The final shots of Spider-Man: No Way Home show Peter Parker swinging through the snowy skyline of New York City without a care in the world, sporting a homemade costume that’s arguably the most comic-accurate outfit we’ve ever seen in live-action throughout the Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield and Tom Holland eras.
As it turns out, that was entirely by design, with writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers looking to strip away as much of Peter Parker’s ties to Iron Man as possible. It makes sense when one of the very few criticisms fans have of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Spidey is that he’s hardly true to the character’s roots on the printed page.
Tony Stark plucks him from YouTube fame to Avengers membership, acts as his mentor and father figure, supplies him with fancy gadgets and a nanotech suit, and even leaves him an inheritance of sorts after his death via E.D.I.T.H. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the scribes revealed it was always their intention to strip Peter back to basics.
He was trying to do what May taught him and that made the sacrifice that much more difficult, because it blew up in his face and it got her killed. Then he started questioning that morality in a way that he never really questioned because he hasn’t been put to the test in that way. You want to have that doughnut scene be him making the last piece of the sacrifice. “I could tell them everything. I can try to get my friends back. But I’d be going right back to the place of endangering my loved ones by bringing them into my life. And I can’t have that.”
By the end of No Way Home, the teenage superhero is shacked up in a dingy apartment, cobbling together his own duds and nobody has a clue he even exists, which is about as far away from being Iron Man’s heir apparent as you could possibly get within the context of Spider-Man’s role in the MCU.
