Man's Peter Parker identity is erased from everyone's memory).
• No wonder they had May be the MCU's Uncle Ben. The point of Uncle Ben's death is the emotional impact it had on Peter Parker. But by now, Uncle Ben has been dead for over 50 years in real life, and Peter came to terms with it long ago even in comic book time. Uncle Ben has no real emotional connection with the audience, so the impact is nowhere near as strong as it should be. Using Aunt May, who has a long and ongoing comics relationship with Peter (plus development in the previous two movies), allows the audience to understand the emotional hit that Peter felt when Ben died.
  • It's also a version of The Night Gwen Stacy Died, perhaps done better than when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 covered it. In that film, Peter had defeated Harry's Goblin before failing to save Gwen, whereas here, May dies while the Norman Goblin who killed her has fled. Part of the impact of that story isn't just Gwen's death and the mark of tragedy it leaves on Peter, but the aftermath: Peter understandably driven to murderous rage against the Goblin, but when the time comes, choosing not to give in to his rage and desire for revenge. MCU Peter had a little help in that regard, but it still demonstrates why Spider-Man is one of the most beloved superheroes in fiction.
• Raimi Peter kept MCU Peter from killing Norman, but injecting the cure into him still allowed Peter to kill the Goblin anyway.
  • It makes sense that Raimi Peter would be so determined to stop MCU Peter from killing Goblin. He knows just how tempting but ultimately self-destructive the Roaring Rampage of Revenge really is.
• Electro's personality seems rather different from Max Dillon in his own movie. Except it's not. As Electro, he was a lot more confident, expressive, and jokey than Max (just like Spider-Man), just really deadpan about it. With an actual human body back, he's still all of that stuff, but with normal human expressiveness. He also reformed himself into an idealized version of his original human body, which is why he suddenly looks like, well, Jamie Foxx.
• Ned can use a sling ring without prior training, even though Dr. Strange and other trainee sorcerers at Kamar-Taj took time to learn how to use them. But this is actually justified by how the Ancient One told Strange that to use magic properly, he needed to surrender his ego and preconceptions (such as his belief that he needed the full use of his fingers to perform magic). Ned, knowing nothing about sorcery, literally has no preconceptions about how to use the sling ring, which would actually give him an edge in performing sorcery.
  • The Ancient One's test for Strange (putting him on Everest so that his desperation will force him to surrender his preconceptions and use the sling ring) also overlaps with how Ned's use of the ring is rooted in his desperation to help Peter—presumably, they were both under comparable forms of mental pressure that placed them in the right mindset to use the ring.
  • Ned also doesn't have Strange's arrogance.
  • Adding to that, Ned FULLY believes in the existence of magic, even saying that it runs in his family. Strange, when he arrived at Kamar-Taj, absolutely did NOT believe in such things (calling it all a bunch of cheap tricks and charlatanry), so Ned may have inherently been in the right headspace to tap into the power of the ring.
• Both non-MCU Spider-Men are a foreshadowing of what MCU Spider-Man had to expect in his future:
  • MCU Peter ends up in a rundown apartment with a tyrannical homeowner, much like Raimi Spider-Man with the infamous Ditkovich, fighting hard just to rebuild his life.
  • Amazing Peter claims that since he lost Gwen, he had no time to be Peter, effectively claiming he had to be Spider-Man all the time to drown the guilt. MCU Peter has literally no place and no one to be Peter with, so the first thing he does before settling with his new life is sew himself a new costume and become, again, Spider-Man.
• Also, both non-MCU Spider-Men came at MCU Peter's worst to stop him from replaying their personal failures, acting as older brothers who already lived some of his struggles.
  • Raimi Peter too struggled between being Spider-Man and being "an ordinary guy, not a care in the world". And he came as an older brother, or even a father-figure, to remind him of MCU Peter's Uncle Ben and Aunt May's legacy. These lessons pay off when we see Peter putting his LEGO Palpatine figure on the windowsill—even if Ned doesn't remember him anymore, he's still a part of his life.
  • Webb Peter lost Gwen Stacy, and since then he had become an embittered wreck unable to think of himself as Peter Parker, fueled by vengeance and "unable to pull his punches". The last hurdle MCU Peter has to face before saving the world is stopping himself (with Raimi Peter's help) from killing the Green Goblin, delivering him the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown Webb Peter dreamed for all his life to be able to deliver to Harry.
    • Webb Peter being the one to say “I always wanted brothers” may sound a little weird given his admittedly violent nature after Gwen’s death and low self-esteem, until you remember that a plot point in his movie was him trying to unravel the conspiracy surrounding his Parental Abandonment. Although he had Uncle Ben and Aunt May, he probably spent his childhood wishing he had immediate family to share his troubles with.
• Wong’s appearance at the end of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings suddenly makes a lot more sense with the knowledge that he’d become the Sorcerer Supreme in Strange’s absence following the Snap.
• When Norman comments about being in another universe, he mentions that there's someone else living in his house as an example of how different things are. When Norman tried to get into his penthouse, the person living there must have thought Norman was someone that got blipped and was trying to go back to their old home, which could explain how Norman arrived at the FEAST shelter and met May.
• The how and why of the Goblin's actions, and his ascendance to the ultimate threat of the film:
  • First, Norman attempts to return to his home only to find someone else living there. This is followed by apparently learning that neither he, his son or his company appear to exist in the MCU. So now he's got an existential crisis on top of his issues with the Goblin.
  • Next, upon Norman's arrival to the Sanctum Sanctorum, Otto - his old friend - informs him of his own demise, which Sandman confirms. Electro then promptly reveals how HIS version of Oscorp created him and his own death (and given his behavior for most of the film, the Lizard likely reveals his connection to Osborn as well). This proves that both Goblin is seemingly doomed to die himself, and yet that his legacy echoes beyond his own universe.
  • Finally, Strange traps Norman in a prison and dismisses his potential death as a sacrifice for the greater good, only for Peter to try and save him anyway. Not only does this give the Goblin an increased sense of importance, it gets him properly interested in THIS incarnation of Peter.
  • The short version is that the Goblin comes to realize both his death and his potential lasting impact on Spider-Man, even with said death, and decides that if he has to go, he's going to do as much damage as possible.
  • This even extends to bombing Strange's spell cube during the climax. Obviously, it's to prolong his life and make sure he can live as long as possible. However, given Goblin's brain shows how dangerous he is, he likely predicted either that destroying the cube would bring more multiversal threats to the MCU or that it would send him home. He intends to make Peter lose as much as possible... And so that the Peter and universe without an Osborn in it will always be haunted by the Goblin's legacy.
• Although Electro apparently destroys the new inhibitor chip Peter and Osborn created for Octavius, Octavius later returns to assist the Spider-Men rather than the other villains. Considering that the reason the original inhibitor chip was destroyed was an electric overload, it isn't hard to speculate that Peter redesigned the new chip to be at least more resistant to that kind of damage, with the result that Octavius never reverted and just chose to retreat until he could get a better handle on the situation and be of more assistance to the Spider-Men beyond providing an ally.
  • Doc Ock's arms also being resistant to Electro's souped-up electricity makes sense as their original purpose in Spider-Man 2 was to operate his fusion reactor, which by Doc's own admission has a similar power output to that of the arc reactor.
• It takes some people a little longer than others to realize that the reason why Doc Ock and Osborn were de-aged, but Tobey's Spider-Man wasn't, is that the former two were supposed to have died close to 20 years prior, thus being whisked from the literal past, while Tobey-Spidey continued aging in the years since and taken from the present.
• Andrew's Spider-Man dives after MJ, catches her himself, and then decelerates them both with a web, avoiding MJ dying via being roughly yanked from terminal velocity like Gwen did. Given how much Gwen's fate affected him, he likely made damn sure if something like that ever happened again, he'd know exactly what to do differently.
• It's a little confusing as to how exactly it works, but the spell to make people forget who Peter is only seemingly affects physical memories and apparently deletes videos on the internet and news articles documenting Peter existing so people can't readily look up Spidey and see that he's really Peter. However, it didn't seem to affect his governmental information, such as his Social Security Number, so he can do things like start a bank account and rent an apartment, which are things that would be impossible to do without that information. It also didn't erase some of Peter's physical presence in the world, allowing him to grab his stuff from his and May's old apartment and Happy's so he's not entirely without anything after May died.
  • It also helps that Doctor Strange specified multiple times that the spell only affects the world and the cosmic tears in the sky. This means that if a certain bunch of Guardians from space decide to pay a visit... Or the real, currently-off-world Nick Fury and Captain Marvel, for that matter...
    • Not to mention characters who are inherently not OF the same "world" (Thor, Loki, and Valkyrie are Asgardians, Korg is a Kronan, the Eternals being created life forms, etc).
  • It's also possible the internet videos and news articles still technically exist, but the spell rendered them meaningless to anyone who sees them.
• The whole time we were denied watching the MCU version of Spider-Man's origin story, as we have all seen it before and know all the details. As a redditor pointed out that by going back to a fresh start at the end, the entire trilogy so far retroactively becomes part of his Superhero Origin!
• Maguire's Spider-Man stopping Holland's Spider-Man from killing Green Goblin at the end is practically a continuation of the lesson he learned in Spider-Man 3. That revenge is not useful and neither is blind violent anger, which also reflected what Maguire-Peter and Garfield-Peter told Holland-Peter when they met: Maguire-Peter claims that getting his revenge on the man that killed his Uncle Ben didn't make him feel better, and Garfield-Peter warn Holland-Peter to not become a bitter, angry man like him. Given all the damage Norman Osborn caused, it would have been easy for Maguire's Spider-Man to want to murder him, but he doesn't. He saves his life and prevents Holland's Peter from going down a similar road to him.
• The spell that wiped everyone's memories of Peter Parker actually saved his life (or at least spared him some burden) in the long run. Why? Because Mac Gargan, who was dying to know who Spider-Man was back in Spider-Man: Homecoming, probably had some big plans for him once he heard the news about his identity.
• Peter having all memory of himself outside of Spider-Man wiped from everyone in the world makes sense from a Watsonian perspective in order to keep what's left of his friends safe from harm.
• Aunt May telling Peter "with great power, there must also come great responsibility," is not just a Truer to the Text version of the famous quote, but also highlights a subtle yet profound difference from the more popularized version attributed to Uncle Ben. In the previous Spider-Man film continuities where Uncle Ben died, especially in the Raimi trilogy, it was presented in the context of "if you don't use your great power for good, bad things will happen." But here, Aunt May, as someone who started a charity to help homeless people and was willing to take in an addled Norman Osborn despite him being a perfect stranger with clear signs of mental instability, reframes the lesson in a different context along the lines of "if you have the power to help someone, you must do so, regardless of the personal cost." This becomes key to the MCU Peter finally going through with the memory erasure spell, understanding that saving the world and everyone he cares about must come first, even if he has to make the greatest possible sacrifice of being wiped from everyone's memory.
• Andrew’s Spider-Man saving MJ and Tobey’s Spider-Man stopping Peter from murdering the Green Goblin is essentially the two saving Peter Parker (MJ dying would likely lead to Peter staying as Spider-Man to deal with the grief like Andrew’s Spider-Man did) and Spider-Man (Peter would have to deal with the guilt of murdering Norman as well as making Mysterio’s lie a reality and undermining what it means to be Spider-Man).
• Strange shows no sympathy to the villains taken from their home universe and would send them back to their fates. This leads to a series of events that almost causes the destruction of his universe or world. So you could say the plot could have been avoided if Strange hadn’t lost his heart...
  • This is not the first time that Doctor Strange has been shown to be coldly pragmatic, either. Remember that he told Tony Stark back in Avengers: Infinity War that he would sacrifice Stark in an instant to prevent Thanos from getting the Time Stone.
  • This also explains why Strange finally respects Peter Parker at the end—because Peter is making the same decision he would, to unhesitatingly make a major sacrifice for the greater good.
• Related to the above, all five villains were essentially suffering from medical conditions that led to their villainy. As a doctor, Strange should have helped them because he took the Hippocratic Oath (something Strange made a very big deal about in his own movie). But Strange had been forced to break that oath so many times because doing so was the only way to save the world, that it became easier to break again when it was necessary. Peter saving and curing all five villains likely reminded Strange of the doctor he used to be and contributed to his increasing respect for the young man.
  • That being said, Strange is a surgeon. A surgeon has to be willing to sacrifice a small part of the body to preserve the rest.
• Max notes the energy in the MCU universe feels different. Looking at his reaction to an arc reactor, the difference could be explained that more energy in the MCU universe is produced by arc reactors rather than other, conventional ways. And that’s not even getting into the advancements caused by reverse engineering all the alien tech that has accumulated over the years. This can even explain why his energy effects look differently, as he's souped up by a completely different form of energy.
  • Electro's radical appearance change after absorbing the MCU's electrical power can also be explained by Tony Stark's role in developing sources of energy in this universe. Surely, Tony would have had a hand in developing New York's electrical grid after the Chitauri invasion, so by absorbing some of the electricity, Max becomes more stable and his features change to make him resemble Stark more.
  • It's also conceivable that the nature of energy in general became slightly different in the MCU when Thanos dispersed the Power Stone across the universe. In effect, there's a teeny dash of purple power in the electricity Max is tapping into.
• Doctor Strange tells Peter, MJ and Ned to "Scooby-Doo this shit" in regards to capturing the villains. What do they end up doing afterwards? They redeem each villain and reveal the human being inside each monster! All they're missing is an anthropomorphic dog.
  • They have an Octopus instead.
• Matt gets Peter, MJ, and Ned's charges dropped with ease, despite some of them being legitimate (vigilantism). Matt started out his career as a talented-but-green lawyer, who botched one of NY's biggest trials. However, he's now been in practice for nearly a decade. This has given him the time to hone his legal skills to become an outright ace attorney with a repaired reputation.
  • The choice of Matt Murdock as Peter's lawyer also serves as another indication of the canonical status of the Marvel Netflix shows, as his involvement in the aforementioned trial (Frank Castle's) made him the first lawyer anyone would think of calling.
  • There's also one other point that, technically, none of Peter's actions were illegal; once it's provable that he didn't use the drones and Quentin Beck faked everything (provably simply by pulling up records of Beck's existence prior), the only thing left is his actions as Spider-Man. Peter, however, was registered with the Sokovia Accords back in Civil War and even supported by Tony Stark himself. There's no illegal activity to charge Peter with because none of his actions have been vigilantism. Likewise, MJ was Peter's girlfriend for all of two weeks and was never directly involved in anything he did as Spider-Man so there's nothing to hold against her, while Ned, even though he'd aided Peter, was likely covered by the same protections Peter was since Ned was aiding a registered superhero.
• Peter’s first MCU trilogy and crossovers are a big metaphor for growing up and leaving the nest. He starts as an unsure child, mimicking the other heroes and adult figures in his life (Tony and the Avengers). Then he has to work on establishing his identity more, while his parental figures guide him and support him. Once he gets older, his parental figures step back, or pass away, and now he has to learn how to do things as an adult relying on himself, creating his own connections while retaining the memories of the past. His next movies will likely be about him being an adult known for his own heroics, not his "parents" or as Tony’s sidekick.
• During the final battle, the villains show up in opposite order of the movies they're from. First Electro, then Lizard, then Sandman, then Doc Ock (albeit as an ally), and finally Goblin as the Final Boss.
• Some of the Multiversal Villains are characterized as walking "ghosts", because their fate in their home universes is death. By the end of the movie, Peter Parker essentially becomes a ghost himself in the MCU.
• Nobody from the alternate universes seems to be having any problem living in a different universe, no danger of their molecules falling apart unlike in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. There could be several reasons why:
  • The rules are just different for the MCU universes.
  • The spell that brought the villains and heroes is what’s keeping them from experiencing the harmful effects of multiverse travel. If they had traveled to the MCU universe through a more technological way than magically, they would have started experiencing the side-effects.
    • Alternatively in ISV, it was the unnatural nature of the collider that caused the side-effects the Spider Gang had since in the comics, characters regularly cross over dimensions and even stay on other Earths for extended periods of time.
  • They weren’t in the MCU universe for long and if they did stay longer, they would start falling apart like in ISV.
• When Raimi-verse Peter speaks about his experience fighting an alien in Spider-Man 3, he oddly refers to Venom as "an alien made out of black goo" rather than calling him "Venom". However, this makes perfect sense when one remembers how Venom was never actually name-dropped in that film.
  • Additionally, he could have (correctly) assumed neither of the other two Spideys had fought an incarnation of Venom before—even if Venom had been named, Raimi-verse Peter simplified his explanation to "black goo alien" to not confuse the Webb-verse or MCU Peters (which is also why MCU Peter refers to Thanos as just a purple alien). After all, when MCU Peter name-drops the Avengers with little-to-no context, nobody knows what he's talking about. Mentioning something based on description, on the other hand, means everyone can understand it.
    • Webb-verse Peter refers to Rhino as just a Russian guy in a rhino mech for similar reasons—Rhino was never called such onscreen (he uses his legal name, Aleksei Sytsevich, the entire time), and even if he were, Webb-verse Peter has no reason to assume the others have fought an incarnation of Rhino (which they haven't).
    • Rhino did actually call himself Rhino onscreen, during his rampage, though that may have been before Peter arrived.
    • They might have realized that none of them have fought the same villains that the others have fought. The Green Goblin^note the Norman incarnation specifically; both Raimi-verse and Webb-verse Peter fought the Harry incarnation, Doc Ock, and Sandman were only fought by Raimi-verse Peter, and Electro and Lizard were only fought by Webb-verse Peter. They likely all figured that since none of them recognized any of the villains not from their universe, all of their villains were unique and they didn't have alternate versions.
  • It also may foreshadow a potential future Spider-Man film, since a drop of the Tom Hardy Venom symbiote was left behind in the MCU after the mid-credits scene. MCU Peter will at least have some knowledge of the creature if he runs into it in the future.
• Andrew and Tobey's respective Spider-Men are more than willing to discuss the villains they've encountered, considering the threat at hand; outside of that, however, they are both somewhat evasive on the topic of their personal lives. Webb-verse Peter only refers to Gwen Stacy by her first name before quickly correcting himself with "my MJ", and Raimi Peter is even more vague when talking about Harry Osborn (never even mentioning his name). The most detail we, the audience, ever get is when they are talking amongst themselves outside of the MCU gang's hearing. On one hand, these are among their least favorite topics of conversation (to put it lightly). On the other hand, they're both smart enough to know not to disrupt/prejudice any current or future relationships MCU Peter may have with his universe's Gwen and Harry.
• How was Tobey's Peter able to create the cure for the Goblin serum in the first place? During Spider-Man 3, his brawl with Harry in the Osborn mansion spilled into the secret area which stored all of the Goblin's weapons, equipment and most importantly, vials of the Goblin formula as shown at the end of Spider-Man 2. It's not unreasonable to assume that Peter may have gone back at some point and retrieved a sample of the formula for study over the years.
  • More importantly, why wouldn't Toby's Peter think about developing an antiserum? The stuff has already gotten two people close to him killed, and who knows if any of this crap is still floating around his universe. Should the Goblin formula pop up again in some other sucker, he'd rather have something that can turn them off, instead of anyone else dying.
• Andrew's Spider-Man is, when initially introduced, seemingly a very chipper and upbeat guy but as time goes on, it becomes clear he's quietly very depressed, and is hiding it behind the humor. This comes up more blatantly during the emotional moments when he talks about his losses and struggles, but we see it more subtly elsewhere, such as how, while Tobey gives him a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech, he still self-categorizes himself as the "lame" one and admits he "needed" to hear Tobey's Peter say that. Besides that, when they decide on numerical differentiators, he's the one who decides to appoint himself as "Peter-Three", which is just...dude, talk about low self-esteem and self-worth.
  • His depression isn't even hard to understand, given that this Peter has the greatest amount of on-screen tragedy. Unlike the others, he remembered his birth parents (which clearly affected him more than it did the others) and like Tobey's, he lost his Uncle Ben; he also lost George Stacy, who he greatly respected and was guilt-ridden over the death of, and he more infamously lost Gwen (he also more-or-less lost Harry, whose descent into madness was probably just as painful as if he died). By contrast, Tobey's Peter lost Ben and Harry, and possibly Aunt May at this point, but other than having a somewhat "complicated" relationship with his MJ, he doesn't appear to have much in terms of other traumas to deal with, and Tom's, by this point, has only lost Aunt May and Tony (and implicitly Uncle Ben too, but he seems to have adjusted to that). Andrew's Peter easily the biggest Woobie of the group in this regard.
  • While Andrew's Spider-Man may be depressed, the numbering scheme does actually make a lot of sense. They're in the MCU, so logically, MCU Peter is Peter 1. And Tobey's Peter is the most experienced of them by far, so him being Peter 2 makes sense. And that, by elimination, leaves Andy's Peter as Peter 3. He's fully aware that MCU Peter is the one the meet-up revolves around, and that Petey Maguire is most qualified to be the leader of the group, leaving himself as the least important Peter Parker in their trio. Which probably doesn't exactly do much to help with his self-esteem issues, really.
• Electro didn't actually know Peter Parker was Spider-Man, so him being pulled into the MCU makes far less sense than the others...except when he starts recounting how he died, he mentions getting "a lot of data". He already demonstrated some degree of technopathy in his debut movie, so it's likely this comment means he was able to outright read digital signals and process information. We also know that Andrew's Peter, like Tom's, kept his cellphone with him as he Spider-Man'd, and that would likely have personal ID info on it if it was registered to his name or signed into any apps or accounts, so Electro probably pulled from Peter's phone his name, thus he knew Spider-Man's real name (and if not, he was pulling all this energy from an Oscorp plant so the data he was taking could have been from Oscorp, who apparently knew Peter Parker's identity). He might not have consciously realized this, or he just didn't care and so didn't express it, but this at least is a plausible excuse for how he counted by the spell's definition.
  • Alternatively (and more simply), Electro did know Spider-Man's first name was Peter. During Spider-Man and Electro's original final battle, Gwen refers to Peter by name, and Electro reacts a second later. He presumably overheard her as he was regaining consciousness, but he simply didn't think anything of it. Even so, by knowing, maybe even subconsciously, that Spider-Man was going to be a Peter, his knowledge still counted by the spell's definition.
  • What supports the former is that when Andrew’s Peter unmasks, Electro is surprised that Peter is Just a Kid and not black. That means he knew his name was Peter Parker but not what he looked like or anything else about him. This makes sense because Andrew’s Peter Parker was a nobody. To Electro, Peter Parker is just another person. Even if Electro knows his name, Peter Parker means nothing to him because he’s never met or had a relationship with Peter unlike the other villains. Electro would probably find information like Peter Parker’s address more important than Peter Parker’s name.
  • Being a huge Spider-Man fanboy, Max probably knew the name of the guy who takes the best pictures of the webslinger. It's possible that he just (correctly) assumed the "Peter" under the mask was the same "Peter" from the paper who has an ambiguous connection with Spider-Man.
• A meta example: Some viewers expressed disappointment at there only being five main villains among the multiversal visitors, being one member short of a Sinister Six lineup. Technically, there was a sixth "villain" in the form of Venom. He just opted to hang out at a bar and get drunk since he was all the way in Mexico.
  • Another reason why Eddie and Venom were not part the group of villains is that this incarnation of Venom is the protagonist and hero of his own movies: they stopped an alien invasion, and a couple of superpowered psychopaths to boot. Venom may have wanted to eat people, but that's just because of his alien biology and not a wish to harm people for the sake of it.
  • Additionally, the film's arc of reforming previous villains by eliminating or subduing their superpowers, rather than "send[ing] them home to die", would run contrary and even retcon all the development Eddie and Venom went through across two films to cement their friendship.
  • Eddie not showing up with the villains makes sense when you remember A) he's a reporter and B) it's implied Venom (not Eddie) knows who Peter is. Eddie being a reporter means he wants his facts and background info straight before he does anything. And while Venom can make Eddie do some things, the amount of steps needed to fly to New York from Mexico means Eddie needs to be on-board with the plan, if for no other reason than to be less suspicious than usual.
  • One more argument for Eddie being the sixth member: when Eddie and the symbiote were sent back, not ALL of them were sent back. There's still time for the symbiote to cause trouble, even if it's not with its team members.
    • A better candidate for the sixth member would be the one who set in motion the events of this film; If it wasn't for Mysterio, Peter wouldn't have requested the spell that went badly. Mysterio might not have hopped universes like the five main villains and Venom, but his actions were a thorn in Peter's side the whole film, which should make him an honorary member of the Sinister Six.
  • One reason why they went with the Sony's Spider-Man Universe version of Venom as opposed to the one in the Rami-verse is because the latter version is an irredeemable scumbag who wouldn't have fit the mercy motif of this movie; even its version of Eddie Brock didn't have any redeemable qualities as opposed to Norman Osborn.
• Why Doc Ock seems so much more snappish and aggressive in this film than his Cold Ham performance in Spider-Man 2. In that film, both Otto and the tentacles could be completely focused on rebuilding the fusion reactor. Here, the actuators are unable to rebuild the machine/fulfill their programming, leaving the AI frustrated and purposeless.
  • Further supporting this, the first thing Doc Ock does upon finding Spider-Man is demand to know where his machine is so that he can get back to trying to rebuild it.
  • It's also mentioned in both films that the AI inhibits Otto's higher brain functions. Aggression is more of a base/self-defense reaction.
• Max's comment about there being "a black Spider-Man somewhere out there" resonates on three fronts:
  • A line like that would've sounded incredibly patronizing coming from Peter-3, so Max said it himself.
  • Peter-3 had also just apologized for the way he treated Max in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and was continuing to be deferential even though Max had just beat the shit out of him, so Max decided to Pet the Dog.
  • And (not that he knows it) Max is right. There is a black Spider Man somewhere in the multiverse and somewhere in the MCU itself.
• Even without trying to contact MIT to have his and his friends' applications accepted, Peter had good reason to go through with the memory spell anyway. With everyone on the planet knowing that he is Spider-Man, not being able to get into college is just the start of Peter's problems at this point. Such things would be minor inconveniences compared to what would really happen. Peter isn't like Tony, he doesn't have the resources to protect himself even when he's not superheroing like Tony did. Peter would be under constant attack from any villain he ever fought and will fight that survives, villains might start preemptively attacking him to get him out of the way of their plans, and friends or not would be in constant danger just from being around him. Mysterio revealing Peter's identity would not only be the end of his superhero career, but it would destroy his life.
  • Tony also thrived on attention; he was a self-admitted showman. "Full-tilt diva, flowers, parades, a monument built to the skies with his name plastered all over it." Peter's way more humble and down-to-earth.
• For MCU Peter, the closest we got to the famous "great power, great responsibility" line was this phrase Peter says to Tony in Civil War: "When you can do the things that I can, but you don't... and then the bad things happen, they happen because of you." At first, it was believed to be a simple adaptation of the famous line. But now we know he says that because in this timeline, Ben never actually told Peter those words, with the role instead going to May before her death.
• When Norman shows up at F.E.A.S.T. after ditching his mask, he's suddenly wearing purple and green street clothes. Where could he have gotten these? Well, keep in mind that Peter had been cleared of all charges by this point, so it's entirely possible Norman found some discarded clothing from a former Mysterio supporter.
• The first Goblin antiserum didn't fail because the Goblin secretly sabotaged it, or because of differences between universes, it failed because it was incomplete. Norman knows how dangerous the Green Goblin is, and would have likely taken the antiserum the instant it was finished. That's why the Goblin took control when he did because had he waited any longer, he would've been killed without getting to do anything. After the apartment fight, with neither Norman or Peter available to complete it, May had to inject the Goblin with the unfinished antiserum because it was all she had.
• How the spell works isn't elaborated on, but it can be inferred by the fact that Peter was able to get an apartment that he still legally exists. To that end, Peter was likely still enrolled at his school, so he dropped out simply because it was easier than having to deal with an environment where there'd be too many questions.
  • There’s also an even more straightforward explanation—Peter dropped out of school because, with May dead and the rest of the world forgetting about his existence, he now needs to get a job so that he can provide for himself.
• All the Spider-men’s actions in this movie coincide with their actions in their previous films in terms of responsibility and protecting their identity and loved ones. Raimiverse Spidey refused to date MJ TWICE despite her advances. The only person he reveals himself to on purpose is Otto in Spider-Man 2 to ask how to stop the reactor. Not to MJ (who found out herself), Aunt May or anyone else. In this film, he was privy about revealing who he was when he came out of the portal. Webbverse Spidey revealed himself to Gwen on technically their first date. After agreeing to Captain Stacy’s death wish, a few weeks later he flirts with Gwen again in class, gets her mixed up with Electro and even agrees to join her in Europe. Once Ned opens the portal, he reacts and answers to "Peter", even removing his mask before people who don’t even know. Lastly, MCU Spidey, aside from his immature actions in the two previous films, involves MJ and Ned with his villain problems (by giving the box with Strange’s spell to MJ and the sling ring to Ned in front of the villains), brings four dangerous villains to Happy’s apartment and even shows them Stark’s equipment, all this with Aunt May in tow. Right after Aunt May’s death, he just forgets that all the villains are on the loose and MJ still has the box which means he should retrieve it ASAP before the villains do, but he doesn’t do so right away. In the ending, walking away from MJ shows how he’s grown and finally understood responsibility. Pretty much shows how Raimiverse Spidey is the one who matured the earliest and the one who understood the value of hidden identities out of all of them. MCU Spider-Man showing the least maturity also makes sense when you realize that Uncle Ben's death may have been different in his universe so his progression was quite slow compared to the other two since he was still in high school for 3 movies and his absence due to the Blip. There were time skips with Raimiverse’s Spider-man as he was only shown to be in high school in one movie while Webbverse Spidey’s development was shown in the course of two movies and finally reaching his coming-of-age story when Gwen dies.
• Norman being the Green Goblin without a mask in the MCU makes complete sense; since he never existed there, there wasn't any need for him to maintain a Secret Identity in finding a way home or a cure for his condition, as no one knew who he was to begin with.
• Otto being sent back a changed man seems fruitless on closer examination, as the exact moment he was taken from was seconds before his Peter would help him regain his humanity anyways, whereupon he gives his life to stop the fusion reactor. Being saved and sent back to that moment wouldn't change anything, he'd still meet his end. Except, Otto goes back holding onto something extra: the Arc Reactor from the Fabricator, which was shown to be able to both stabilize and enhance Electro's powers; with this, Otto will be able to stop the fusion reactor without giving his life and keep living as a good man.
• Why is Max the first villain to get wary when Peter starts eyeing them as his Spider-Sense begins to go haywire? Because not only was Max paranoid when he became Electro, his Spider-Man claimed to be trying to help him only for Max to feel betrayed when it seemed like the hero was distracting him so that he could get shot by a sniper, not knowing that Spider-Man was legitimately trying to help but the situation got out of hand.
  • This moment is essentially a repeat of those events because this Spider-Man is also legitimately trying to help him but the situation again gets out of hand. What seals Max’s full turn to villainy in this movie is also a Green Goblin validating him.
• Why was Goblin so impressed by MCU Peter's spider-sense? He has never seen it before. Norman didn't know about Raimi Spider-man's special ability. If he did, he wouldn't have tried to impale him with his glider in the final act of the 2002 film.
  • It's also interesting to note that when Peter's spider-sense does go off, the Goblin reacts very differently compared to the other multiversal villains, indicating that he's the danger it's sensing. Rather than asking him what's wrong or being wary of his reactions, the Goblin just watches Peter, clearly making mental notes about what his enemy is doing.
• In a sense of Book Ends with Peter's first appearance in the MCU, the second stinger for the movie somewhat mirrors that of Captain America: Civil War. It focuses on a character who, while having importance to the story, is not the main character but something of an Advertised Extra relative to the other main characters, is there to advertise a movie coming out the next year, and ends on a "Will Return" Caption for that character as opposed to the character whose name is in the title.
• Strange is the perfect person to tell Peter that he can't live two separate lives. By the end of his first movie, Strange considers using the Time Stone to rewind time so he never loses the use of his hands but doesn't because he realizes that he can't have his old life back and be the Sorcerer Supreme since he then wouldn't have been there to stop Dormammu. So Strange became a Sorcerer full time, clearly having no other life. And we've already seen what happens when Strange actually tries to steal his old life back—with all the horrible consequences.
  • Strange can be seen as a Foil to Peter because like Strange, Peter is also not going to be able to go back to his old life due to a big mistake he made without thinking of the consequences.
• This movie can be seen as an antithesis to Strange's plan in Infinity War and Endgame. Strange was ready to sacrifice the multiverse villains by condemning them to their possible deaths to protect his universe. It shows that you shouldn't make a sacrifice if there are other options, even if those options have more consequences. This movie also shows what would happen if someone played chess with people's lives—they'd probably become callous. Peter taught Strange to have a heart again, which is why Strange was moved by his actions. The events of this movie prove that Strange should not play this level of chess on a less critical basis and if he remembers the events of this movie beyond Peter Parker, he probably won't.
  • Pretty much confirmed by Strange's next appearance, where he refuses to consider sacrificing America Chavez for the greater good, and gets pissed off by Wanda using that idea.
• Sandman knowing the details of Norman’s death seemingly flies in the face of the canon established in the Raimi Trilogy until you remember that he says Goblin was the one impaled on the glider, meaning that there’s still no indication that anyone made the connection between Osborn and the Green Goblin.
• Why does Peter-3 consider Max a friend even though he only had one conversation with Max before he became Electro? There’s a good chance Peter-3 looked into Max's background after their final fight, sympathized with him and decided to consider him a friend.
• On a brighter side, Peter will not have to do much to reacquaint himself with the other Avengers. The Avengers besides Tony only really knew Peter Parker as Tony Stark's ward, and also knew Spider-Man as Tony Stark’s ward first, which will close the gap more, and he was a nobody before his secret was outed by Mysterio. They will still remember fighting together with Spider-Man in Infinity War and Endgame.
• The other 2 Peters don't seem to know who the Avengers are. There is no indication that other superheroes exist in the Raimi and Webbverse. As far as we know, Tobey and Andrew are the first superheroes in their worlds. It's implied there is a Dr. Strange in the Raimiverse, but he could be some ordinary stage magician.
  • Amazing Spider-Man also had a video game continuation that mentioned Captain America. It never said anything about the Avengers.
  • Even if there are other superheroes like Cap and Dr. Strange out there, that doesn't necessarily mean that you have full-fledged teams of heroes.
• Why isn't there a black Spider-Man in the movie, or any villains from Miles Morales's film continuity for that matter? Because Strange’s spell just hadn’t taken effect long enough to bring in those Spider-Men. With enough time, other characters who know Spider-Man is Peter Parker or were killed fighting Spider-Man, like Harry Osborn and Venom from Peter-2’s universe, would have shown up with the other multiverse villains. Those Spider-Men from ITSV could have been among the people who were about to come into MCU near the end as the multiversal barriers were breaking down.
• When Sandman finds Peter, Peter is wearing a black suit (actually his old suit inside out) but Sandman recognizes him instantly. Of course he would; Spider-Man 3 has his Peter switch back and forth between the black symbiote suit and his classic red and blue one.
  • Peter and Flint also immediately team up not just because Flint ended on good terms with his Peter, but MCU Peter is used to working with the Avengers — he has no reason to assume a superpowered multiversal visitor is a villain when they could just as plausibly be an Avenger from another reality (and 616 comics Sandman has been an Avenger, no less).
• The moment where the Raimi-verse Peter stops the MCU Peter from killing the Green Goblin with his own glider has an even greater significance when remembering Spider-Man 3's final battle. During that scene, Venom grabbed Harry's glider and leaped towards his target, Peter. Harry's response was to jump in between the two and let himself get impaled. Raimi-verse Peter didn't just redeem himself for Norman's death. He also did the same for Harry!
• Perhaps Peter's entire identity, Social Security number, and any records, videos and such were removed by the memory erase spell. However, given that this is a post-Blip/Snap world where there are no doubt still millions of people across the planet that are displaced, it would make sense that there would be government systems set up by this point to handle people who seem to have lost their entire lives. Peter could've claimed that he was Blipped (which he was) and had his identity erased, his possessions destroyed, and his family left/died in the aftermath, etc. Then used those systems to get himself back on his feet after the memory spell.
• So... if Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius and Max Dillon were all pulled away before they died, in some cases even mere seconds before they died... and were returned cured, that means they wouldn't die. This was the entire reason behind Tom Spidey wanting to cure them, so they could go home and survive whatever killed them, changing their fates. This means Max went back to his own universe without his powers, and his fight with Andrew Spidey ended prematurely with Max still alive. If the fight ended earlier than it needed to, then Gwen wouldn't have needed to reset the power system to kill Electro like they did in the original film... meaning Gwen wouldn't be nearby when the Green Goblin turned up (still in the general vicinity but not near Peter)... meaning Peter could have fought him one-on-one without needing to worry about her... which could mean that Gwen is alive now.
• One of the issues with Spider-Man as a character is that he constantly winds up making enemies, sometimes creating his own villains like Venom or (in these movies) Sandman. Fittingly enough, this film revolves around fixing that issue. Taking responsibility for the mess he caused, not only by saving people from these new villains, but saving the villains themselves.
• Webbverse Spider Man is obviously the most socially awkward of the three, and his social skills actually seem to have deteriorated since his two films. This makes sense since he claims to have given up being Peter Parker so the most interactions he’s had with people in a long time are probably criminals and super-villains.
• The Green Goblin not reemerging before Otto is cured makes more sense if one sees his time letting Norman believe he fought him off as a time analyzing the other villains to see if they are potential allies. And since Otto is either focused on rebuilding his machine or a genuinely benevolent character depending on if the tentacles are in control or not, the Goblin likely realized that Doctor Octopus isn't helpful to his cause.
• Every character that comes into the MCU is introduced in an area that they previously were seen in their home universe, which indicates that Type 1 of the Time and Relative Dimensions in Space trope is in effect here. Specifically...
  • Doctor Strange mentions that he found the Lizard in the sewers when he first realized that they were getting multiversal visitors. After his first transformation in The Amazing Spider-Man, Curt Connors ends up setting up a makeshift lab in the sewers of his New York, and also discovers Spider-Man's identity shortly after his second transformation and subsequent bout with the webslinger. This indicates that he must have been pulled into the MCU shortly after learning this fact.
  • The Green Goblin is shown bombing the Alexander Hamilton Bridge the second he shows up in the MCU, much he was doing to the Queensboro Bridge in the climax of Spider-Man.
  • Doctor Octopus explicitly notes the scene where he was choking his Peter Parker in a fit of rage in Spider-Man 2 was the exact moment that he transported into the MCU, indicating that the place where he was setting up his second machine must have been near the bridge the Green Goblin was bombing in the first film.
  • Electro first appears out of thin air while trying to absorb energy from some powerlines, and he even describes how he was trying to do something similar in his home universe before appearing in the MCU, indicating that the wooded area Peter-1 finds him in is likely where the power plant from The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was.
  • In general, all the major multiversal characters in this movie were shown living in or near New York City, hence why they ended up in the MCU's version of the city as well. Meanwhile, Eddie Brock and Venom had just fled from the U.S to Mexico after the events of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and are still in Mexico after arriving in the MCU, just in a luxurious hotel instead of a cheap shack.
• Why does the film put more focus on The Goblin, Dock Ock, and Electro over Sandman and Lizard? Aside from logistical issues behind the set, Flint Marko and Curt Connors survived their encounters with Spider Man in their native timelines, so there was less of an urgency to redeem them before it was too late. The Spider Men needed to work considerably harder to save Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius, and Max Dillon before they would inevitably die of their own accord, which is the reason why Peter Parker wanted to give them a chance in the first place.
• It's been pointed out above and on the main page that there appear to be a few continuity errors with the multiverse characters, most notably when it comes to knowledge of things like Peter Parker or the Green Goblin's true identity. While there are other ways to fill these little plot holes it is worth pointing out that these are alternate universe characters in a multiverse that apparently has infinite realities, meaning it's entirely possible that these people are from universes that are extremely close to the previous movie franchises but are not literally the same places and thus have a few differences which include the apparent retcons here.
• Peter repeatedly improvises plans, claiming he knows what he is doing, but clearly does not. Near the end of the film, the key to the three Spider-mans working together involves them all trusting in their Spider-Sense to guide their actions. Due to his inexperience, MCU Peter fights best when he's letting his Spider Sense take the wheel, so his natural impulse when there is a problem is to jump right in and react instinctively rather than to make a plan.
• Why does Green Goblin detach part of his glider to his armor if he wants Peter-1 to kill him? That’s because he was preparing for if Peter-1 sends him back to his universe. If Peter-1 sends him back to his universe, Goblin will be better prepared to fight Peter-2 because in his final fight with Peter-2, he didn’t have access to his glider for most of the fight because of the small enclosed space he was fighting Peter-2 in. This is also telling by how he detached the retractable blade of his glider. It’s possible that Goblin knows that he died by being self-impaled by the retractable blade, so he is making it so he doesn’t face the same fate if he gets sent back.
  • It also makes up for one of his weaknesses: his entire arsenal is from his glider.
• In a twist, Mysterio is an Evil Counterpart to Peter-2 and 3. The two of them are actual otherworldly heroes who come to hunt down dangerous monsters who they have lost things to, only to meet and become friends with MCU Peter. The one difference is that they actually told the truth.
• It's widely agreed that Lizard easily has the least depth and relevance of the five villains, and that he was the only one who was cured and/or wasn't in immediate danger of dying, so his presence is unexplained. But depending on when he was taken, Captain Stacy is the one who doesn't have to die.
• Peter got the idea to turn his FFH suit inside out while he was washing it. But remember, he spent much of that movie in the "Nacht Monkey!" stealth suit. He knows how well it worked in that movie, so he's willing to try stealth again on another night mission.
• In between when Norman's personality had control and after he was cured, he seemed cowardly compared to other versions who went through the same thing. It makes sense since it's confirmed the other universes don't have other heroes besides Spider-Man, and Norman would've been the first villain since Octavius, Brock, and Harry came after, so he's not used to hero and villain madness like other versions of him, which would explain why he is more scared.
• A big plot point of the Raimi trilogy is the fact that Harry didn't know his father was the Green Goblin and thus blamed Spider-Man for his death. And yet, Flint says that both the Green Goblin's identity and how he died were all over the news. So what gives? Firstly, Otto seems to only put things together when he sees the Goblin in person, so most likely, the public still didn't know anything in his time. Secondly, Flint is from the future (since the first thing he does is help Spider-Man and he seems to have lost the ability to turn human), so it's quite possible that Norman's identity only came to light after the trilogy ended. Now, what happened in Spider-Man 3? Harry has died. Moreover, he died while using the same gear that the Green Goblin did, which should be enough of a clue to reopen the investigation into Norman's death.
• Possibly unintentional, but there’s a special kind of humor in the Raimiverse’s Peter being designated “Peter 2” (or in other words, Peter B.).
• Jameson's accusations about Spider-Man's cowardice in not showing his face is actually somewhat understandable—none of the Avengers, other than Spidey, even had secret identities, and other New York heroes, such as Luke, Jessica, and Danny, don't either. Admittedly, Daredevil and Punisher do, but neither of them is exactly going to be seen as a positive role model.
• At one point during Strange and Peter's fight, Strange knocks Peter's astral form out of his body, so that should mean the spell can be easily retrieved... except Peter's body keeps dodging Strange's attempts to take it from him, to their mutual confusion. It very likely could be Peter's Spider-Sense kicking in - after all, it's his unconscious "early warning" system that lets him react to oncoming threats even if he can't see them first. His Spider-Sense is probably reacting to Strange trying to "hurt" him, and so his unconscious body is pulling the spell out of his reach even with Peter getting ejected from the driver's seat, so to speak.
• While they didn't appear in the Spider-Verse comics crossover, the two previous Peters were mentioned in it. It could have happened after this movie, so that they won't recall adventures with other Spideys.
• Why did the spell pull Doc Ock through right as he "had [Spider-Man] by the throat"? Because it was the moment before Ock died, and Octavius resurfaced.
• Peter ultimately choosing to not tell MJ who he is at the end after he sees she still has her bandage, breaking his promise, parallels a moment in Avengers: Infinity War when another Peter, Peter Quill, made a promise to his love interest that because of emotions running high, he wasn't able to follow through on until it was too late, not being able to kill Gamora before Thanos captured her like she made him promise he would.

Fridge Horror

• After Ned reveals that he can use a sling ring, he assures Peter that he'll never turn evil and try to kill him. Throughout the movie, Ned is wearing the Midtown High letterman jacket. The colors of the jacket are orange and blue. The same colors of the Hobgoblin: Ned's villainous alter-ego in the comics.
  • Bonus points if you also know that Ned was never really the Hobgoblin, but a patsy the original brainwashed to use as a scapegoat. So while there's hints to him doing so, it's true that he'll never turn evil.
  • On the other hand, since Ned lost his memories of Peter (and thus isn't bound by his Suspiciously Specific Denial), it could be possible for the writers to take creative liberties with his character. After all, the Hobgoblin is notorious for being the (bad) guy in the chair.
  • This is supported by the fact that much like how MJ retained the hopefulness that she learned from interacting with Peter, Ned might retain his affinity for working in the shadows, reveling in his accomplishments while hiding behind more recognizable characters.
• The Spider-Sense was always fairly vague as to what triggers it beyond "danger" in all the movie continuities, but this film has Green Goblin easily showcase it: an eerie, omnipresent sense of danger that can linger, as Peter wanders through the condominium sensing the Green Goblin's murderous intent for him the entire time. He sensed it with each of the dimensional travelers, but only as a brief warning — the Goblin put his senses into a hyper sensation of imminent death, completely unintentionally since at the time, he didn't know of it. Keep in mind that Peter-2 had a similar sense for the Green Goblin's mere presence before. This means that if Peter ever ends up in a room or area with someone that is just completely and utterly homicidally insane, or even filled with such people, his entire mind would be flooded with non-stop killing intent from every direction, potentially even inhibiting his ability to protect himself. And this is consistent across the Spider-Men.
• You can see the moment when the Goblin returns, even before Spider-Man himself. When Otto says to Norman, "You're about to become whole again. No more darker half. Just you," the camera zooms in towards the back of Norman's head, but he doesn't turn around just yet. Instead, he stands up straighter and more still and says, "Just me," in a subtly different voice than Norman usually speaks in. He then turns around a second later to smile at Otto. But just the change in tone indicates to the audience that the Goblin is back. And what might have prompted it? His old friend acknowledging out loud the Goblin's imminent demise. While trying to offer words of comfort and encouragement, Otto might have instead accidentally given the Goblin a warning to come back and take control over Norman. And the Goblin has gotten good at pretending to be Norman...
• Everybody gets up forgetting who Peter Parker is by the end of the film. What's not to say that people from the multiverse also end up forgetting who their Peter Parker is as well? Meaning that Peter 2 and Peter 3 might have a tough time when they go back home as they could have everybody they know forget who they are.
  • That's assuming that the spell didn't just sever the connection to the MCU by having everyone from there forget. Since we don't entirely know how the spell works on a multiversal scale, it might just have been localized to the MCU.
  • Webb and Raimi Peter are fine. The Infinity Stones are infinitely (no pun intended) more powerful than Dr. Strange, and they can only function within their home reality. Logically, Strange's spell can only reach the borders of his universe and no further. He might be able to open the door to other realities, accidentally or otherwise, but affecting them on the same scale is out of the question. Otherwise, every universe would be subjected to the spells of every other theoretical universe, including the one where Dr. Strange had too much to drink one night and decided to cast a spell to collapse the entire multiverse (all possibilities exist in an infinite multiverse, therefore...).
    • We got a taste of that in What If...? - villains capable of threatening more than one universe do inevitably happen.
• If the spell is dragging in everyone who is aware of a Peter Parker Spider-Man's identity, what about universes like ours where Spider-Man is one of the most famous fictional characters in the world, and his secret identity is common knowledge? An almost infinite number of otherwise innocent bystanders would be flooded into the MCU, and only exacerbate the very overpopulation problem Thanos was trying to stop.
  • It's not even implied, Dr. Strange outright states in the Mirror Dimension fight that in an infinite multiverse, there are logically an infinite number of people who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
    • Yup, Earth would become a black hole from the mass of the people pulled in.
  • To give one such example, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse had Peter Parker unmasked to the world shortly after his death. Literally EVERY single person on that version of Earth was getting pulled in.
    • No, he was dead. The only beings from that reality getting pulled are Miles and that Peter. Everyone else knows Peter Parker was Spider-Man.
• Just what happened to the Mexican bartender after Eddie left a piece of symbiote behind as he left? We see him pick up their cups and leave the scene, but that doesn't mean that he can't come back and get infected by the symbiote. He even mentioned having a family! And don't forget that in any case, the symbiote is going to have a long line of unfortunate hosts to hijack in order to reach Peter.
  • On a more hopeful note, the symbiote left behind is of the same type as the Sony Venom movies. Said symbiotes are not Always Chaotic Evil like many versions tend to be in various adaptations. This symbiote has the potential to be a good/not totally evil being when bonded with Peter.
• The memory wipe spell already carries a lot of fridge horror, but even more so when you let it sit that this spell has been enacted for such trivial things like having a wild party at the sanctum. Wong, an elder member of the sanctum, is a victim of the spell and doesn't even know it. The movie plays the revelation for laughs but it's weird to think that entire moments, events and even people can be wiped from your mind on such a whim, let alone by your allies and friends.
  • The memory wipe spell is basically the MCU version of the Neuralizer from Men in Black.
    • It even gets activated from the top of the Statue of Liberty, much like the large-scale version from Men In Black 2.
  • That said, it's entirely possible that Strange is completely pulling Wong's leg about the "wild party at the Sanctum", and it never actually happened at all.
  • Worse, it's possible to use this spell to erase something from the minds of an entire planet - including the caster. How do we know this hasn’t been done before? What else has been erased from humanity's collective consciousness, leaving no one the wiser?
• By the end of the film, Peter gets a new, plainer suit that clearly has no fancy Stark Tech this time around. Meanwhile, the spawn of Venom is lurking somewhere in Mexico. Should they ever cross paths, it'll be much easier for the Symbiote to bond with Peter's suit, since it doesn't have any security measures like his hi-tech suits.
  • It gets worse...originally? The film ENDED with Peter getting infected.
• The fact that the villains were sent back to divergent timelines because the pasts of the Raimiverse and the Webbverse can't be changed means that Sandman and the Lizard will never really see their original families again, but variant versions of them. Unless they could return to their original universes given how they didn't die unlike the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus and possibly Electro...
  • By returning to their universes and changing the course of history, Sandman and Lizard have become variant versions themselves. Their "variant" families are just their families.
• Webb-verse Peter mentions that the last notable supervillain he fought was Rhino. In other words, Harry's plans to create a Sinister Six didn't work out. Why this falls into fridge horror is because it could imply that one of Harry's meetings with a potential recruit didn't turn out so well for him...
  • This Peter is implied to not be much older than the last time we saw him since Max thinks that this Peter is Just a Kid, so it’s possible that Harry just hasn’t made big strides yet.
• Webb Peter said that he "stopped pulling his punches" after Gwen died. Given that any Spider-Man could easily kill people if not careful, did he start killing the villains he fought from then on?
  • Combining this WMG with the above: Perhaps the reason that the Webbverse Goblin never formed the Sinister Six was that Webb Peter killed him in a fit of rage. There's already precedent for this—the original script for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 featured a scene where Webb-verse Peter beat Webb-verse Harry within an inch of his life after the latter mocked Gwen's death. Perhaps this scene happened after all, in one way or another, only Harry didn't survive?
    • The thing that could disprove that is that this Peter doesn’t react much when Raimi Peter mentions his best friend trying to kill him and then dying in his arms.
    • Also, since Peter is a fundamentally good person, there’s a chance that he stopped immediately around the time after he stopped pulling his punches and he felt guilty just from severely harming someone from not pulling his punches.
• Those airplanes in Electro's timeline definitely collided with one another. In The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Electro HAD to die for the power in the planes to return. Electro is possibly a mass murderer now. In the regular timeline, he only killed 2 people(?).
  • The power came on just before he exploded, so depending on when exactly he was taken, the planes might have survived.
• Green Goblin represents the logical endpoint of Peter foregoing the "great responsibility" part - he has all the power he wants, while also having no code of ethics or sense of moral duty to temper his worst impulses. He was delighted at the prospect of MCU Peter killing him because his own philosophy made him feel that Peter had the right to by virtue of proving himself the superior being, and also because he believed Peter had finally renounced the last of his humanity. Had MCU Peter succeeded at killing him, he would most likely have not stopped there, and it would have gotten easier each time as he began to see himself as more and more of a god of punishment - in short, the sort of abrogation of restraint and human moral compunctions that the Goblin wanted to see from him.
  • Back in his debut, the Green Goblin gave a notable speech to Peter-2 about how there's no reason to bother being a hero when the populace will just want to see him fall and die in the end for their amusement. While Peter-2 managed to avert such a fate, in the end he was still dead accurate — for Peter-1, whose life was ruined because the world either idolized his heroism or demonized him over Mysterio, and society became one giant Ungrateful Bastard. His words also eerily reflect that of the Marvel Cinematic Universe altogether; as soon as Wakanda's call for the Sokovia Accords came into practice, the world threw their greatest heroes under the bus the instant they felt threatened by their existence. And the biggest hero immortalized among them all, was Tony Stark sacrificing himself after a fall from grace. What was meant to be a cynical ramble from Norman Osborn's hatred at the world ended up borderline prophetic.
• It can be explained that maybe Talos in Nick Fury's shoes had the lack of authority to do much, since Damage Control openly knows about his absence from the planet, but the organization he was leading still had the resources and capability of acting. Just what the hell was going on during Peter's Frame-Up that it took Matt Murdock to cover for him while Stark Industries was practically torn apart from the inside out, rather than the secret agency that was trying to protect the world and had the international resources and power to try to do so in the previous film?
  • It really does bare reiteration: the United States government used Mysterio's death and Peter's frame job as an excuse to have their Damage Control seize all of the Stark Industries technology for themselves. In a world where HYDRA has been defeated before but still stubbornly clasps on to survival, real bastards like "Thunderbolt" Ross still have military power, and the U.S. Government has a habit of really bad decisions in how to handle larger scale threats, they've now got all of Tony Stark's armors, Arc Reactor designs, weaponry and other assorted things combined with E.D.I.T.H. and global information gathering at their full disposal. And they used a high schooler being coined as a murderer to get away with it. The consequences of this uptick in power become readily apparent in Ms. Marvel (2022), and Damage Control now has authority to arrest any non-contracted metahuman individuals in general.
• While it's unclear exactly how much time passed between the fight at Happy's apartment and the Goblin's arrival at the Statue of Liberty, it's clear that at least several hours passed, as it's sunrise by the time Norman is cured (not to mention the period Peter had disappeared in following May's death, as well as however long it took the three Peters to create the remaining cures). It's clear the Goblin has been active during that time, as he updated his outfit with flight goggles and a Blade Below the Shoulder. So that begs the question—just what else did the Goblin do while he was away?
• While the villains are cured and returned to their home dimensions, therefore creating new timelines separate from the Raimi and Webb continuities, that doesn't guarantee a happy ending for the villains. With Octavius, he was presumably taken just after learning Peter's identity in Spider-Man 2, by which point his machine had become self-sustaining and required him to commit a Heroic Sacrifice to destroy it. So unless the arc reactor he took with him provides him the means to destroy the machine safely, his fate remains unchanged, and even if it does, his best outcome is serving time in prison, though he might be happy with that and would be motivated to atone for his crimes. Electro, meanwhile, is assumed to be taken just before he was defeated in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 based on his comments, so while his Spider-Man would stop fighting him when he returns powerless, it is unlikely he will be able to help prevent Harry from killing Gwen and would still be arrested for his crimes. Lizard would also face imprisonment like in the original Webb universe but since it's unclear when he was taken from the events of The Amazing Spider-Man, it might be before he even properly attempts his plan so George Stacy could still be alive. Sandman is assumed to come from after the events of Spider-Man 3 so his fate is unclear, but it's likely his powers were the only thing keeping him from being taken back to prison unless something has changed since then, though it's possible his daughter is still alive, meaning he at least gets to be with her. Osborn is the only one guaranteed to have a positive ending as he would return without his Goblin personality, and regardless of whether it's before or after Peter learns his identity, it still gives him a chance to prevent Harry from becoming the New Goblin and he may also even prevent his version of Octavius from becoming Doctor Octopus.
  • Depending on when Norman was taken from his timeline, he may still end up being stabbed by his own glider. Also, the Lizard is missing a finger from Captain Stacy’s shotgun blast, so it’s likely he still died, even with the Lizard’s earlier redemption.
  • Norman still had his glider when he arrived in the MCU, so he likely won't be stabbed by it. And with the Lizard there's a small chance he was taken just before he killed Captain Stacy.
  • As for Octavius, he died to drown his miniature sun in the river which landed on him. "I will not die a monster!" This was likely entirely deliberate suicide on Otto's part, as he knew he could only take control over his arms briefly before they eventually took over again. That's not a factor in this Otto's case though, so he would likely just drown his sun without sacrificing himself to do it, which wouldn't be too difficult to do. As for his time in prison... Otto could serve his time, reverse engineer the Arc Reactor he got from the MCU, then release it to the world and retire a happy man with his dream fulfilled. Or flee the country to do basically the same thing if his sentence was too much and negotiate time off his sentence. Or not even have a sentence if he can prove his actions were caused by his arms mental influence and thus he wasn't responsible for his crimes.
• The potential multiverse visitors wouldn't just be the various versions of Spider-Man and his allies and foes. As mentioned above, since it's long been established that versions of the "real world" exist in the Marvel Multiverse, it would also include the citizens of worlds where Spider-Man is the mascot of a popular comic company owned by the biggest media conglomerate in the world.
  • Although that would depend on whether or not Strange's spell distinguishes between knowing something is true in reality from knowing that something is true in the context of it being part of a fictional narrative.
• Peter's personality keeps him from being able to hold a day job for any length of time in many stories, often resulting in his having to move back in with his aunt. Except he no longer has an aunt, or anyone else, to go to for that support and may well end up homeless due to being unable to keep up with the rent in NY.
• While Strange's second reality rewrite removed a burden on all of Peter's loved ones, it doesn't change the fact that, even in this new reality, Mysterio won. His final message may not include Peter's name anymore, but he's still seen as a hero like he always dreamed of, and through the butterfly effect, he still managed to ruin Peter's life. Even though Peter's real identity hasn't been revealed, his actions in trying to undo Mysterio's dirty work resulted in him losing all his existing friendships and romances, and it doesn't matter that he's not being hounded by the authorities as Peter Parker, Jameson and The Daily Bugle are still actively trying to ruin the name of Spider-Man in the name of Mysterio. Peter wished too hard, and in the end, the person who ruined his life still came out on top.
• Though Tony was trying to be a mentor to Peter, he basically became the Unwitting Instigator of Doom for Peter long before even meeting him. And this is not only due to him working with the Department of Damage Control (which lead to the creation of the Vulture). Quentin Beck and his crew were all made up of Stark Industries employees who worked for Tony before and after his wake-up call in the first Iron Man film, and Tony bequeathed E.D.I.T.H. to Peter. Due to these two factors, it led to Beck exposing Peter as Spider-Man, leading him to try to get Strange to fix it. This caused the backfire of the spell, leading to the crossing over of villains and Spider-Men from two other realities. This in turn led to Aunt May's death and Peter having Strange erase everyone's memory of who Peter Parker is. By getting Peter involved with Captain America: Civil War, Tony inadvertently set him up for the events of the Home trilogy, a path which led Peter to be alone, without any friends or family—basically an Unperson—as a result.
  • It wouldn't have gone that bad for Peter had he stopped to think of all his options before asking Strange to do a mindwipe spell. Mysterio's lies didn't convince everyone, the legal charges are off, and his closest friends are willing to stick with him to the very end. Ultimately, it's Peter's actions that doomed him as the Green Goblin was never a product of Tony Stark, rather a product of Peter's inability to accept the consequences of his secret identity being revealed.
    • However, had Tony not approached Peter to help him with the events of Civil War, as well as actually treated his employees better after his wakeup call in Iron Man, not only would Peter have avoided having to "stop and think of all his options", he would have avoided it all together because Beck and his group never would have needed to try and create the Mysterio persona to get any recognition, thus not leading to Peter's identity being exposed in the first place and not leading him to go to Strange to help him fix it. This in turn would have not lead to the villains of other realities turning up to his reality, no death of Aunt May and no having to erase everyone's memory of who he is. Also, it's the fact that Stark directly and indirectly created his own enemies, in addition to creating the two villains that Peter had to deal with in the first two Home films and set up the events that lead to the events of this film. Yes, had Tony not done so, Peter wouldn't have been an Avenger and wouldn't have been there to help stop Thanos in Avengers: Endgame, but it doesn't make Tony any less of an Unwitting Instigator of Doom. Besides, Tony and Peter both have the fatal flaw of not thinking things through (and in Tony's case, it's practically a character flaw with him throughout his existence that has been lampshaded quite a few times throughout the MCU films).
  • Tony seems to have became an Unwitting Instigator of Doom to Peter the second he died. If Tony hadn’t died, the plots of the second and third movies wouldn’t have happened or the plot of the second movie would've played out differently because Beck wouldn’t be able to launch his plan, or would've have to make a different plan if Tony was still alive.
• Back when Thanos trashed the Avengers Compound, people said DUM-E might've perished in there. Well, this film shows he's alive. So now with the building trashed, is he still okay?
  • Considering that he was previously crushed and dropped into the ocean in Iron Man 3, it's safe to say that he'll be okay.
• When the villains discuss their original fates, Sandman doesn't mention (and presumably doesn't know) that the glider impaling Norman was an accident of his own making, and Raimi-Peter is never shown telling MCU-Peter what really happened. During their final showdown, a vengeful MCU-Peter picks up Norman's glider and tries to outright murder him with it. From both Norman and MCU-Peter's perspectives, Raimi-Peter killed Norman the same way.
• When Norman regains control after the Green Goblin is removed, he quietly asks Peter (and himself) what he's done. This could have been because he caught sight of what he's done to Raimi-Peter, but there's a possibility that he's also remembering what he's done since the Green Goblin took over in the apartment. And if that IS the case, then does that mean Norman was fully aware of what the Goblin was doing, and simply helpless to stop it?
  • If that IS the case, then Norman could have possibly been trying to stop himself while out of the driver's seat. He fails.
• Considering their initial interactions, and how the Green Goblin was already considered a separate identity, it wouldn't be hard to believe that it wasn't Norman that Peter wanted to kill, there just didn't seem like that many options left, and may have even felt that the Goblin killed him too.
• Flint Marco never fully takes on his human form throughout the film. It’s possible he never felt the need to but it’s also possible that he’s not capable of doing it anymore. This might mean his condition was worsening and if he hadn’t been cured, he may have deteriorated into nothing but a pile of sand.

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