Warning: the following article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
If 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home proved anything, it’s that anything is possible when it comes to Sony’s broader Spider-Man universe and its dealings with the MCU. The film turned out to be an absolute triumph by bringing together the talents of all of the previous live-action Spider-Men into one film, and it was a joy for audiences around the world.
With Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse being Sony’s first big-screen outing for the webslinger since the landmark team-up of Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire, naturally a pretty fair question comes to mind – did they somehow manage to show up in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse? Given how every superhero film nowadays is “multiverse this, multiverse that,” and studios are doing their best to prove that anything is possible for our fan-favorite heroes, stranger things may have happened, right?
Obviously – don’t read ahead if you don’t want the film and any of its potential surprises spoiled for you, go watch the movie first. And with that second and final spoiler warning out of the way, let’s go up the list of Spider-Men in release order:
Is Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse?
It’s a bit of an odd question to answer – so to give you the short and condensed version, yes, but no. Let us explain.
One of the core narrative drivers in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the idea of “canon events” – moments in any given Spider-Person’s life that are capstone developments in their stories. Moments such as the death of Uncle Ben (or the individual that lends the same significance), and the various police chiefs that die in Spider-folk’s arms.
While Miles is being reprimanded for interrupting a canon event in Indian Spider-Man (Pavitr Prabhakar’s) universe, Miguel O’Hara delivers some hefty exposition about the concept of a canon event. Archival footage of these significant character deaths is shown to Miles from all angles, including – lo and behold – Tobey Maguire sobbing over one of the people that died in his original films.
Is Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse?
Andrew Garfield appears in the same capacity as Tobey Maguire, also by way of archival footage showing one of the more tragic losses he suffered during the events of The Amazing Spider-Man movies. In Miles’ case, one of these canon events is yet to happen – the death of his father (the newly appointed police captain) at the hands of Spot. While Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire’s versions of Spider-Man weren’t afforded this foresight in their respective films, Miles has a chance to prevent his father’s death, and he isn’t about to sit back and just let it happen, as Miguel wants him to even if it means risking the entire multiverse in the process.
Is Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse?
We should note that Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is jam-packed with easter egg after easter egg after niche reference to all things throughout Spider-Man’s cinematic and comic book history – so there may be a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment we missed, but as far as we’re aware, we didn’t see any archival footage of Tom Holland’s MCU Spider-Man in this outing.
However, we did catch at least one easter egg to Tom Holland’s cinematic outings. While Miles is making his escape from the Spider-Man hub world, he dodges a few ensconced villains and rogue Spider-people as he charges down a hallway, and we do hear Alfred Molina’s infamous “Hello Peter” line of dialogue from Spider-Man: No Way Home.
So – in short, two out of the three live-action Spider-Men appear in Across the Spider-Verse, but not in any newly-filmed scenes. We just get to see some archival footage from scenes in their respective movies. Still a pretty cool nod, we think! We’ll see if Sony Pictures can pull off a proper appearance from our flesh-and-blood Spider-Men in some way when Beyond the Spider-Verse releases next year.
