Spoilers in this story Spider-Man has no way home.
Spider-Man has no way homeIt is full of familiar faces. Tom Holland’s Spidey accidentally breaks open the multiverse and invites in characters from the other two Spider-Man franchises that preceded the Homecoming trilogy. Yes, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire will be reprising their respective roles as Peter Parkers. (Maguire played Peter from 2002-2007 in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man From 2012 to 2014, Garfield in Trilogy Amazing Spider-Man movies.)
In the movie’s finale, three different Spider-Men get to battle some of the greatest Marvel villains of all time, like Doctor Octopus and the Green Goblin. The Spider-Men also have to fight Lizard, Sandman and other villains, both of whom were pretty awful when they appeared on the big screen many years ago.
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Why is there so many people around? Well, after the villain Mysterio revealed Peter’s secret identity to the world at the end of Far from Home, Peter’s life got a little chaotic. He asks Doctor Strange to cast a spell to make (almost) everyone forget he’s Spider-Man. They fail to cast the spell correctly and summon characters from different universes who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
Holland’s Peter initially plans to round up the bad guys and send them back to their respective parallel universes. Peter realizes quickly that the bad guys will all die in their worlds. He resolves to heal the mental and physical conditions that made them so evil, before sending them home.
Here’s a breakdown of every single cameo in Spider-Man has no way homeThese characters can also be used as a way to remind you where they were last seen.
Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man
Five years before Christian Bale took on the role of a billionaire playboy-turned-vigilante in Batman BeginsAnd eight years earlier Robert Downey Jr., there was another billionaire playboy. Iron ManTobey maguire introduced Peter Parker from Queens, a poor kid.
Last we saw Maguire’s Peter in Spider-Man 3, he’d defeated Venom (Topher Grace), let Uncle Ben’s killer, a remorseful Flint Marko (Thomas Haden Church), go and watched his best friend-turned-nemesis Harry (James Franco) die in his arms.
At that point, he had already broken up with Kirsten Dunst (MJ Watson), and was getting back together. It was not clear if MJ would continue to live with him. She was kidnapped several times a film, which must have been quite distressing. In the end, they had a good time and shared a few laughs.
Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man
Poor Andrew Garfield spent his last few months touring the country in support of his musical film. Tick Tick Boom having to pretend like he wasn’t going to show up in this movie when everyone was pretty sure he would. Garfield has finally been released!
Garfield’s Spider-Man arc was kind of a bummer. This was the final of The Amazing Spider-Man 2,Gwen Stacey was his lover, but he didn’t save her from an untimely death. He hung up the Spidey suit for about a year and visited Gwen Stacey’s grave obsessively. After grieving, he finally decided to watch an old video of Gwen Stacey’s graduation speech about living in the moment (a video that seemed not particularly gradutation-y and suspiciously well-tailored to bucking up Peter at that particular moment, but I digress).
Spider-Man returns to his crimefighting duties to battle…Paul Giamatti in a rhino suit doing a bad Russian accent. It was clear that the third installment of this movie series would not be made. It was during You can’t go home! when Maguire and Holland’s Peters reminisce about fighting aliens, Garfield laments that his villains were lame, poking fun at Rhino in particular.
Garfield still gives an excellent performance. You can’t go home!This reminds us that he might have been the greatest Peter Parker even though he was in some of the worst Spider-Man films.
Daredevil
Remember for a second that Netflix made a lot of Marvel TV shows? Daredevil Luke Cage Jessica Jones? (We ought to all pretend like? Iron Fist never existed.)
It’s still unclear if these shows—which were all abruptly cancelled—are part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon. It’s great to hear that fan-favorite characters may soon be appearing in the MCU.
Charlie Cox played the blind attorney-turned-vigilante Matthew Murdoch in Daredevil. At the end of the show’s third and final season, Daredevil put crime boss Kingpin behind bars. In You can’t go home!Peter’s role is retaken by Cox and he offers his services to Peter as an attorney.
The end of Far from HomeMysterio faked Peter’s death in order to give the appearance that Spider-Man has killed him. The police take Peter into custody at the start of the film. You can’t go home!Matt is present for advice. During that meeting, someone throws a brick through Peter’s window with “Mysterio was right” scrawled on it. Murdoch grabs the brick.
“How did you do that?” asks Peter.
“I’m a very good lawyer,” shoots back Murdoch.
It appears so since the Mysterio murder investigation is completely removed from the plot. Peter is not dragged back to the police station.
Charlie Cox will be appearing in Marvel properties. Probably. Because—Warning! Disney+ spoiler alert Hawkeye—Vincent D’Onofrio, who played Kingpin in DaredevilThe MCU has just added this new member to its roster Hawkeye.
Doctor Octopus
Spider-Man 2, Alfred Molina’s Dr. Otto Octavius in Spider-Man 2, built mechanical arms to conduct a Oscorp-funded fusion reactor experiment that went awry, killing Octavius’ wife in the process.
The chip which allowed Octavius control of the arms using his mind was destroyed and the arms started to control Octavius. He was obsessed with finishing the experiment no matter how many people it killed.
The end of Spider-Man 2, Maguire’s Peter revealed his identity to Doctor Octopus in hopes of reaching the man inside the machine. Doctor Octopus went to his senses, and he sacrificed himself for the destruction of the reactor.
Doc Ock shows up in You can’t go home! He has yet to realize that the Arc reactor is dangerous. Instead, he is determined to murder Spider-Man.
Green Goblin
Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe), a scientist and the father of Peter’s best friend Harry Osborn, became the Green Goblin in Maguire’s first Spider-ManMovie after movie, he inject himself with the supersoldier serum that he made. This serum caused him to become insane and gave rise to a second personality.
Just before the Thanksgiving meal, Spider-Man was set to join Green Goblin in a fight. During the battle, Green Goblin cut Spider-Man’s arm and later, at dinner, Norman noticed that Peter Parker was bleeding from a fresh wound in the same spot. Spider-Man and Green Goblin faced off again before Green Goblin accidentally fell from his own jetglider. (Oops.)
There is no one villain that can take the title of “villain supremacy”. You can’t go home!, it’s Green Goblin. Norman appeals to Aunt May’s sense of decency while secretly plotting against Peter.
Sandman
It’s unclear if Flint Marko (a.k.a. The truth of Flint Marko’s (a.k.a. Sandman), identity is not known. died fighting Spider-Man in Spider-Man 3. It’s so bad that it ends in such chaos that even the screenwriters seem to have forgotten about Flint.
You probably don’t remember Flint, but he is the robber who killed Uncle Ben (though Peter had previously thought a different man was responsible). His arrest led to him being sent to prison, but he managed escape. Flint fell in an experimental accelerator while on his run and was transformed into a sandman.
The end of Spider-Man 3, Maguire’s Spider-Man and his best friend Harry (now the reformed baddie Hobgoblin) defeat Sandman and Venom to save Mary Jane. Sandman appears on the screen, and Venom tells him that Peter is Spider-Man. Peter let him go. Marko shapes-shifts in sand to flotilla and Peter releases him.
Marko may have taken his own life, given that Spider-Man and all the other characters were supposed to end their lives fighting him. Perhaps he died of his sand injuries later? It is hard to know.
Electro
Jamie Foxx is glowing You can’t go home!. Thank goodness, because The Amazing Spider-Man 2, he started out as a socially awkward nerd with a combover and bad glasses and evolved into…a blue floaty guy. Not a cool, blue-floaty man like Doctor Manhattan. WatchmenSeries for TV. Lame, blue and floaty man.
Max Dillon, also known as Electro, gained his supervillain powers through falling into something hazardous, which in this instance was a vat of genetically engineered electric eels. As Electro informs Sandman, You can’t go home!, “Gotta watch where you fall!”)
The Amazing Spider-Man 2,, Electro challenged Garfield’s Spider-Man to a battle at a power plant. However, Spider-Man and Gwen Stacey managed to overload the power supply making Electro disappear into thin air.
You can’t go home!, Electro not only gets to look like a normal human—Lizard jokes about the character’s “makeover”—he also gets a personality transplant. This character now resembles Jamie Foxx. It’s all fine. Better, really.
Here’s a possible continuity error: It Amazing Spider-Man 2, Electro never actually discovered Spider-Man’s secret identity before he disappeared, so it’s unclear why he would be summoned to the world where Holland’s Peter lives.
Lizard
Ah! That villain no one wants to see again. Rhys Ifans plays Curt Connors, or Lizard again. Amazing Spider-Man. Connors was a scientist who, in a quest to regrow his missing arm, conducted an experiment that—you guessed it!—went awry: He accidentally turned himself into a lizard-human hybrid.
Connor was also made evil by this transformation. (Is the moral of the Spider-Man series, don’t become a scientist? It seems that you are 50/50 likely to become a homicidal madman if this is your goal. Connors tried to make everyone lizards by releasing a cloud-gaseous version of his lizard formula. As Electro notes in You can’t go home!This was ridiculous.
Lizard learned Peter’s identity when he found a camera caught in a web helpfully labeled with Peter’s name. Spider-Man foiled Lizard’s dastardly plan to turn humanity scaly and turned him back into Connors using an antidote. Connors was taken into police custody
The whole of the plot You can’t go home!This idea revolves around Spider-Man killing each villain, although Lizard is the only one who survived. Amazing Spider-Man. Perhaps Lizard escaped and died duking it out with Garfield’s Spidey a second time.
J. Jonah Jameson
J. Jonah Jameson, unlike other characters in this list does not travel from a parallel world. J.K. Simmons plays the role of the snarky newsman who loathes Spider-Man in the Maguire series.
There are a few differences: The Jameson in Maguire’s world runs a newspaper; the one in Holland’s world makes videos for a blog and (later) a TV station. J.K. Simmons clearly has changed roles.
But why does the version of J. Jonah Jameson in Holland’s world look the same as the one in Maguire’s universe? As Marvel TV shows, Loki explains, different “variants” of the same person can exist across many universes. You might have 2 J. Jonah Jamesons. Or twenty. Or thousands. Many of them are the exact same. Others look completely different. Loki is one example. He encounters many Loki variations. Some of them look identical to him (and were played by Tom Hiddleston, Loki actor). Others are female. Others are men. Others are children. One is an alligator.
Similar to Peter Parkers, there are many. All three of the Peter Parkers we meet happen to be white guys who are similar in appearance but different from one another. (Can we really cast a Spider-Man that isn’t white already?) Or a blonde woman instead of brown? What about a blonde dude instead of a brown one?
Anyway, that’s why there are at least two J. Jonah Jameson variants who look exactly like J.K. Simmons.
Venom
So in case you’re not caught up on Sony’s VenomSeries know which movie is the most recent? Venom: There Must Be CarnageIt was a kind of rom-com featuring an eccentric journalist, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy), and the carnivorous alien synbiote that lives inside his body. The two eventually learn to coexist harmoniously and eat chickens instead of human brains. Yes, really. These films are truly wild.
However, the final of Venom: There Must Be Carnage, Eddie and Venom were taking a vacation in a crappy island hotel room when suddenly they were transported to a really nice hotel room (presumably in the world of Holland’s Peter Parker). Peter’s face popped up on TV, and Venom licked Peter’s face.
If you’re a VenomThe diehards that will not stop spending everything You can’t go home! waiting for Venom to show up and chomp off Lizard’s head, I have bad news for you. Venom doesn’t make an appearance until a mid-credits scene. It shows Eddie Broke being told by a bartender that Iron Man and other superheroes exist in the universe. Eddie thinks, “Hey, maybe I should go talk to that Peter Parker kid,” at which point he’s sucked back into his own universe. Womp womp.
But—wait for it—a bit of Venom symbiote is left behind, no doubt to infect someone in this universe.
It’s worth pointing out that, yet again, neither Venom nor Eddie seemed to know Spider-Man’s secret identity, so it’s weird that they even got sucked into this universe in the first place. But, they did hear cool stories about Thanos.
Honourable mentions
Mary Jane Watson
Kirsten Dunst played Mary Jane Watson, Peter’s love interest in the Maguire films. Dunst did not, however. You can’t go home!, Maguire’s Peter does offer a quick update on his relationship status. He said that although the couple had experienced their share of bumps in relationships (read: MJ was kidnapped a lot more), they were able to find a way together. It’s a great time to be in love.
Gwen Stacey
Emma Stone played Peter’s girlfriend Gwen Stacey in the Garfield Amazing Spider-Man movies. It was unlikely that she would pop up in movies. You can’t go home!Consider her character that she died in The Amazing Spider-Man 2
In many comic book runs, Peter Parker falls in love with MJ after the death of Gwen, but Garfield’s Peter has not found love since Gwen died. He finds some relief in the last act of the film, when Zendaya plays the role of MJ, which is filmed from the Statue of Liberty. Garfield’s Peter catches and saves her, crying as he does, which is a very sweet moment. Would I like to see Andrew Garfield do more Spider-Man films? Maybe?!
Miles Morales
In the final battle scene, after Garfield’s Spider-Man cures Electro, the hero removes his mask so the two can share a chummy moment.
Electro stares at Peter in dismay. “You’re from Queens, you help the poor. I thought you might be Black,” Electro says. “Well, there’s probably a Black Spider-Man out there somewhere.”
It is. Miles Morales (a Black-Puerto Rican teenage living in Brooklyn), is one of them. he has assumed the role of Spider-Man, both in comics and other Spider stories including the Oscar-winning animated movie. Spider-Man: The Spider-verseA recent and critically-acclaimed Spider-Man videogame.
Holland’s Spider-Man movies have even hinted that Miles may exist in Holland’s universe. In Spider-Man’s HomecomingPeter Parker was introduced to Aaron Davis by Donald Glover. Davis is canonically an anti-hero called the Prowler and Miles’ uncle. Davis also mentioned in the film that his nephew was a young man. It’s probably only a matter of time before Miles gets his own live action film in Sony’s expanding cinematic unvierse.
