‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ retuning villains were originally meant as end-credit scene

Warning: this article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home.

The box office behemoth known as Spider-Man: No Way Home almost had a completely different storyline than what we got, relegating one of its biggest selling points to a mere end-credits scene.

Luckily, the Marvel and Sony co-produced film creators realized what gold they had on their hands and expanded that would-be end-of-film tag into the plot of the film itself. Warning, from here on out, this article will contain spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home.

It turns out the idea of bringing back villains from other multiverses — such as Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin, Jamie Foxx’s Electro, and Alfred Molina’s Dock Ock — was actually something originally conceived as a mere end-credit scene at the end of the MCU’s third Spider-Man movie.

In an interview with TheWrap, the film’s writers, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, explained that they brainstormed different story ideas shortly after Sony and Marvel reached a deal to reunite for a third Spider-Man film with the film’s producers. The only clear plot element was that it would take place in the aftermath of Spider-Man: Far From Home, where the world becomes aware of Spider-Man’s real identity.

The idea of adding other villains in the mix, a la Sinister Six, as a tease at the end of the film, was something that was floated as part of the discussions.

“So we were coming up with different storylines that would just sort of write towards a tag like that,” McKenna said. “So inevitably, we were like, ‘What if Kraven? What if [Other Villains?] and we were kicking around a lot of different ideas”

McKenna said that we couldn’t do certain story ideas for various reasons, which caused the creators to circle back on the idea of that end credits scene once again and see if they couldn’t just expand on that.

“I think it was [Marvel boss] Kevin [Feige] who goes, ‘Remember that idea with all the villains that we were talking about for a tag? That Sinister Six idea? Why don’t we just do it in the movie? Make this movie be about that?’ and then that just sort of blew everything open.”