Spider-man No Way Home is packed with Easter eggs, things you missed and a lot of insane details that make it one of the densest comic book movies of all time.
The film expertly brings together stories spanning twenty years to give us one of the biggest Spider-man celebrations ever. Throughout this post, we’re gonna be breaking it all down and there might even be some little cameos of our own to keep an eye out for.
Obviously, huge spoilers ahead!
Stan Lee’s Presence
Now the movie centres around Tom Holland’s Peter Parker as he accidentally breaks open the multiverse and brings across several versions of him from the MCU. This includes Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in some scenes that would make Stan Lee proud.
Though he passed away before he ever got to see the film, the creative team somewhat kept a cameo of him in the movie and when Peter visits the doughnut shop at the end we can see that MJ is serving an old man. This is actor Ed Force who according to the script is supposed to be a Stan Lee lookalike.
This was done deliberately to make us look at the actor and get a feeling that we knew him from somewhere even though we can’t put our finger on it.
Expertly laced into the scene this is of course also the exact same feeling that MJ has upon Peter re-introducing himself to her.
She knows him from somewhere but can’t tell where and I absolutely love this line. The script even mentions that she has Deja Vu and a slight sense of recognition but she can’t put her finger on it. MJ wears the black Dhalia necklace in this final scene which you might remember was gifted to her at the end of Far From Home.
In the movie it was initially a fully formed flower but after it was destroyed it fractured into pieces like how we see. She still has a reason to wear it and in her subconscious is drawn towards it.
Now Stan Lee co-created Spider-man with Steve Ditko and he too gets a little reference with his name appearing in graffiti during the scene in which MJ and Peter are on the roof. There’s also a nod on the feast van and when May pulls up to the Sanctorum we can see the name written on the side. Mr Ditkovich was actually based on Ditko and though we don’t get a cameo by him, we do get somewhat of a nod to the character with the guy asking for rent at the end of the film.
Spider-MEN
Now the movie, of course, brings all of the live-action movie’s spiders together.
There is of course another character who everyone knows as Spider-man and that is Miles Morales. First introduced in Into The Spider-verse we also know that his uncle Aaron is in the MCU and that he’s played by Donald Glover. He even mentioned his nephew in Homecoming and though Miles hasn’t been cast yet there is a line that’s somewhat a nod to him.
If we look at the script this line has a little note at the end of it that isn’t said in the movie, which I like to think is setting up a live-action Miles for the movie. All of Peter’s villains come back and there are several lines that they drop that repeat phrases from their prior movies.
Foreshadowing
There are so many details like this and lots of foreshadowing in the film.
One of the major events that happen is the death of Aunt May which actually gets hinted at right before she passes.
There’s a really cool scene where Peter’s spider-sense kicks in and he starts to walk around Happy’s apartment looking for danger.
The first thing Peter says is ‘May’ which is very much hinting toward her death at the hands of the Green Goblin.
If you look at Peter’s hand it actually starts to move towards Norman when he’s surveying the room but he’s interrupted by Sandman which is when he drops it.
Spider-Sense
Now speaking of Spider-sense we see it in action just before the mirror dimension scene.
Strange pushes Peter into his astral form and he attempts to grab the magic box from him that we’re not gonna try to pronounce here.
However, Peter’s arm constantly moves and reacts to him attempting to grab it which shows his spider-sense is very much what happens when his body is on auto-pilot. If you look closely at his head you can actually see somewhat of a wavy line effect coming off it and this is his spider-sense in action.
This is exactly what it looked like in the comics and there’s also a squirrel there which….no….it can’t be….can’t be him
Now the spider-sense keeps him out of harm’s way and the aforementioned scene with Osborn shows that it will pick up the danger in his subconscious even if he can’t consciously determine where it is.
During the scene in which a brick is thrown through the window, though Matt Murdock catches it, if you look closely at the footage you’ll see Peter raises his hand up to stop it because of his reactions.
Matching the end of Far From Home
Now the movie opens immediately after the first post-credits scene of Far From Home.
They even brought back the actors from that film and if you look behind MJ you’ll see that three people are standing there with the guy on the right holding his phone up to film the webhead.
Cut back to Far From Home and we can catch those same people including the guy with the phone showing how much they tried to line up the moments.
It’s at this point that we hear the words “he’s just ta kid?!” This is actually a throwback to when Tobey Maguire’s version was unmasked on the train.
We can also see this is at Penn Station which was also shown at the end of Venom Let there be Carnage in the post-credits scene.
Calls to Other Marvel Properties
The newscaster who drops the reporter is an anchor that’s actually appeared throughout the MCU at several points and he’s somewhat of a mainstay when it comes to reporting on the events of the Universe.
Hawkeye, Comics, & Civil War Links
Peter swings throughout times square and we catch several posters for Rogers The Musical which popped up throughout Hawkeye. There’s also a giant sign with his face cut in half that has the mask on one side and Peter’s on the other. This iconography often pops up in the source material whenever Peter’s Spider-sense goes off. It also popped up in Civil War right after his identity was revealed which is of course an element that this movie is based upon.
Pre-Tom Films
He and MJ land on the Queens Borough Bridge and you might recognise this from the original Spider-man movie. Green Goblin dropped MJ over the edge of it and she somewhat ends up falling over it in this one two when Peter jumps down with her.
There are other things from that movie, namely the Roosevelt Island Tramway car which Goblin too held up in that movie. This also popped up in Amazing Spider-man 2 when Peter was researching his father’s secret lab and it’s one of the first of many bits that foreshadow the two showing up.
A nod to DC?
We then catch Flash Thompson and throughout the movie, he promotes his book Flashpoint available in all good book shops now.
Flashpoint might actually be a nod to the DC story of the same name in which Flash broke the multiverse open after travelling back in time. That story is gonna be explored in the upcoming Flash movie and this might be Marvel doing a bit of a joke to DC as they got there first in the films.
Better not be though, or I’m gonna kick off, gonna kick off if there are any jokes about anything.
There’s such a slick moment here and I love how when Peter travels past Flash Thompson that you can see him basically web up the grate, drop through the hole and then pull the grate back on top so that he has something for his webbing to hang off when he goes into the sewer.
He travels through the subway which is where Tobey fought Sandman in Spider-man 3 and as he exits the sewers he pulls the manhole cover closed using his web. According to the easter egg special features on the blu ray, this is a nod to the final shot of Andrew Garfield in The Amazing Spider-man 2 in which he grabbed a cover and swung it around with his webs.
Homecoming Callbacks
Peter pops up outside of Delmars, the deli from Homecoming. If you cast your mind back to that movie then you might remember it was destroyed after the Avengers bank robber scene and this now has a number 3 on the sign in reference to the third Spider-man movie.
This also appeared in the extended version of Far From Home which was only released in Theatres and if we count that then this is also its third appearance.
The banner says ‘best sandwiches in Queens’ which is something that Peter dropped in the first film when going there.
Other callbacks to Homecoming happen just after this with Peter wearing the I survived my trip to New York T-Shirt that he wore after Tony took his suit away.
Holland has been on the Heavy Spoilers diet though and bulked the f**k up. You can actually see this in the shirt and if you place them side by side you’ll notice it was way baggier on him in Homecoming.
Ya chump.
Damage Control
I love this and Peter walks around the home closing all the blinds. The last one he gets to won’t close and he webs this shut in a really nice bit of attention to detail. Later on, they end up covering these windows with newspapers and we can read one with the headline web of destruction.
He’s taken away by Damage Control who debuted in Homecoming and I love how the opening of the movie has the likes of them, the t-shirt and Delmar all calling back to Holland’s first movie for the first act of the film. When Damage Control shows up we can also catch a photo of MJ and Ned at the homecoming Party in which Peter got called Penis Parker.
There’s also a tie-bomber which is a nod to Ned and Peter making a Death Star together and when he’s questioned by Damage Control he wears the t-shirt that he had on at the start of Homecoming when Tony and Happy dropped him off.
It’s at this part that they progress into the Far From Home easter eggs and we get the Edith Glasses as well as the Iron Spider suit charging station.
Damage Control confiscates all the tech Peter owns except for the Iron Spider suit which he has on the bridge. This is because it wasn’t in the charging station at the time and I guess that Peter had it on in these scenes. When Peter lands at the bridge we can hear a male AI voice instead of Karen and this is because the Stark Network is unavailable. All the drones and Edith glasses get ceased so it’s likely that the entire network was down which is why Peter doesn’t have access to it. Also, it’s hilarious that Flash drops a text saying here’s da lady ur looking 4.
Agent Cleary says that Nick Fury has been off-world for a year and this is because Talos was masquerading as him for the events of the prior movie.
Throughout this is a news report from the Daily Bugle which includes several images. There’s one in which a sketch of Spider-man can be seen with the headline Iron Man Jr, an in-joke on how Peter is often called that by people who think that the MCU version needs to stand on his own two feet. This magazine cover later pops up in the movie when we catch Strange walking past a magazine stand.
Peter gets green paint thrown over him as well and this explains why he has to turn the suit inside out as he can’t get it out until May steps in.
There’s also a news report and we can see along the bottom that there’s a warrant out for Night Monkey, calling back to Far From Home.
Daredevil Appearance
They also use an image of Happy Hogan looking like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction which is what he donned at the start of Iron Man 3. Charlie Cox pops up in one of the best cameos in the movie and he catches a brick that’s thrown through the window. Also, look at this phone call, I dontdon’t think anyone is on the other end of that. The guy doesn’t even hang up.
Jon Favreau of course played Foggy Nelson in the Daredevil movie and it’s nice that the two have a bit of back and forth where Matt says he needs to lawyer up.
Now at this point, the brick comes through the window and if you pay close attention to it you’ll notice that Believe has been misspelt to remove the ‘lie’ part of the word. This could show that Mysterio supporters can’t even spell believe and that they were duped by the master of illusions.
Now Matt is big news for the MCU and Kingpin of course also appeared in Hawkeye recently.
Maybe he could’ve also stopped by Westview to help Wanda learn how to cope without vision. Badum-tsssh.
According to Vincent D’nofrio, all the Netflix shows are now canon.
Hiding Out at Happy’s
Happy’s apartment is full of cool callbacks and we see the badges that he had on in Iron Man 3 when he was ‘forehead of security’.
Later on, we learn that there is a fabricator there which showed up at the end of Far From Home. Right beside it, we can catch the word Slott, which is a reference to the comic book writer Dan Slott.
There’s also Dum-E, the robotic arm that was the first invention Tony Stark ever created. This appeared in the Iron Man trilogy, it got salvaged at the end of 3 and could later be seen in Homecoming at Stark Tower.
Dum-E plays a big part later on as Peter webs Goblin’s hand to this which is something that he’s done in a lot of movies. He webbed Tony’s hand to the door in Civil War, webbed Aaron’s hand to his car boot in Homecoming and the guy just does it as a reaction to stop people from moving.
Peter and MJ facetime one another and above her bed you can catch several of the sketches that she drew during detention in Homecoming.
This includes coach Wilson along with several photos from Venice in Far From Home.
One More Day & Brand New Day Inspiration
Cut to Betty Brant reporting on Peter going back to school and this pulls from the storyline Brand New Day in which she became a reporter instead of a desk clerk for The Daily Bugle. The movie is based heavily on the comic One More Day which led into Brand New Day and in it, it cribs several plot points.
After Civil War, Peter travelled to Doctor Strange to see if there was a way to help Aunt May who had been shot by one of Kingpin’s assassins.
The Sanctorum was extremely run down and this is somewhat mirrored in the movie when we catch it covered in snow.
Strange tried several spells but he couldn’t heal May and thus Peter turned to Mephisto. Mephisto saved her in exchange for Peter and Mary Jane’s love and to make sure no more assassins were sent after those close to him, he erased the knowledge from people’s minds that he was Spider-man. One of the signs makes Peter out to be a devil possibly linking to this or possibly a massive reeeaach.
During this scene, Betty Brant says ‘Go Get Em Tigers’, a catchphrase of the school that is of course based on Mary Jane saying it in the comics.
We can also hear the line do a flip which also popped up in Homecoming and this guy of course returned for the bus scene. There’s also Zendaya’s assistant who makes a cameo talking about their spider babies.
Easter Eggs in Peter’s School
Inside the school, we see the wall of legendary science figures that popped up in Homecoming. Amongst these are Howard Stark, Urskine from Captain America The First Avenger and Hank Pym.
They have a trophy case set out for Peter and I’m unsure how this would work with everyone forgetting but we could be stuck here all day. There’s a photo of MJ and Peter in Venice and if you look closely at it you can see Mr Harrington has cut himself out and pasted himself into it.
Harrington actually appeared in the Incredible Hulk as a scientist and since then he’s gone on to get a job as a teacher at the school. There’s also a trophy for Peter’s decathlon which was a big plot point in Homecoming.
On the rooftop, MJ reads an article about how Peter has hypnotised her and this foreshadows the ending of the movie in which he hypnotises everyone into forgetting about him.
Lego Easter Eggs
We see Dum-E slowly building Peter’s Death Star and it then gets dropped on the floor when May brings the MIT letter in. This is just like how Ned dropped it upon finding out that Peter was Spider-man and the Lego Death Star Easter Eggs don’t stop there.
In Homecoming, we’re introduced to Ned through the Palpatine figure that he holds up to Peter’s head. This is the first time we meet the character and Peter keeps this figure with him in the apartment at the end of the movie to remind him what he’s fighting for.
Visiting Doctor Strange
After seeing a hanging witch decoration for Halloween, Peter ends up going to Doctor Strange.
Whilst the central one doesn’t really look like the Sorceror if you look at the heads on the left and right they both have little beards that make him look like Stephen.
From this point he travels out to the Sanctorum which we see is covered in snow. We learn that this is because Wong left open a gateway that allowed a blizzard to come in. We saw these gateways in Doctor Strange’s movie and as Wong walks in you can catch a contraption on the wall behind him.
This is the bondage…can I say that? This is the bondage suit that Strange through on Caecillious in that movie to trap him in bondage. Hehe, Bondage.
Wong is now the Sorcerer Supreme as he got in on a technicality during the snap and it’s how I’m gonna become the best breakdowner after I kill every other one out there.
Coming for you Ryan.
Doctor Strange also has a mug that says For Fox Sake on it which is what I imagine the security at Sony to be thinking after all these leaks.
Spell-ing Mistakes
The spell gets broken five times and this is why five villains are able to come into the MCU. However, there are also the two Peters and Venom who we learned in let there be carnage finds out Spider-man’s identity because of the symbiote collective consciousness that spans the multiverse.
Whilst this is going on we can see Strange’s helpers and that little ornament thingy falling apart which also happened in Thor Ragnarok.
The shape of the Lizard is formed in the multiversal web and later on when the same thing happens at the end of the movie, there are more figures you can catch. This includes Kraven The Hunter, The Scorpion, Rhino and possibly Madam Web who we know is getting a spin-off movie very soon.
According to the easter egg special features, there is also the four armed spider-man there but I can’t see it, so maybe you should go watch that breakdown instead.
The Bridge Scene
Cut to the bridge scene and we get Peter flying in on the wingsuit which he also used during Homecoming. Peter rushes past several cars and in one we can see kids watching the daily bugle report that’s being filmed from the helicopter.
This is actually showing the camera shot from when he was just waving at the helicopter and as we know, there’s normally a seven-second delay on broadcasts going live.
Doc Ock arrives and tries to hold him up to a Daily Bugle helicopter to kill him. This is symbolic on several levels as it’s pretty much showing how everything the Bugle threw at him has been transformed into a weapon that has the power to kill him just as much as his enemies.
This river is the same one Ock died in and we get one of the licence plates that teases his debut. You can catch 63ASM-3 which stands for the year 1963, Amazing Spider-man Number 3.
This debuted Doc Ock who arrives not long after and starts doing more reaches than we’ve done in this video.
The taxi behind Peter also has the numbers 12 and 28 possibly a reference to Spider-man 12 which featured Ock that was then further fleshed out during a flashback in issue 28. Just Googling numbers all day I was.
At one point Peter ends up climbing up one of the cars as it falls which is somewhat reminiscent of when Tobey climbed up the brick during his fight with Harry in Spider-man 3.
There are more callbacks to that scene as Peter is wearing a similar suit to what Tobey had on and at one point he gets his tie sliced in half. This is something that also happened to Tobey during that movie when Harry cut it.
The car that gets thrown over the edge which Peter webs up also looks a lot like the one that went over the bridge in Amazing Spider-man and if it’s not well, sometimes you have to let your boy reach.
Doc Ock goes to crush Peter’s head and this is something that he did in the bank scene against Tobey.
Peter takes over the boomers tech before the Goblin arrives to ruin everything like this next guy.
Speaking of Goblin, when he takes off his mask and tells the Goblin to go away, he walks away leaving it in the trash. This is paralleled with the scene in TASM 2 when Peter gave up his suit.
This is a nod to the comic Spider-man No More which was also brought up in Spider-man 2 as one of the Daily Bugle headlines.
Sanctorum Basement
At the Sanctorum, Ned drops a line that sets up him being a wizard. We know from the concept art that it was originally gonna be America Chavez who brought Tobey and Andrew across but because the release dates of the movie switched we got Ned doing it instead.
In the basement of the Sanctorum, they start to look on Tik Tok for the green goblin and get these funny little elf videos. MJ also picks up a Goatee Template box and ey Strange, I’m not judging. The guy’s hands are still shaking so yeah, do what you gotta do mate.
Ned’s laptop also has the this is fine sticker on it which is a carry-over from Homecoming showing that the guy is still using the same one.
Electro Arrives
Electro becomes the first target and he appears in a Terminator-esque lightning storm butt naked just like Arnie did.
Later on in the movie when his powers start up he gets a bolt covering his face that’s very reminiscent of the mask that he wore in the comics originally.
When Peter dukes it out with him he ends up tying together several webs and this is extremely similar to what Andrew Garfield’s version did in his second film.
Sandman helps out and the fight ends with Electro saying he hates the woods. This is because there isn’t really that much electricity there unlike the city which is filled with it.
I hate sand because it gets everywhere and we have a nice bit of attention to detail when Peter smacks Sandman’s hand to say thanks. It actually completely disappears and ey. I appreciate that, let’s just hope it’s not his hand that he uses for…I can’t I can’t I’m sorry.
Norman Osbourne meets May
Now after learning Goblin is at FEAST, Pete heads there.
Outside there’s a poster for Spider-man and at the beginning of Far From Home, he of course did the event with Feast for Aunt May. This has been spraypainted with Mysterio was right and we can also see that the phone number is 1-800-Giv-Feast which is because it’s a charity.
Though it seemed like he destroyed the Goblin identity we can see from Norman’s clothes that he’s still there. The Goblin’s colours are of course Green and Purple and Norman still having these here show that it’s buried in his subconscious.
May wears blue and red which are of course the colours of Spider-man. Norman of course kills her and her standing here in these colours sets up them being on opposing sides later on.
I love how you can catch Norman in the background stealing doughnuts and it really paints him out as a very sympathetic figure.
Info Wars Joke
Cut to The Daily Bugle studio which is of course an Info-Wars-esque outlet. Much like Alex Jones, it’s now pushing supplements and we see a report asking why Spider-man hates national monuments. This has the Washington Monument which he climbed up and damaged during Homecoming.
They return to the Sanctorum and there are several nods to the other movies, namely the villains’ deaths and how we left them.
Peter grabs the box and he opens portals to trap him with his own web which feels like it was ripped right out of the Portal games. If you look at the last one you can see himself actually holding onto his foot which dangles him mid-air.
It’s super slick, super smooth and there are some great little moments like this with his web in the movie.
He pushes him out of his body into his astral form in a shot that plays heavily on the way this was done by the ancient one in Doctor Strange.
Into the Mirror Dimension
Strange plans to send him into the mirror dimension.
Now they fly through a mirror dimension world and Strange throws a train at Peter. This is something Mysterio did in Far From Home and there was of course the famous train scene in Spider-man 2 which this one seems to be the exact same model as that train.
Now If you pay close attention to the trees in Central Park you might notice all the leaves are brown…and the sky is grey. This is because the movie is set in the fall which we can tell by the doughnut shop owner telling MJ to take down the Halloween decorations. The movie of course also ends in winter due to the snow so it looks like Peter actually spent a couple of months on his own getting used to his anonymity before going to her.
It’s great as they travel further into the desert how the skyscrapers themselves turn into cavernous rocks and it also makes me wonder if Strange was taking him out this far because it’s a good place to hide a body.
Peter manages to beat Strange by recognising the Archemedian spiral and he then uses his knowledge of math to beat magic.
Trying to Save the Villains
Now they all go to Happy’s apartment and as they pass the camera it glitches for Electro because he interferes with its frequency.
They build a new nanochip for Doc Ock and the tentacle lights turn from red to white after it’s applied. In Spider-man 2 we learned that this differentiates when they’re in attack mode and when they’re white Ock is in control.
There’s a really cool bit of attention to detail where Peter throws his headset at the bench and it actually glitches the hologram as it passes through it. This didn’t exist when they were filming it and I love when visual effects artists put these kinds of things in as it shows they’re paying attention to what’s going on in the scene.
He gives the nanotech back to Peter and this smaller section of nanobots goes over his spidey suit to create a new one that he wears throughout the film.
We see Norman working away and at the bottom of this shot, you can catch the photo of Iron Man that was based on the one used for Obama’s presidential run. Just as Peter’s spider-sense kicks in we can catch another nod to Iron Man 2, namely the Stark Expo model in the back. This was what Tony used to create a new element and it’s so cool seeing it in the back of Happy’s.
Goblin ends up revealing himself and he calls Doc Ock a lapdog which is somewhat of a callback to earlier in the movie when Otto said he’d be fixed, like a dog.
Is it…a bit of reach but moving on.
Peter goes toe to toe with him and it’s one of the most brutal fights in the movie. Norman actually punches him so hard at one point that it breaks one of the stairs.
Like me and my viewers with my bad jokes, Peter keeps PUNishing him until he finally breaks him and he just goes full-on insane, laughing at whatever he throws at him.
Goblin kills May and bombs her in her home much like how he did to Rosemary Harris in the first Spider-man movie.
May says the famous words “with great power, must also come great responsibility.”
However she changes this up from the more typical version. Now, this is how it was originally phrased the first time it was dropped which is a bit of detail that I absolutely love.
May’s death scene is a really emotional one and it happens in a very similar way framing-wise to how Ben passed away in the first Spider-man movie.
Meeting the Other Spideys
MJ and Ned bring across Andrew and Tobey and you can also catch a sewing machine in this scene which gets a bit of attention drawn to it. The script says that Peter’s new costume at the end of the movie is somewhat of a combination of Tobey and Andrews and here they are, introduced together with a focus on a sewing machine. Peter later ends up using a sewing machine to stitch them all together and I love how this scene is kinda brought together by the end.
Ned’s grandma’s furniture also has plastic wrapping over the top of it which ey, we’ve all got that kind of relative in the family.
Bringing Peter Back
Andrew and Tobey very much want to save Peter from walking down the dark path that they did. Tobey talks about how he went out to get revenge on the person he believed killed Uncle Ben and that this didn’t fix the problem. Later on, in the movie, he stops Peter from killing Norman Osborn which saves him from the life of regret that Tobey ended up having. This is done in more subtle ways with Garfield who talks about how after he lost Gwen that he ended up becoming more brutal.
Andrew saves MJ later on and in doing this it stops Tom Holland’s version from losing the person he loves. The pair both stop him from dealing with the same mistakes that they did and thus they very much right the wrongs of their own past. I absolutely love how rather than killing the villains, the movie is about curing them and it really shows that this is what we do…well they do…not me, I’m a d**khead. Probably spoil the whole movie for you.
They all bring up the great power great responsibility line which shows it’s very much tied into the character’s origin story across the entire multiverse.
Now from this point, we learn a lot about them.
The lab has the three men pointing at each other which Cosmic Wonder talked about before. This meme was also in Into The Spider-verse and the group point at each other three times in the film. This happens here in the lab, on the scaffolding and during the credits we can catch a sketch of them all doing it to three’s the magic number.
Sony also recently just released a behind the scene image of the three pointing at each other and I think this might be the best photo ever made. Absolute classic.
The Big Fight Scene
Just before the fight they have some back and forth banter and give nods to the villains that they fought. This includes Thanos, an alien in Venom and Andrew talks about the Rhino who’s just a Russian guy in a suit.
Tobey says he’s amazing…and ey…he’s the AMAZING Spider-man…got all the Easter Eggs in this video we do.
Now, this scene is absolutely amazing and we watch as the Spider-men learn to work together. Their swing is incredible and they help each other through the air before landing on the Statue of Liberty head. This statue now has a Captain America shield on it which shows that he was celebrated much in the same way that Tony was after Avengers Endgame. Cap was initially outlawed for breaking the Sokovia Accords but this shows that society has accepted him once more with open arms after he saved the Universe. Earlier in the movie, we can also catch a banner for it which sets up its appearance in this finale.
When Electro is in Happy’s home you can also see the approval rating for the change-up showing that people are actually against them changing the way it looks.
They manage to save all the villains in ways that reference the prior movies. Andrew gets electrocuted and it looks very similar to how it happened in Amazing Spider-man 2.
You can actually see it messes up his suit badly and if you zoom in on his mask it cracks the lens on the iris.
Both he and Tobey get electrocuted but Andrew recovers a lot quicker and this is because he insulated his suit in that movie to fight the villain. Some of the shots from the original films are even used and there are deleted moments from the original movies that show their transformations. You might remember that Sandman was transformed by a spinning Supercollider and this somewhat is referenced in the miniature device that turns him back. Lizard chases MJ and Ned through a lab and this calls back to when he fought Spider-man in the first Garfield film.
At this point, Osborn swoops in and says can Spider-man come out to play.
Andrew’s Redemption
Destroying the box tears open reality and MJ falls in a nod to Gwen Stacy’s death.
He saves her, learning from his mistakes and instead of using a web to catch her he uses his arms to cushion the blow.
At this point, Holland’s version thinks that MJ is dead as he didn’t see Garfield save her. He just goes wild on Osborn and does some moves that are very similar to the ones from the PlayStation game. However, Tobey stops him and this shares similar iconography to when the character pulls the same stance as Mary Jane in Spider-man 2.
Forgetting Peter
Doctor Strange carries out the spell to make us forget…forget…someone…someone I can’t remember and we see how the world changes for Peter.
Now it’s at this point that Tom, Tobey, and Andrew say goodbye to each other. The trio hug it out and say the words ‘this is what we do’ which calls back to when May said it at FEAST. Later on, Tobey also said it and I love how there’s this consistent thing throughout the characters.
Peter wanted to back away from the problem but he was inspired by May who said that they help people. This is a line that has a lot of meaning for the ending as the Peters of course wanted to heal the villains rather than harm them. It shows at their core that they have these values to help people no matter what and makes May’s inspiration hang over the movie even more.
As Andrew disappears we see him do a peace sign and this might even be a little nod to the meme where that kid does one before disappearing.
Final Scenes
Ned and MJ get into MIT and he ends up studying for his GED.
She serves him a coffee cup and this has popped up in several of the Netflix shows and it says we are happy to serve you which somewhat symbolises Peter’s new life choice.
From his room, he listens to police frequencies and this is a reference to the opening of the PlayStation game in which he does the same thing. Aunt May’s grave also has the exact words, when you help someone you help everyone.
This too was used in the PlayStation game on May’s grave after she died at the end of it.
Peter swings off into the night sky and the script tells us that he can now fully focus on being Spider-man. We get a shot where his face comes towards the camera and we zoom in on his eye. This is also the same way that the first Spider-man movie ended and it very much brings everything full circle from that movie 20 years ago.
Peter Parker is no more but Spider-man is and rather than having to deal with living a double life he can now focus on the one that betters people’s lives instead of putting them in danger.
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