Back when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 came out in 2014, not only was Andrew Garfield set to reprise his version of Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man 3 a few years down the line, there were also plans to expand this universe through Sinister Six and Venom spinoffs. However, due to The Amazing Spider-Man 2 critically underwhelming, this Spider-Man film series was scrapped, and Tom Holland debuted as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spidey in Captain America: Civil War in 2016. Fortunately for Garfield, he finally got to jump back into the superhero game last year for Spider-Man: No Way Home, and the actor recently got candid about his return to the role.
After lying for months about his involvement in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Andrew Garfield did indeed show up in Marvell’s final 2021 movie alongside Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, with the two Peters aiding Tom Holland’s Peter in the climactic conflict. Garfield has talked before about how the abrupt end to his original Spidey tenure “hurt,” but as he told GQ, it didn’t feel like he was closing a circle when he was brought into No Way Home. As he explained:
I don’t know if I had an expectation of doing more. I was very open to it being whatever it was meant to be. But there was an undone feeling. Like, ‘What was that experience about? And how do I close that circle in my living room on my own?’ And I was doing that – and then it was like that classic thing, when you’re getting over a relationship, and you’re first starting to really feel free and untethered from that thing – the person knows to call the hour after the first good night’s sleep you’ve had.
Although there had been plans for Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man run to continue into Spider-Man 4, Spider-Man 3 at least ended in a way where there felt like there was enough closure. The Amazing Spider-Man 2, on the other hand, left a lot of loose ends, but Sony Pictures swiftly decided that the next move for the Spider-Man film franchise was to team up with Marvel Studios. It never seemed like Andrew Garfield would play Spider-Man again, and as he said above, just when he was starting to make peace with that chapter of his life truly being gone, then Spider-Man: No Way Home came his way.
Back in January, Andrew Garfield said that he agreed to do Spider-Man: No Way Home because the idea “sounded incredibly fun, incredibly spiritual — trippy and thematically interesting.” When the time came for him to act opposite his fellow Spider-Man actors, Garfield found himself having a blast and forming a tight bond with them. In his words:
But doing [No Way Home] was really just kind of beautiful. I got to treat it like a short film about Spider-Man with buddies. The pressure was off of me. It was all on Tom’s shoulders. Like, it’s his trilogy. And me and Tobey were there to provide support and have as good a time as possible, actually, and be as inventive, imaginative, and kind of dumb as possible. Y’know, between the three of us, I was like, ‘Oh shit, this is going to be interesting.’ You have three people who feel real ownership over this character. But it was really, like, brotherhood first, I think. And I think that comes through in what we shot.
During Spider-Man: No Way Home, we learned that following Gwen Stacy’s death, Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker spent less time in his civilian life and dealt with criminals more brutally as Spider-Man. The team-up with his variants allowed him to finally achieve some inner peace, particularly when he saved Zendaya’s MJ from suffering a similar fate as Gwen, which was one of No Way Home’s best moments. While there are no plans for Garfield to play Spider-Man again right now, since the MCU has thrown open the doors to the multiverse, maybe there will be another opportunity for both him and Tobey Maguire to get another bite at that proverbial apple in the coming years.
While it’s unclear when another live-action Spider-Man movie will be released, the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse arrives on June 2, 2023. As for Andrew Garfield, he most recently starred in the miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven, which can be viewed with a Hulu subscription.
