“Spider-Man: No Way Home’s” Multiverse Explained
Everything to know about the still-recent creation of the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse – and how it results in all those older characters showing up in the newest "Spider-Man."
To say that there has been an unbelievably long wait for the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer is actually something of a grand understatement; just looking at the two other 2021 Marvel Cinematic Universe films that never had any marketing materials released before their covid-19 delays, we see a far different story in terms of publicity: the teaser trailers for both Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (September) and Eternals (November) dropped some five or six months before their respective release dates, while the full trailers arrived roughly three months out. The very first preview for the third Spidey didn’t arrive until tonight, just under four months until the movie’s December 17 debut, and, even then, the argument could be made that it only materialized because of a leaked – and work-in-progress – version from yesterday had forced both Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios’s hand.
While the exact nature behind this unprecedented MCU delay remains currently unknown, what is known is just how much news, rumors, and sheer speculation from seemingly all corners attempted to fill the content void over the course of the past year. And, intriguingly enough, the teaser’s long-awaited arrival hasn’t done much to address those ardently held theories – though it certainly has given us some bones of substance to chew on until the next, full trailer gets delivered from on high.
It’s a lot to parse, so we’re going to do our best to wade through it all together. Here’s everything we know about the big-picture, overarching connections of No Way Home now that we’ve received the very first narrative confirmations (and half-confirmations, as it were).
What’s All This about the Multiverse in No Way Home?
Over the past few years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been resolutely moving towards a multiversal model, meaning a metaverse that is comprised of several different, if not simultaneous, timelines or universes. The concept, along with some sort of time-travel mechanism to access them, was first broached in Avengers: Endgame (April 2019), when the titular team of superheroes discovers how to manipulate the quantum realm to revisit certain periods in history – a process that doesn’t change the preexistent chronology but which, instead, potentially generates offshoot realities.
The first two MCU chapters to release afterwards hinted at a multiverse tie-in of one type or another, but their flirtations ended up being mere teases: Spider-Man: Far from Home (July 2019) promised that a new partner for the web-slinger heralded from a different timeline, though he ultimately proved to be a duplicitous antagonist; WandaVision (January 2021), meanwhile, recruited the actor who portrayed Quicksilver, Wanda Maximoff’s brother, in Fox’s two-decade-old X-Men franchise as a nod to a possible multi-studio crossover, but the character was eventually revealed to be a completely unrelated individual with no greater significance (leading to complaints of a casting stunt from some irate fans).
It wasn’t until this summer’s Loki series (June 2021) that audiences got some tangible results from all this cinematic pillow talk. After the alternate version of the God of Mischief seen in Endgame manages to sneak his way out of the established Marvel history, he’s hunted down by the newly revealed Time Variance Authority and scheduled for deletion – until he teams up with another variant of himself and takes down the secret power behind the mysterious agency. Despite this leader’s questionable, if not fascistic, ways, he nonetheless managed to prevent divergent timelines from branching off, flourishing, and ultimately achieving the ability to cross over and invade the main chronology; now, the television show hints, it’s open game, with an infinite number of threats possibly rearing their heads down the line, thereby transforming the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse.
And then there’s the still-ongoing What If…? (August 2021), the first-ever animated entry in the MCU, which follows a different narrative scenario in each of its nine first-season episodes, covering such possibilities as T’Challa becoming Guardians of the Galaxy’s Star-Lord as opposed to Black Panther. The thread that ties each anthologized tale together is the presence of the Watcher, a figure who apparently exists beyond space and time – and who was previously hinted at in a fun cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (May 2017). Given its canon status and continuity bona fides, it is currently expected that What If…? will have some kind of barring on the Marvel state of affairs moving forward (and, indeed, may only be possible thanks to Loki’s climactic finale).
There is, as of right now, no indication that Spider-Man: No Way Home will in any way follow up on these major developments – this third solo chapter could take place immediately after the second one’s cliffhanger ending, especially since Marvel Studios has shown a growing affinity for nonlinear releases (Guardians, Vol. 2 is set two-and-a-half years earlier, for instance, while Black Widow [July 2021] jumps back in time five years, during the events of an entirely different film). Still, the just-released teaser places Peter Parker squarely within the multiverse thanks to a spell-gone-awry by none other than Doctor Strange, seemingly slipping him into a different reality or two – ones that were initially created by the first two iterations of Sony’s Spider-Man property, the ones starring Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield.
How Do the Previous Spider-Man Franchises Factor into No Way Home?
This is the question that has been fueling all of the rabid speculation, hypothesizing, and rumor-mongering for the past 10 months, ever since reports first surfaced of two key actors making return appearances in the newest Spider-Man offering.
In order to put everything in its proper context, however, we need to first recall what came before this latest take on the wall-crawler. Sony Pictures originally kicked off its big-screen forays into Spidey’s world with a trilogy that ran from May 2002 to May 2007; with the studio unsure if a third sequel would prove profitable or disastrous, and with the rights set to default back to Marvel if no further movies were ushered into production within the immediate future, Sony opted to instead reboot the franchise with a whole new interpretation just 10 short years after starting its original one. The Amazing Spider-Man (July 2012) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (May 2014) were the result, and though they were meant to become the seed of a whole new shared universe of their own (inspired by Marvel Studios’s, of course), they, too, ended up fizzling out in short order.
This seemingly fatal turn of events for the film studio actually opened the door to a pretty revolutionary – and successful – level of inter-corporate cooperation: the character would still be cinematically controlled by Sony Pictures, but he would be able to make appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and have his new solo outings be creatively supervised by Marvel, to boot. Announced on February 9, 2015, it took no time at all for the agreement to go into effect, incorporating Peter Parker into Marvel’s proceedings by either reference or direct appearance starting that July (with Ant-Man, to be exact).
Now, six-and-a-half years later, the MCU’s multiversal opening allows for the two companies’ partnership to be even grander in scope. Word surfaced in early October 2020 that, for No Way Home, Jamie Foxx would reprise his role as Electro, the villain in Amazing Spider-Man 2, though it was uncertain at the time if it would be a direct continuation of that arc or a brand-new spin on the character (exactly as Spider-Man: Far from Home did with JK Simmons, bringing him back from Sony’s trilogy for a new performance as a different J. Jonah Jameson). Fuel was only added to the fire over the next two months, when Alfred Molina was reported to similarly resurrect (perhaps literally, given his initial fate) his own nemesis, Doctor Octopus, from Spider-Man 2 (June 2004). (Not only does the new trailer, in conjunction with some leaked photos, confirm these returns, there’s also evidence of Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, last seen in the very first Spider-Man [May 2002], joining the trans-dimensional party.)
These news thunderclaps instantly set off the online fandom, which was only too happy to instantly latch onto the idea that this newest production would essentially be a live-action version of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (December 2018), the Sony animated film that saw multiple Spider beings from multiple realities team up to save the world. However, unlike with the antagonists’ appearances in No Way Home, which were ultimately confirmed both by the actors portraying them and a series of leaked images of tie-in merchandise, there was no evidence directly supporting the on-screen presence of either Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield, the previous Spider-Men. There’s also been the little matter of some pretty forceful denials by everyone on Team Marvel, most vociferously by current webhead Tom Holland himself – though such refutations (and, even, doctored footage in trailers) are typically offered up by the studio in the hopes of keeping its fans unspoiled and surprised.
(If these earlier Parkers do, indeed, show up in this latest Spider-Man undertaking, as some set reports definitely suggest, it’s no surprise at all that they aren’t seen alongside their continuity brethren in the teaser – such a massive payoff is typically something that Marvel Studios would hold back until the full preview proper.)
Either way, though, whether there’s just one or a full trio of Spider-Men facing off against this motley crew of baddies, Spider-Man: No Way Home is going to deliver on WandaVision’s promise of crossing over with the other, earlier Marvel films, the ones that were created under the auspices of other filmmakers at other studios – a momentous piece of history in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, specifically, and all of filmdom, generally.
What’s the Future of the MCU’s Multiverse?
As has become thoroughly customary by now, each new release within Marvel’s shared universe comes with at least a fair bit of foreshadowing for all future installments, and this latest Spider-Man is no different: namely, Dr. Strange’s brush with the multiverse here will set him up for his own sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (March 2022), in which he will more fully explore these myriad other continuities (and which is being helmed by Sam Raimi, the director of the very first Spider-Man trilogy). The movie actually serves as something of a nexus point all around – Scarlet Witch looks to be a major part of the upcoming sequel, paying off her own development in WandaVision, and it’s already been confirmed that Loki’s first season will get similarly paid off (with, even, rumors that the Asgardian himself might also pop up).
Speaking of that television show, its second season could potentially arrive later on in ’22, with a premise that’s largely expected to revolve around a multiversal war breaking out. Meanwhile, the individual who was responsible for the creation of Loki’s Time Variance Authority all those countless centuries (or is that millennia?) ago, a mysterious figure identified only as He Who Remains (at the end of time), is scheduled to return in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (February 2023); here, that variant of the character will go by the name of Kang the Conqueror, a time-traveling warlord that has been described by Marvel Studios as the “next big cross-movie villain.” Should this Thanos-esque mantle truly fit, then it’s entirely possible that we’ll get to see even more alternate versions well before then, maybe even popping up in some of 2022’s other entries, whether they be Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (July) or, presumably, the Moon Knight Disney+ series.
And somewhere in the midst of all this is Spider-Man himself. As part of Sony and Marvel’s recently updated deal, which allowed for the existence of No Way Home in the first place, it was agreed that Peter would show up in one additional film – and now that he’ll have a much firmer understanding of the mystic arts and time-travel both, the sky’s truly the limit for what role Spidey can play in the still-unfolding Marvel Cinematic Multiverse.