This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home
Ever since Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios has been expanding the MCU into a multiverse. Spider-Man: Far From Home teased the concept, WandaVision referenced the Fox X-Men movies, Loki introduced us to ‘variants’, and What If…? showcased multiple alternate realities.
But Spider-Man: No Way Home blew the doors off, bringing in characters from Sony’s ‘Raimiverse’ trilogy and the Andrew Garfield duology and explaining that these fictional universes are connected. Even though they were returned to their universes at the end of the movie, the visiting characters mean the events of previous Spider-Man movies are now canon to the MCU.
This is pretty much confirmed by Marvel’s official website, which now has entries for Maguire and Garfield’s Spideys, naming them ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ and ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ respectively.
But hardcore Marvel fans will have known they were linked long before No Way Home. In the wider Marvel multiverse, the MCU is Earth-199999, the Raimiverse is Earth-96283, and the ‘Amazing’ universe is Earth-120703. This means that, at least as far as Marvel Comics cosmology goes, these universes and many others could always cross over with one another.
As Marvel Studios begins to develop the concept, I expect to see much more cross-pollination – and it’ll be particularly interesting to see if they ever resurrect or directly reference Fox’s X-Universe (Earth-10005). Let’s just hope they stay away from the nightmarish Earth-1218 though, which is currently undergoing multiple catastrophes and doesn’t have a single superhero to assist them!
Spider-Man: No Way Home is now in theaters.
