Spider-Man: No Way Home ended with Tom Holland’s Peter Parker making a fresh start. The magical multiversal shenanigans eventually resulted in him being wiped from the world’s memory, which tragically included MJ and his best friend Ned. As per the ending, that pair are now MIT students, while Peter focuses on street-level crime as a self-made Spidey.
That said, whenever Spider-Man 4 happens, we wouldn’t be surprised if Zendaya and Jacob Batalon reprised their roles once again. So, based on what we saw in No Way Home, what does the future hold for the loveable Ned? MCU fans are debating where his story could go: will he ever follow his comics counterpart and become the Hobgoblin, or could his latent magical talents make him Wong or Strange’s newest apprentice?
Replies conclude that at this point Ned is unlikely to ever become the MCU’s Hobgoblin, particularly as No Way Home extensively lampshaded Ned’s fears that all Spidey’s friends eventually become supervillains, but it’d be a shame if we never got any future updates on how “magic runs in my family.”
If Marvel Studios ever needs a way to restore Ned and MJ’s memories, a reply suggests that Ned doing some amateur-level experimentation in the mystic arts may reveal to him what happened at the end of No Way Home. If so, we’d be curious to see how the pair would react to Peter making this decision for them. On one hand, Peter was absolutely correct that MJ and Ned are much safer without him in their lives, but on the other, his taking the decision to mess with their heads without their consent has to sting.
Here’s hoping we get some firm Spider-Man 4 news soon, but at least we’re getting a full dose of web-slinging action when Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings into theaters on June 2.
