There has been an intense amount of secrecy surrounding the third Spider-Man movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, titled Spider-Man: No Way Home. Marvel Studios, for the most part, has been focusing on the releases of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Eternals, two MCU movies that will drop before Spider-Man arrives in December. And calls for a trailer have been growing louder and louder from the Spidey fanbase. Well, footage for Spider-Man: No Way Home finally has been screened, setting the stage for some multiverse madness.
Do not keep reading unless you want to be spoiled on the plot specifics for Spider-Man: No Way Home. For real, it’s about to get serious in here.
The trailer begins with Peter Parker (Tom Holland) dealing with the fallout from the major reveal at the end of Spider-Man: Far From Home, when J. Jonah Jameson (JK Simmons) revealed the hero’s secret identity and blamed him for the murder of Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal). Worried for the safety of his friends and family, Peter approaches the Marvel hero who he thinks can help: Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch).
Strange tells Peter that he can conjure a spell that will make everyone in New York forget that they know his secret identity. But Peter would like some of the people in his inner circle to remember… specifically Ned (Jacob Batalon), MJ (Zendaya) and Aunt May (Marisa Tomei). However, by talking through the spell, Peter messes up Strange’s concentration, and the master sorcerer ends up opening up portals to the multiverse that threaten Peter’s reality.
There is a flurry of special-effects and big-ticket action set pieces, culminating with a game-changing cameo at the end of the footage: Alfred Molina as Doctor Otto Octavius, coming on screen and saying, “Hello, Peter.”
So it’s official. The window between Sony’s Sam Raimi trilogy and the current films being made in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been opened. Does that mean more characters will fly through it? There have been more than enough rumors. Willem Dafoe allegedly is coming back as Norman Osborn, and he might be building a Sinister Six that includes himself, Doc Ock, Electro (Jamie Foxx) and more. Of course, that also means that the rumors of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield reprising their roles for Spider-Man: No Way Home are still in play, though we do not see them in this first footage.
At the very least, this is an incredibly exciting first look at an eagerly anticipated chapter of Spider-Man’s adventures in the MCU. I love that it’s the first time Peter is responsible for the problems that are happening to him, and the consequences of his actions are his alone, and not a spinoff of a Tony Stark issue. Naturally, we hope that there will be five more Spider-Man movies made under Kevin Feige’s guidance at Marvel Studios. Sony and Disney really need to keep this pivotal deal in place.
Look for Spider-Man: No Way Home when it arrives in theaters on December 17.
