Marvel Studios and Sony have still yet to confirm who out of the dozens of names mentioned in conjunction with Spider-Man 3 recently will actually show up in the movie, but that hasn’t stopped speculation about the fourth, fifth and sixth installments in the web-slinging franchise from starting already.
There’ve been various rumors and reports making the rounds about potential plot directions and villains for Tom Holland’s second solo trilogy, even though we’re currently waiting to find out if Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire will suit up to fight alongside the MCU’s Peter Parker in Jon Watts’ threequel, with Jamie Foxx’s Electro the sole multiversal character that’s been officially announced for Spider-Man 3 so far.
Almost every villain from all three Spidey franchises has been linked with a comeback over the last few months, and insider Daniel Richtman is now claiming that Doctor Octopus and Normal Osborn will return for Spider-Man 4, which raises a multitude of questions as unfortunately, he doesn’t offer any further details. For instance, is Alfred Molina surviving the third movie? Will he cross over into the canonical MCU timeline? Does that mean Willem Dafoe will also be back? Or is it the Chris Cooper cameo nobody saw coming?
The answer to all of these at the moment is that we simply don’t know. Trying to speculate about what happens in Spider-Man 3 is just as impossible as it is pointless, at least until we get confirmation from the two partnering studios over how many of the familiar faces will be back. If Spider-Man 4 ends up dropping the multiverse angle entirely, though, then given that Doc Ock and the head of Oscorp have been rumored to be joining the MCU for years anyway, it could even turn out to be completely different and brand new versions of the iconic villains that we see.
