Other challenges
Although the old spiders would be decisive to guarantee the success of Spider-Man: No way home, the challenges would not end with their simple on-screen presence. On the contrary, they would just start. What happened to Tobey Maguire’s Spidey after Spider-Man 3 (2007)? Did he reconcile with Mary Jane Watson, continue his fight against crime, or did he quit to live as normal a life as possible alongside the woman he loved? And what about Andrew Garfield? How did you cope with the death of Gwen Stacy and how did you continue your fight after your obvious failure? Not least, have you ever deciphered the mysteries surrounding your parents?
If true fans have asked these same questions for years, it is because they were all key to the canceled futures of both heroes. Perhaps a film with an excess of characters cannot delve much into them, but one that could try to pay tribute to two classics such as Sin camino a casa should take at least a few minutes to tell us what has happened to these warriors since the last time we saw them. All this also without neglecting their respective essences, remembering that all spiders have had a very own personality that has made them unique in the eyes of the public.
The good news is that Marvel Studios already has experience in the field. This was demonstrated with What If…? (2021) who skillfully tackled the parallel versions of so many characters. Perhaps the most drastic case was that of Thanos, who went from genocidal potential to a courageous combatant alongside the Star Lord of T’Challa. And although it might be thought that the intersection will be nothing more than an isolated adventure, what has been done by this film will be decisive to mark the entire future of a marvelita saga increasingly plunged into multiuniversality.
New cobwebs
You don’t rescue two Spideys to leave them there. At least that’s what many think, who are convinced that Marvel Studios and Sony will take advantage of the making of new arachnid films by Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Although there are also those who think that this could become confusing and even counterproductive for the central story, the own Marvel Comics has used this same formula ad nauseam with plots set in all sorts of alternate universes.
The notions of parallel worlds They date back to cultures as ancient as Greek, Persian and Indian, being a source of inspiration for many later scientific investigations, as well as for countless works of fiction. Such is the case of Marvel Comics, whose multiverse introduced in 1971 consists of alternate universes that, although they coincide in their bases, vary from the decisions made by each character, also opening new branches with each possibility. This led the publishing house to divide its worlds into lands, with Earth-616 being the primary universe in its print and film form. To better understand it, the aforementioned What If…? it is not part of this continuity.
If Marvel Studios took so long to tackle this narrative, it was in large part because its proper exploration required an organic introduction. As proof, it is enough to remember that the bases have been there for a long time: Doctor Strange visualized more than 14 million futures in Avengers: Infinity War (2018); the Elder explained to the Hulk in Avengers: Endgame (2019) that the slightest variation in his present would cause ramifications in the future; Mysterio misled everyone about an alleged alternate origin in Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019); the Scarlet Witch listened to her nonexistent children in WandaVision (2021). And of course, the Loki series did the rest with the frank opening of multitemporality, while What If …? offered numerous glimpses of what to expect. In other words, nothing has been a fluke so far.