How No Way Home Sets Scorpion and J. Jonah Jameson as Villains in Spider-Man 4

Warning: this story contains spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home. Peter Parker (Tom Holland) could feel the Scorpion’s sting in Spider-Man 4. In Spider-Man: Homecoming, career criminal Mac Gargan (Michael Mando) is disfigured after the wall-crawler’s ferry scuffle with Shocker (Bokeem Woodbine) and the Vulture (Michael Keaton). A post-credits scene shows a scarred Gargan is interested in learning Spider-Man’s secret identity, later revealed to the world by Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) and The Daily Bugle pundit J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) in Spider-Man: Far From Home. But before Gargan can get his revenge on Spider-Man, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) casts a spell making everyone forget whose face is beneath Spider-Man’s mask to end No Way Home. 

Unlike the blustering but harmless blowhard J.J.J. of the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films (also played by Simmons), this Variant Jameson of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is much more active in his anti-Spidey smear campaign. Not only does Jameson maliciously expose Spider-Man’s secret identity, he hires a Bugle lackey (Robert Mitchel Owenby) to get the scoop on Spidey when he hides out with his Aunt May (Marisa Tomei).

This calls back to Gargan’s first appearance in The Amazing Spider-Man #19, where a suspicious Jameson hires a private investigator to tail his photographer Peter Parker and find out how he gets exclusive photos of Spider-Man for the Bugle. When Jameson comes across Dr. Farley Stillwill, a scientist who can cause artificial mutations, he pays off Gargan to undergo an experimental process giving him powers greater than a spider’s — the power of a scorpion — to destroy the hated Spider-Man. 

In most versions of the mutated Scorpion’s origin story, Gargan blames Jameson for funding the transformation that costs him his sanity and his freedom outside of the suit equipped with a powerful mechanical stinger. Scorpion’s vendetta against Jameson is what typically brings him into conflict with Spider-Man, with Jameson aware of the irony of the wall-crawler saving him from a monster of his own creation.

Though No Way Home ends with everyone forgetting Peter Parker, a news broadcast confirms Jameson is still waging his crusade on the masked menace Spider-Man. Should he want another “blockbuster” story now that his exclusive and explosive exposé on Spider-Man’s secret identity has been wiped away, Jameson just might fund the vengeful Gargan’s transformation into the Scorpion in Spider-Man 4. 

“There is a chance,” Mando, who last appeared in 2017’s Homecoming, told Steve Varley last year when asked about returning to the MCU as Scorpion. “There’s always a chance.” 

More Spider-Man: No Way Home Coverage

1. Back Issues: Spider-Man and Daredevil
2. Back Issues: Spider-Man and Doctor Strange
   
3. Back Issues: Spider-Man’s Identity Crisis
   
4. Back Issues: Spider-Man vs. the Sinister Six

Starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei, Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Jamie Foxx, and Benedict Cumberbatch, Spider-Man: No Way Home is now playing in theaters.