This story is going to get into massive spoilers for WandaVision, specifically episode 5. If you are not up to speed on the Disney+ program, and want to avoid details, back out now.
By now, you have seen the moment. Vision (Paul Bettany) is grilling Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) about the illusion that she has created, because it’s having adverse effects on innocent New Jersey residents. Vision demands that Wanda doesn’t have the right to make those decisions, because she’s essentially playing God. But their argument is disrupted by the doorbell. Wanda answers it, and standing on the other side is a character few of us expected to see.
Pietro Maximoff. Well, one of them, anyway. Evan Peters played Peter Maximoff in three X-Men movies for Fox, but makes his debut in the MCU because we’re now in the Multiverse. Characters who started in Marvel Properties outside of Disney have the ability to appear in the larger Marvel storyline.
Now, imagine this from the perspective of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man 3, currently filming in Atlanta. During a pivotal scene, Holland looks like he needs help to overcome a foe -- or series of villains. He looks up… and sees Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in their Spider-Man suits from their respective Sony franchises. The live-action SpiderVerse is open. Spider-Man fans would lose their collective minds.
After what we saw in WandaVision, it all seems possible. Actually, probable.
The first thing I thought of when I saw Evan Peters carry his Quicksilver over from the Fox properties wasn’t the possibility of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield appearing alongside Tom Holland in Spider-Man 3, though my brain got there eventually. Instead, I thought that the casting rumors which we have heard up to this point made a lot more dense. On WandaVision, when Darcy (Kat Dennings) saw Peters instead of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, she made a joke that Wanda “recast” Pietro. No, but Marvel did have Wanda use a version of a character that we have seen outside of the MCU.
And I think that’s what will happen in Spider-Man 3.
By similar logic, Jamie Foxx can still play Electro… only. He won’t be the Electro that we saw in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. The same goes for Alfred Molina and his interpretation of Doctor Octopus. I’m sure that we will get further explanation about how the Multiverse is actually working in the MCU and on WandaVision, but Peters’ appearance clarified (for me) the rumors of Foxx and Molina being in Spider-Man 3.
We get ahead of ourselves in predicting that the Big Three of Tom, Tobey and Andrew can share the screen. Even with all the rumors swirling violently, with DoorDash drivers confirming Garfield’s presence in Georgia, the concept seemed like a reach. Possible, but a reach.
Seeing Evan Peters move from a Fox X-Men series to the MCU changed my mind. Everything seems possible now, and the Molina and Foxx casting rumors only make more sense in the greater context. Tom Holland recently called Spider-Man 3 the most ambitious standalone superhero movie he has ever seen.
After watching WandaVision this week, I’m prone to believe him.
