Back when Sony Pictures Entertainment was marketing the second Andrew Garfield Spider-Man movie, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, they included a shot in the trailer of Emma Stone’s character, Gwen Stacy, falling. Was she falling to her death? Was Spider-Man going to save her at the last minute? Stone wasn’t upset that too much was revealed. She was annoyed that the sequence was teased at all, believing that had the potential to be a The Sixth Sense level twist if audiences had walked into the theater completely unprepared for the possibility of Gwen falling from a great height… fulfilling part of her comic book legacy.
So imagine my surprise when, at the very end of the last trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home, a similar sequence plays out. MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) are atop the girders surrounding the Statue of Liberty, and Peter Parker’s girlfriend once again gets knocked off. We’re left to wonder if she’s going to survive. Ahead of the new movie opening up in theaters, CinemaBlend sat down with the cast, so I asked Zendaya if, like Emma Stone, she regretted seeing that scene included in the teaser. But it was her co-star Tom Holland who set the conversation going around how he never believed she actually would die, BECAUSE it appeared in the trailer. He revealed:
I remember seeing that, but I never thought she was going to die, though. … By putting that in the trailer, it almost made it seem like she survived. Do you know what I mean? I actually think that was a great thing to put in the trailer.
That’s an interesting spin. Tom Holland thought that the marketing team on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was ahead of the audience, and threw them off of the trail of Gwen Stacy’s death by SHOWING it in the trailer. Therefore, does this mean that showing Michelle Jones falling in Spider-Man: No Way Home also means MJ lives? Or dies? Naturally, these two can’t answer directly, but Zendaya did playfully offer up:
Well, if hers was in the trailer, and mine’s in the trailer… you don’t really know, do you?
No, Z. We don’t. But we are that much closer to finding out, now that Spider-Man: No Way Home is ready to open in the U.S. In fact, our loyal readers in the UK might be watching the movie while you are reading this story, as the anticipated sequel is now playing in theaters. This means that they know the answer to MJ’s fate. Don’t tell us. We need to see it for ourselves this weekend!
