“Spider-Man: No Way Home” Completes Peter Parker’s Origin Story
And sets the stage for the future of Spidey in the MCU and beyond
In the Marvel Studios offices, there is a scroll that is rolled out for new directors. The scroll (not Skrull) is a history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), starting with the big bang and leading to the distant future. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” director, Marc Web got to see the scroll when he was hired to direct the first MCU Spider-Man movie, “Spider-Man: Homecoming.” I’m sure this history/future history is somewhat fluid. Real-world situations change the order of how the stories are released, and therefore where they stand on the timeline. However, the important beats must be there. After watching “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” it’s clear that Marvel Studios president and MCU mastermind, Kevin Feige, had a pretty good idea where he wanted to take Tom Holland’s Spider-Man.
One notable thing about the MCU’s Peter Parker/Spider-Man is that he was never given a proper origin story. We first meet Peter in “Captain America: Civil War.” That film introduces Peter as a 15-year-old with superpowers swinging around New York City in a homemade costume. The MCU’s Peter is just a kid. He’s only been Spider-Man for about six months. Tom Holland portrays him as a kid who is excited about meeting his heroes, the Avengers. He is invited to join an Avengers mission and given his first real suit by his idol, Tony Stark, A.K.A. Iron Man. There’s no Uncle Ben. There’s no spider bite. We are introduced to a youthful Aunt May, played by the amazing Marisa Tomai. We are given a taste of what his abilities are. The film does a great job of showing his witty banter and highlights just how young this version of Spider-Man is. He refers to “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” as “that really old movie.”
Fast forward to “Spider-Man: Homecoming” where we get to know a little more about the MCU’s Peter Parker. Marvel again avoided the classic origin story, which we had already seen play out twice on the big screen in the Sam Raimi films and again a few years later in “The Amazing Spider-Man” films. Instead, we get to know 15-year-od Peter Parker, a very typical teenager (who happens to have been bitten by a “special” spider and receives super-human abilities).
In “Homecoming,” Peter is trying to balance life as a high school student, with all the monumental difficulties that entails, while also trying to figure out how to live up to the example of a hero that his idol Iron Man and the Avengers set before him. The film does a great job of showing us that Peter is just a kid. In other words, he fucks everything up.
Peter just wants to make a good impression on the girl he likes. He wants to be a good friend to his best bud, Ned. He wants to be liked. He also wants to prove that he’s just as capable as the rest of the Avengers.
Throughout the film we see him fuck it all up. He fails his best bud. He fails the girl he likes. He fails as a superhero.
At his lowest point, Tony Stark tells him he’s not ready to be a hero and takes the Spider-Man suit he made for him away. Left with just his homemade spidey suit, Peter tries one last time to get things right. He manages to defeat the film’s villain, the Vulture played by Batman, I mean Micheal Keaton. However, to do so, he has to sacrifice his relationship with his crush, who also happens to be the Vulture’s daughter.
The biggest hurdle teenagers have to overcome is the concept of taking responsibility for their actions. The film consistently has Peter run face-first into that brick wall of responsibility. It is a hard concept to wrap your head around at that age. Responsibility and self-reflection are something that doesn’t come easily to teenagers (I know, I was one MANY years ago, and I’m currently raising one right now). After a lot of pain and heartache, Peter realizes that he has to do what’s right, even if it costs him everything he thinks he wants. He learns to take responsibility for his actions and accept the consequences.
In “Avengers: Infinity War”, Peter Parker is pulled into the global crisis brought about by Thanos’ invasion of Earth. We don’t get a lot of character development for him in this film, but we get to see him learn how to become a team player, which will come into play later in his overall story arc.
In the film, Peter joins forces with Tony Stark and Doctor Strange to stop Thanos from gaining powerful cosmic stones that would allow him to wield power over all of reality. After his experience working with half of the Avengers in “Civil War”, he plays his part perfectly. We see him apply the lessons he’s learned throughout his journey so far, to be a valuable member of the team. Ultimately, it is another weak link (looking at you Peter Quil!) who fails the team and allows Thanos to escape, retrieve all the Infinity Stones, and wipe out half of all life in the universe.
Peter’s spider-sense, a precognitive ability that allows him to sense oncoming danger, tips him off to impending doom. In one of the film’s most emotional scenes, before everyone else is aware of what is happening, Peter tells Tony, “Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good.” Then he falls into Iron Man’s arms and begins to turn into dust, followed by half of the rest of the universe, including many of the MCU characters we had come to know and love. Thanos wins, the Avengers lose.
Five years later in the MCU timeline, “Avengers: Endgame”, shows the remaining Avengers go through time travel shenanigans to restore all that was lost in “Infinity War.” Peter and half of life in the universe return as if no time has passed at all. When he is reunited with his mentor, Tony, he is greeted with a true hug, one which he had hoped for in “Homecoming”, but was comically denied. He joins the fully assembled Avengers to battle the army of Thanos. In the end, the good guys win, but his mentor Tony Stark makes the ultimate sacrifice. Peter is there to witness the death of this father figure, recalling previous iterations of the character’s loss of the Uncle Ben character. This is a profound moment for the character. One that will have consequences throughout his future adventures in the MCU.
“Spider-Man: Far From Home” deals with the fallout of the events of “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”. Peter, and his friends from “Spider-Man: Homecoming”, have all “Blipped”, the in-world term used to describe billions of people disappearing for five years without aging. The film focuses on how Peter deals with the trauma of these events and the death of Tony Stark.
Peter’s spider-sense is fritzing out. On top of that, he is feeling guilty for not being able to save his mentor, Tony. He feels that loss profoundly. He feels the need to honor and live up to his mentor, yet he feels inadequate to the job. While dealing with that he also has to deal with being five years younger than everyone he left behind when he Blippped. Luckily, he has his friends, who also Blipped, to help him along the way. When dangers from another version of Earth in the Multiverse begin attacking his reality, Peter finds a potential new mentor, Quinten Beck also known as Mysterio.
Earlier in the film, Peter is bestowed a pair of sunglasses from the late Tony Stark, which give him access to all of Tony’s technology, including a drone network. Feeling inadequate to the responsibility of such power, Peter gives the sunglasses to Quinten, believing that a hero who lost his entire universe and ventured to another to stop the same thing from happening there would be worthy of such a responsibility.
Homeboy was dead wrong. As we all know from the comics, Mysterio is a trickster. It turns out, Quinten Beck was a disgruntled Stark Industries employee who made up his entire story to steal the Stark technology from Peter and set himself up as a false hero.
The thing that made all of this possible was Peter’s denial of his power. After the trauma of losing to Thanos, his spider-sense became dormant. Feeling the oncoming doom of half of all life in the universe including yourself, disappearing for five years, and then watching your mentor die in front of you can do that to a person. With a little help from his friends, including his new love interest MJ, played beautifully by Zendaya, he was able to look within, find his inner power, reconnect with his spider-sense, and defeat Mysterio.
However, he quickly learns that having power doesn’t solve all your problems. After he defeats Mysterio, everything falls apart. Mysterio releases a doctored video that implicates Peter in his death AND reveals Spider-Man’s identity to the world. All the power in the world can’t save a Spider hero from an asshole.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” begins exactly where “Far From Home” left off, with Spider-Man watching a fake video broadcast in Timesquare showing Spidey killing Mysterio, his identity as Peter Parker being revealed to the world, and Peter calling back to Aunt May’s truncated reaction to finding out his alter-ego by shouting, “What the Fu(car horn)!”
From there we follow Spidey and MJ fleeing the triggered citizens of New York, the media, and the police through the city back to Peter’s apartment in Queens. There’s no escaping this problem. Everyone knows Peter is Spider-Man, and everyone thinks he killed Mysterio. Thanks to a quick cameo from Charlie Cox, who played lawyer Matt Murdock, A.K.A. Dare Devil in the Netflix series, Peter is quickly cleared of the murder, but the consequences of his unmasking as Spider-Man still bring drastic consequences to those closest to him. Aunt May and Happy Hogan face serious endangerment charges for allowing a minor to participate in Universe-ending threats. Peter, Ned, and MJ are rejected from every college they apply to because of his actions as Spider-Man.
Desperate to help his friends and family, Peter asks Doctor Strange to create a spell that will erase everyone’s memory that he’s Spider-Man. Strange reluctantly agrees. However, during the process Peter realizes his life would not be the same if those closest to him didn’t remember he was Spider-Man, so he tries to change the spell while Strange is casting it. This fucks everything up.
The spell fails and Strange is forced to contain the botched spell in a magical container. Strange chastises Peter for fucking the spell up. Telling him that the problem is that Peter is trying to live two lives at once. This is a problem most characters of the MCU don’t have. Everyone knows Tony Stark is Iron Man. Everyone knows Doctor Strange is Steven Stange. Spider-Man is the only MCU character, so far, that has a secret identity.
Shortly after the spell fails, beings from other universes, who (supposedly) know Peter Parker’s identity as Spider-Man, begin crossing over into his universe. Peter manages to capture one of them, Doctor Octopus also known as Doctor Otto Octavious from the Toby McGuire Spider-Man films. Almost immediately, Peter is attacked by The Green Goblin, also from the McGuire Spider-Man films, however, before the attack can continue, he and Octavious are magically transported to Doctor Strange’s sanctum dungeon, where strange informs him that because of the botched spell, beings from the Multiverse are being pulled into their universe. He charges Peter with retrieving any other incursions.
This quest leads Peter and his friends on a journey to fix his mistake. In reality, this is his responsibility, but because of everything he has been through with the Avengers and in his solo films, Peter believes he needs a team to solve his problems. He enlists the help of MJ and Ned to bring them in. Together they manage to capture Electro from The Amazing Spider-Man 2, starring Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man/Peter Parker, and Sandman from Spider-Man 3, starring Tobey McGuire as SPider-Man/Peter Parker (seriously, do I really have to explain this shit?).
Meanwhile, Norman Osborn, also known as The Green Goblin from the Tobeyverse, finds his way to Aunt May’s homeless shelter. Free, for the moment from the influence of the Goblin, Norman desperately asks for help. When Peter arrives to capture him, Aunt May tries to convince him that he needs to help Norman. Peter’s fear of losing those closest to him and of making another mistake outways May’s advice and he takes Norman to Doctor Strange.
After Peter and the Scooby Gang have captured all the alternate universe villains (that they know about), they learn that each of them was pulled from their universe moments before they were about to die (most of them at least). When he confronts Doctor Strange about this shit, he informs them that it is their “fate” to die and that they have to go back for the good of all life in the Multiverse.
Hearing this, Peter recalls May’s words of compassion and he decides he can’t let Strange send them back to their universes to die. So, he steals the device Strange was going to use to send them back. An amazing action sequence later and Spidey manages to best the not-exactly-sorcerer-supreme.
Afraid for his friend’s safety (but apparently not Aunt May’s) he asks them to take the send-back-the-baddies-device to a safe location so they won’t get hurt if shit goes wrong. He then convinces all the bad dudes to hang out at Happy Hogan’s flat while he works on a cure to make them not bad before he sends them back home.
As it turns out, the evil Green Goblin side of Norman’s split personality decides he doesn’t need fixing, and turns all the other baddies, except for Doc Oc who already got the fix, to turn against Peter. This is where shit gets really good for Spider-Man fans and where we begin to see the real heart and soul of the MCU’s Spider-Man origin story.
Peter battles Goblin while attempting May escape with the cure for Osborn. The fight leads to the lobby of the apartment complex where May is caught in the middle. Goblin’s glider, similar to how he tries to use it to attack Tobey McGuire’s Peter in the Raimiverse, strikes May from behind and then escapes before tossing a pumpkin bomb. Peter deflects the bomb just before it explodes. In the aftermath, he and May gather themselves to assess the damage. A distraught Peter begins to blame himself for the destruction and say that Strange was right and he should have listened when he wanted to send them back. However, May stops him and tells him, “You listen to me, you have a gift. You have power, and with great power, there must also come great responsibility.”
With that line, Marvel set the stage to get Peter to where they have been guiding him towards. This incarnation of the character didn’t need Uncle Ben. Ben was always a device to give Spidey his mission, but not much more than that. The MCU doesn’t do things that way. At least not when they’re at their best. Spider-Man has always been a character who triumphs despite the tremendous loss. His gifts have always been a curse. First, he loses his mentor Tony, then he loses Aunt May, and he’s destined to lose even more.
Peter takes this pain into the rest of the film. He’s distraught. He’s angry. He’s lost. Later, after Ned and MJ use the sling ring to find help, they seek out Peter on the roof of their school, his safe space, and they share a hug that brought almost as many tears as the death of May scene brought.
I gloss over the introduction into the MCU of our alternate universe spider-men, because as awesome as those scenes are, they don’t really matter in the story of the MCU Peter Parker. At this point, Peter is destroyed. It’s not until his friends arrive that he can look up from his pain. That’s when he sees the two figures in the shadows, new friends his old friends brought to help him. His spider-brothers.
The scene that follows is truly amazing and heartfelt. Like two older brothers, who have been exactly where our Peter is right now, share their personal trauma to help guide him back into the light.
From there the trio uses science and nerdery to come up with a plan to defeat the baddies. Fun banter and shenanigans ensue. We get a climactic battle, which culminates in a fight scene between our Peter and The Green Goblin. It’s a vicious, brutal battle. For the first time, we see the MCU Peter Parker unhinged and violent. He beats Goblin and finally picks up Goblin’s glider, the same glider which killed Aunt May, raises it over his head in both hands, and brings it down over Osborn’s head. But Tobey/Spidey steps in between and grabs the glider. Our Peter doesn’t care and tries to keep pushing it towards Aunt May’s killer. Tobey locks eyes with Peter silently conveying all the pain and experience he’s gone through to send the message that this isn’t the way. This isn’t what May would want him to do. That killing is not what he is supposed to use his power for.
Web takes his time with this shot. Slowly, Peter loosens up, and then Goblin runs a blade through Tobey. But even then, Peter’s other big brother Andrew Spider, helps him remember who May wanted him to be by tossing him the cure, which Peter injects into the Goblin, reverting him back into Norman Osborn.
With the help of his Spider-Bros, Peter is able to defeat the Multidimensional villains without losing himself. But the show ain’t over yet!
During all the crazy fighting, Goblin had managed to jack up Strange’s magic spell box that was containing the original spell that caused all the fuss in the first place. Now, the spell is loose and beings from every universe who know Spider-Man’s identity are going to come through a destroy the Multiverse. Peter comes up with a plan, instead of making everyone forget they know Spider-Man is really Peter Parker, Strange should cast a spell to make everyone forget Peter Parker! Knowing it is the only way to stop what’s coming, Strange agrees.
So, everyone in the MCU forgets who Peter Parker is. More than that, the spell effectively erases Peter Parker from that universe. Spider-Man exists, but no one knows who Peter Parker is, including Ned, MJ, Happy, Doctor Strange, and the rest of the surviving Avengers. Peter Parker is now a complete unknown. Peter gives up everything.
The film ends with Peter moving into an apartment on his own. There are no records of his existence. He takes the GED because he has no high school transcripts. He doesn’t get into MIT along with Ned and MJ. He goes to see MJ at the coffee shop she works at and she and Ned don’t recognize him.
Alone in his apartment, he sews a new Spider-Man outfit, one inspired by his two Spider-Bro’s costumes (and the comics). We last see him swinging through New York at Christmas time, alone but content with a greater sense of responsibility.
The MCU’s Spider-Man origin is complete. The first film was about a teenager learning self-reflection and understanding responsibility. The second was about learning the depths of his powers, not being afraid of them, and using them wisely. The third film put it all together. It was about learning how those powers affected everyone around him and how they come with sacrifice and responsibility. “With great power, there must also come great responsibility.”
I love that Marvel took six movies to set up their Spider-Man origin. One would almost be surprised that they played the long game in this way. Sure, the pessimists out there will probably say, if you look at the early films they probably didn’t have all this planned out. I however think Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel Studios and Mastermind of the entire MCU, knew exactly what he wanted to do. Any discrepancies at the beginning were probably a matter of hedging bets. No one knew if the Sony/Disney partnership was going to last, and it almost didn’t. So, yeah, there are a few discrepancies here and there, but this final storyline, from beginning to end is just too damned perfect an origin story to not have been on that scroll from the beginning.
Now, I’m excited to see where the holy MCU scroll leads to next!
