Spider-Man: No Way Home star Tom Holland is leaning into the fans’ obsession with a Spider-Verse-style live-action crossover. The actor took to social media last night to share a meme featuring Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man…and as you might expect, fans who are desperate for confirmation that Maguire will appear in the upcoming film are almost unreasonably excited about it. The meme has nothing to do with No Way Home, other than the fact that Holland is promoting ticket presales with it, but that hasn’t stopped some from assuming it has a deeper meaning than is immediately visible on its face.
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The image features Maguire in his wrestling suit from the beginning of the first Spider-Man. One of the shortest-lived costumes, this meme reminds us that somebody needs to introduce the paper bag mask into the MCU mythology.
You can see a screenshot below.
Both Maguire and The Amazing Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield have long been rumored to make their Marvel Cinematic Universe debuts in the Tom Holland-fronted No Way Home. Set photos and video have purported to show the three Spider-Man actors together, but the cast and producers have either ignored or outright denied those images.
“I understand why people are freaking out about the concept of that because I’m a fan as well. You can’t help but imagine scenes and moments of ‘Oh, my God, how fucking cool would it be if they did that?’” Garfield recently told Variety. “But it’s important for me to say on the record that this is not something I’m aware I am involved in. But I know I’m not going to be able to say anything that will convince anyone that I don’t know what’s happening. No matter what I say, I’m fucked. It’s either going to be really disappointing for people or it’s going to be really exciting.”
The idea of the multiverse has been a part of superhero storytelling since 1961’s “The Flash of Two Worlds” by Garner Fox and Carmine Infantino, but live action had generally steered clear of it until pretty recently. The idea has the feeling of harder science fiction than most superhero stories, and for years it seemed Hollywood didn’t believe audiences would buy in. The popuarity of The Flash, which started using the multiverse as a storytelling tool in 2015, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) proved that wrong.
Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, Loki, and What If…?, Marvel’s multiverse seems to be more wide open than ever before, and that has some fans expecting to see Garfield’s Spider-Man, as well as Tobey Maguire’s, share the screen with Holland. Following the commercial success of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, there’s hardly a more commonsense character for Marvel to begin exploring its infinite Earths with.
Starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei, Jamie Foxx, Alfred Molina, and Benedict Cumberbatch, Sony and Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: No Way Home is scheduled to open in theaters on December 17.
