[MCU Analysis & Predictions] Spider-Man: No Way Home [Trailer & Easter Eggs]
Hello! Today it’s the trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home, which dropped on 24 August 2021 — I’m going to watch it and run through all sorts of predictions!
The newest trailer breakdown is here
[MCU Analysis & Predictions] Spider-Man: No Way Home [11/17 Trailer 2 & Easter Eggs]
The Shang-Chi analysis and review is here!
[MCU Analysis & Review] Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings [Impressions & Easter Eggs]
Contents
Predictions
[Background] The three Spider-Men
There are three live-action Spider-Men going right now.
The first one you already know — the MCU version, played by Tom Holland.
The second is the so-called Sam Raimi version, played by Tobey Maguire.
And the third is the Amazing version, played by Andrew Garfield.
What to watch for in this one
Tom Holland bowing out
https://theriver.jp/holland-wants-to-back-sm/
Technically Tom Holland’s contract runs out with this third MCU Spider-Man film.
How they write Tom Holland out of the MCU, at least for now, should be quite a thing to watch.
Tom Holland off to the SSU?
Apparently? Tom Holland and company are joining the SSU (Sony’s Spider-Man Universe), the universe the Venom films and Morbius belong to, which used to be called the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters (SPUMC). So much for the contract running out… lol
Or maybe it’s a Spider-Man who isn’t Tom Holland who joins up. Looking forward to it.
How the multiverse gets handled
This is finally where we get a crossover between multiverses.
Bringing in the multiverse risks making life and death feel cheap, so how they keep the weight in it is something I’ll be watching very closely.
How it connects to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Spider-Man: No Way Home clearly looks like it plugs straight into the second Doctor Strange film, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, out in 2022, so exactly how it connects is on my mind.
My broad prediction for the film
Writing out the reasoning behind each point would be a lot of work, so I’ll skip that part.
- Peter is accused by the police of murdering Mysterio
- Matthew “Matt” Murdock, otherwise known as Daredevil, turns up to defend Peter against the charge
- Peter wins an acquittal, but he’s worried his friends will be targeted by the bad guys
- So he has Doctor Strange erase everyone’s memories
- That job fails. Several universes get mixed together, and Green Goblin and the rest show up
- Those villains form the Sinister Six
- The villains’ goal is to remake this world to suit themselves
- On Peter’s side, the Sam Raimi Peter’s timeline and the MCU Peter’s timeline get scrambled together
- Peter and company beat back most of the Sinister Six
- Just as he set out to do, Peter decides to live on with Aunt May and Ned and the others in a new timeline where everyone’s memories have been erased
- On the MCU side, the MCU’s Peter Parker and his friends are gone — the new world is the world Venom and the rest live in
- At the very end, the Sam Raimi Peter Parker played by Tobey Maguire appears in the MCU in the swap. Or Venom appears.
- Doctor Strange moves to put the Sam Raimi Peter Parker, and the multiverse he wrecked this time, back the way they were — which leads into the second Doctor Strange film, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
It’s rough in places, but if it goes like this it’d be so good.
There’s another theory going around too: the device Peter Parker is holding here is a machine for travelling between universes, and the film isn’t about enemies coming over from other multiverses but about him moving into various multiverses himself.
The Sinister Six
Those images, from the top, are
- The Amazing version’s Electro (the lightning was blue in the previous live-action film, but it’s gone yellow here, which is a mystery)
- The Amazing version’s Lizard
- The Sam Raimi version’s Sandman (he even looks like he’s helping Peter)
- The Sam Raimi version’s Green Goblin (Norman Osborn, presumably)
- The Sam Raimi version’s Doctor Octopus
That’s the lot. And the Sinister Six is…
A six-strong villain team of Spider-Man’s enemies, going back to 1964.
It has been put together several times over the years with the members changing.
There are offshoot teams as well, like the Sinister Seven and the Sinister Twelve.https://www33.atwiki.jp/studentx/pages/409.html
— that famous villain team from Spider-Man. And with five villains in this film, the Sinister Six forming is surely a certainty. What I want to focus on here is who the sixth member is, and what their goal is.
Who’s the sixth Sinister Six member?
Ned / Hobgoblin
In the comics, Ned is actually the third Hobgoblin, a copycat of the Green Goblin.
The third one was brainwashed into becoming Hobgoblin. So maybe the Green Goblin brainwashes Ned and… something like that?
Mysterio
He might come back thanks to Doctor Strange’s mess-up.
Vulture
Maybe he breaks out of prison and becomes a Sinister Six member, but gets caught this time round, and then shows up in the Morbius film.
One More Day and Mephisto
No Way Home looks like it’s based on One More Day, the story that hugely changed the world of the Spider-Man comics.
A villain out of the Ghost Rider comics. He also has history with Wanda and Doctor Strange. And this devil actually has a deep connection to Spider-Man.
For what it’s worth, Spider-Man’s identity becoming public knowledge, and him asking Strange to rewrite the facts, both happen in the original comics too.
In the comics’ Civil War, Peter joins Tony Stark’s side and holds a press conference where he unmasks and reveals his identity himself. He then switches over to the camp opposing the Superhuman Registration Act, which leaves him hunted by the government, and the villains start targeting his family. Aunt May is shot as a result and left in a critical condition. So Peter goes to Doctor Strange to ask whether Aunt May can be saved. He’s turned down — and then the devil Mephisto appears and offers to save Aunt May’s life in exchange for “erasing the marriage to Mary Jane from existence.” That’s the episode (Spider-Man: One More Day).
https://theriver.jp/spm-nwh-trailer-breakdown/2/
Here’s a fuller outline of the story.
- Peter came out in favour of the Superhuman Registration Act during Civil War
- To make that position clear, he publicly announced that he is Spider-Man
- Because of it, Aunt May is shot by a villain and left in a critical condition
- He begs every kind of hero and villain to treat Aunt May, but is turned down
- Walking around heartbroken, Peter meets a red-haired girl
- The girl is the devil Mephisto, and he tells Peter that he alone can save Aunt May
- The price Mephisto demands is “erasing Peter and MJ’s marriage from existence”
- After agonising over it, Peter and MJ take the deal
- Aunt May is saved.
- Just before the world transforms, Mephisto reveals to the two of them that the red-haired girl was their daughter, due to be born in the future, who can now never exist
That girl turning out to be the daughter who will never be born is so sad… The full details are at the URL below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_More_Day_(comics)
This is something I was predicting back at Spider-Man: Far From Home, but I think the MCU Spider-Man takes One More Day as its base, with Peter indirectly begging Mephisto to sort out the identity reveal. And the price is being together with MJ, I’d guess.
Mephisto himself hasn’t entered the MCU yet. So his proper appearance probably comes in Doctor Strange 2… that’s the sort of thing I’m thinking.
My predictions on his history with Wanda, and on how Mephisto gets involved in Doctor Strange 2, are below.
[MCU Commentary Discussion and Review] “Eternals” [Impressions, Easter Eggs]
Hello, Peter
A Sam Raimi character calling the MCU Peter by name feels off, so as I said at the top, I think Doctor Strange’s slip-up has mixed the Sam Raimi version and the MCU version together.
Tobey Maguire returns / the grey jacket
The clothes the MCU version is wearing here look the same as the Sam Raimi version’s, so the Sam Raimi Peter Parker / Tobey Maguire being the one to carry the MCU from here on would be a lot of fun.
Daredevil appears
Would you believe it — there’s a rumour that the lead of the Netflix Daredevil is in this film! His day job is being a lawyer.
In the trailer there’s the word DEVIL, hinting at Daredevil, or possibly Mephisto… And Peter Parker has been picked up by the police. So the idea is that his lawyer is Daredevil. Looking forward to it.
The Department of Damage Control
That DODC stands for the Department of Damage Control, the outfit Vulture held a grudge against in the first MCU Spider-Man film.
The suits
Looks like this film brings back the Iron Spider and also gives us a black-and-gold suit that seems to fuse science and magic. The figures themselves already have full details out.
The connection to the Loki series
The scene where Doctor Strange touches the multiverse! That was the space Kang was in over in the Loki series! Well, that surprised me.
The mystery item
What is this item Peter Parker was holding? A device for moving between multiverses? Maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t Doctor Strange seem oddly distant here?
