Even though we all knew it was coming, that didn’t make it any less awesome when another version of Spider-Man leapt through a portal in No Way Home, pulling off his mask to reveal Andrew Garfield. The scene also happened to be hilarious, with the variant having to prove to MJ and Ned that he was in fact Peter Parker from another universe.
That was followed in short order by Tobey Maguire’s introduction, and while he didn’t suit up right off the bat, it did allow Garfield to hilariously compare him to a cool youth pastor. The scenes with the three Spideys working together were an absolute delight, but things could have played out in a much different and incredibly more formulaic fashion.
Speaking to Variety, No Way Home writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers admitted that the original plan was simply for a recognizable face from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to appear out of nowhere with Garfield and Maguire in tow, throwing them into the mix to save the day.
“They are brought by a Marvel character going, ‘Here are the saving graces and they’re going to help you through this.’ It was just more of a deus ex machina. We were changing the story so much. We were already two months into production. And we were having to now take another whack at act three, which we hadn’t had time to because we were shooting act one and act two.
It was a beam of light in darkness. It was such a gift, particularly at that point in the writing process, to be writing for those two characters. It the darkest part of the year, the darkest part of production, the darkest part of the story development, and it was like, Oh! Now we get Tobey and Andrew.”
Fans would have gone nuts regardless of how the former incumbents of the spandex entered the fray, but it would be a little on-the-nose to have somebody like Wong conjure a portal out of nowhere, in what would be the lazy narrative equivalent of “ta-da!”.
