This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home from the beginning
Spider-Man: No Way Home managed to be both very funny and seriously sad. Tragedy finally arrived at the MCU Peter Parker’s front door, with Marisa Tomei’s May uttering the immortal words “with great power comes great responsibility”. That scene (and those that immediately followed it) were tear-jerkers, though a late scene involving Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man also brought out the hankies.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ended with a recreation of one of Spider-Man’s most tragic comic book moments: his failure to save Gwen Stacy. As in the comics, his webbing reached her as she plummeted to her doom, but the sudden stop snapped her neck. The last time we saw Garfield’s Spider-Man he was processing his guilt, and No Way Home revealed it’d sent him on a dark path and he’d stopped “pulling his punches”.
But in the final battle, he got a redemptive moment when he succeeded in catching a falling MJ, bursting into tears as he realized she was alright. In my theater, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house, and now Garfield has said he felt this healed his Spidey’s trauma.
In an interview with Variety, he said:
“We were shooting for two weeks, Tobey and I, but I think we managed to achieve something that is not just showing up and going, ‘Hi! Bye!’ My Spider-Man got to save his younger brother’s romantic relationship, potentially. And to heal the most traumatic moment of his own life through doing it for his younger brother. Making sure that he didn’t have the same fate, there’s something cosmically beautiful about that. It meant getting a second chance at saving Gwen. You know, the spirit that Zendaya brings to MJ is so heartfelt and pure and loving, and Emma brought that similar unique spirit to Gwen.”
With Tom Holland having repeatedly indicated he’s taking a break from acting, fans have stepped up the campaign for Garfield to reprise the role. After all, No Way Home proved he still has the goods and there are a lot of loose ends in his story. The suggestion I like is for his character to enter the Venomverse and meet those characters, as it’d both maintain Holland’s status as the MCU Spidey while also letting them tell stories like Maximum Carnage.
Here’s hoping we get some confirmation soon, as I’d love to see Andrew Garfield making a full comeback as Spidey.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is in theaters now.
