My mom always said the best things happen in the morning, but the trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home dropped last night, so she was clearly wrong. I have to say, I thought I was as excited as I was capable of being for the third movie in the rebooted Spider-verse franchise? But I. Was. So. Wrong.
Needless to say, if you haven’t seen Spider-Man: Far From Home, here there be spoilers:
There is so much to talk about in this trailer, from the adorableness that is Peter and MJ together to the complete geekout we did at seeing Alfred Molina‘s Doc Ock on our screen again. He was the best of the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man villains, after all.
But even more fun than the excitement for everything we do see are the theories and speculation about what does it all mean????
Why is Doctor Strange living in the Fortress of Solitude? (Yes, I know that’s a different property, but come on. That’s either the Fortress of Solitude or Elsa’s castle from Frozen, and he’s about to burst into song. And Marvel hasn’t made that kind of movie…yet.)
Is it even “our” Doctor Strange? With a whole multiverse, he could be another version of Strange, and it seems highly unlikely the man we met in Doctor Strange would be caught dead chilling around as Sorcerer Supreme in a hoodie, drinking from a novelty cup.
If it is “our” Doctor Strange – or even if it isn’t – why is he so ready to help Peter? He’s hardly the type to do spells – particularly dangerous ones – because someone asked nice. And why did he decide to keep the chatty teenager around while he was doing said extremely dangerous spell, at least without putting some sort of muzzle on him? HE’S MET PETER, RIGHT?
Doc Ock is speaking to a Spider-Man in this trailer, but is he speaking to “our” Spider-Man? What other multiverse cameos can we expect?
Will everyone (and I do mean everyone) actually lose their memories of Peter being Spider-Man, in the end? It would undo all their interpersonal character development so far, leaving Peter very much alone with his secret. It is a position that I don’t believe any other character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in. Everyone else has at least one other person who is in on their secret and has been from the very beginning – or reasonably close to it. The MCU could be setting Peter up to be the one hero who stands very much alone. And after setting up his relationship with Tony (which was close enough to make him something of an heir apparent in the last film), Strange’s spell would also likely remove the memories of all those Tony had loved. They would no longer remember that Peter/Spider-Man had meant anything to Tony at all.
After killing Peter off in Tony’s arms in Endgame, killing off his memory from everyone Tony cared about in life seems particularly brutal. Which is why it’s possible Marvel could go in that direction.
The speculation is endless, but one thing is for sure: we cannot freaking wait for this movie!
What do you think about the trailer? Have any fun speculations to share? Sound off in the comments!
Spider-Man: No Way Home is expected to hit theaters December 17, 2021.