Marvel fans have been in ecstasies this week following the official release of the Spider-Man: No Way Home teaser trailer, after it was leaked online.
The film is one of the most highly anticipated of 2021, and has become the most-watched trailer of all time in its first 24 hours with over 335.5 million views, surpassing the 289 million achieved by Avengers: Endgame.
The movie picks up from where Spider-Man: Far From Home left off: with its (probably) deceased antagonist Mysterio revealing to the world that Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is Spider-Man, while simultaneously framing Peter both for the carnage he caused and for his apparent death. The trailer then shows Peter’s life being turned upside down, as he is questioned by law enforcement over the ‘murder’ of Mysterio and the public turns against him. Desperate, he turns to Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and asks the sorcerer to erase the memories of everyone who now knows Spider-Man’s true identity. Strange agrees, but the spell malfunctions—which causes “the multiverse” to open up.
It is subsequently confirmed throughout the trailer that many villains from past Spider-Man franchises not included in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) and Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), will return in Spider-Man: No Way Home. This has led to further speculations that the film will also feature the Sinister Six, a team of comic book-era supervillains whose original membership—alongside Dafoe and Molina’s characters—notably included Mysterio, Vulture (portrayed by Michael Keaton in Spider-Man: Homecoming) and Electro (Jamie Foxx, who played the character in 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2). Above all, however, there is one theory that fans have been hoping to see confirmed for months: the potential return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, who both played on-screen iterations of Spider-Man in the 2000s and 2010s respectively.
Although this is not actually confirmed in the trailer many still believe—given that villains from other universes will appear in the film—that Garfield and/or Maguire are bound to make a return. Most notably, Doctor Octopus’ “Hello, Peter” line in the trailer has led fans to suggest that he could actually be speaking to Maguire’s Spider-Man, as he is technically the only Peter he would know from their previous meetings in Spider-Man 2 (2004).
Spider-Man: No Way Home will be released in cinemas on 17 December 2021. With the overwhelming excitement and never-ending fan theories attached to this project, it will undoubtedly be one that fans will not want to miss.
Words by Connie Burke
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